They insist they are “independent”. They claim to be “non partisan”. They react with outrage - well, faux outrage - when asked if they are really Tories. But the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance really are Tories. They keep up the protests, but every time the surface is scratched, it comes up Tories, and has done for some years now.
Blue background - no comment
Take the appearance back in 2008 of the TPA’s then head spinner Susie Squire on Nick Ferrari’s LBC show (it’s been going that long, folks), where she told “I’d like to point out that we’re independent - we’re not for the Tories or for Labour or for anyone”. Was she, though, secretly Conservative? “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I can’t have that - that’s outrageous! That’s just absolutely outrageous! Because we’re totally independent, we talk to everyone ... We don’t have a party preference”. Ho yus?
Ms Squire then went to become a SpAd to Iain Duncan Cough at the DWP before becoming press secretary to Young Dave at 10 Downing Street, which is not bad going for a non-Tory. And this was no isolated occurrence: Mark Wallace went from the TPA to ultimately end up at Conservative Home, with Jonathan Isaby travelling in the opposite direction. It just kept on coming up Tories. And there was more.
In September 2012, Windsor Conservatives hosted a Conservative Renewal Conference. This was attended by such luminaries as the loathsome Toby Young, Dan, Dan, The Oratory Man, James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole, Michael Ashcroft, and the serially clueless Tim Montgomerie. One of the key sponsors was, you guessed it, the TPA.
But perhaps, in the intervening period, the TPA has distanced itself from The Blue Team? As if. They conveniently forgot their crusade against public sector waste when London’s formerly very occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was, er, wasting public money on the vanity cable car, vanity buses, vanity water cannon, studies for a vanity airport, and the now thankfully aborted vanity Garden Bridge. And they’re still Tories.
We have had this confirmed by one of the TPA’s recent interns, Olivia Maso, who has posted photos from her internship, including a trip to Plymouth with the TPA’s ubiquitous talking head Chloe Westley. And whose banner is that under which they are posing for the camera? Plymouth University Conservatives. Same as the Conservative conferences that the TPA attends every year. Not Labour. Not Lib Dem. Not Green. Just Tory.
Well, well, what a coincidence
The party into which the TPA gets its alumni is the Tories. The party supported by new media outlets where TPA alumni end up is the Tories. The party whose “renewal conference” the TPA sponsored was the Tories. The party their current campaign manager can be seen happily supporting with her presence is the Tories.
So when you see Chloe Westley telling the world how “non partisan” she is, you know someone is being seriously economical with the actualité. The TPA are fellow Tory travellers. Whoever is funding them. Full stop, end of story.
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