Michael Fabricant MP establishes Conservative Friends of America

Lichfield Tory MP Michael Fabricant has won the backing of David Cameron and William Hague for a new party group: Conservative Friends of America.  Mr Cameron will be CFA's President and Mr Hague its Vice President.

Mr Fabricant told ConservativeHome that the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan meant that the special, transatlantic relationship could no longer be taken for granted:

"Like any successful relationship, you have to work at it.  We have therefore decided to establish a Conservative Friends of America whose stated aim is 'To promote friendship and mutual understanding between the Conservative Party and the people and government of the United States of America'."

Initially the CFA will be restricted to MPs and peers only but other party members will be invited to join from next year.

CFA joins Liam Fox's Atlantic Bridge and Michael Howard's Atlantic Partnership as two organisations already concerned with the UK-US relationship.

Comments

[Letters From A Tory]

I've got a good idea. Why don't we stop making these pointless 'Friends of...' groups and try to build good party relations with every country, not just a select few like America and Israel?

[Ali T]

Sounds like a great idea. The CFI and other groups have worked to build understanding between our country and others.

Their work has been very successful and far from the doom and gloom of 'A Tory' I am pleased we have such groups.

Well done Michael. I would like to wish you the best of luck.

[Tony Makara]

I'm all for these 'Friends' groups and the more we have with different nations the better we can understand their way and they can understand ours. America is such an amazing nation and its sad to see the anti-American vitriol that has been whipped up over recent years. I am certainly opposed to NeoCon foreign policy but I know the NeoCon's don't represent America, anymore than the Labour government represents Britain.

[Paleo]

I am concerned that CFA, like CFI, will be another neo-con luvvy group. Neo-cons were originally ex-Trots who opposed Stalinism and want to carry on the Cold War. They made common cause with the Henry Jackson Democrats like Richard Perle and Douglas Feith.

The neo-cons need enemies to continue their war-mongering way. Saddam was the first target. But the Shi'ite administration in Iraq is not the puppet regime that Bush and his cronies expected. It welcomed Ahmadinejad last week and will probably form a Shi'ite alliance with Iran against Israel. That's what I call a massive blowback!!

So who's next? Russia. The neo-cons want to return to the Cold War and have been ratcheting up their rhetoric against the democratically Putin. So much for supporting democracy abroad!

When McCain, their second choice after Ghouliani, starts to diss Russia, prepare for the next World War. The neo-cons will not happy be happy until we are obliterated and their loony allies in Christian Right have their long-awaited Rapture. These nutters are no friends of Conservatives, especially on this side of the Atalntic.

[TimC]

A chance to work towards joining NAFTA?

[Tony Makara]

Paleo, it is regretable that after the end of the cold war the NeoCon's seemed to go looking for a new international enemy, and didn't produce, but found one in radical Islam. I well remember a programme on TV about 20 years ago called 'The Sword of Islam' that predicted this would happen. I can't remember the programme in detail having only ever seen it once but I do remember thinking at the time that if Communism ever collapsed, as was always possible with their economy, then radical Islam would be a ready made nemesis waiting in the wings. The worst thing for the NeoCon's would be the collapse of Islamic terror networks.

[Editor]

Michael Fabricant says he has been "overwhelmed" by the response since Conservative Friends of America was launched earlier this week.

He's just sent me this message:

"We now have over 150 Parliamentary members and climbing" he says. "Originally, the Group was only going to be open at the beginning to MPs and Peers, but we are now extending it to Members of the European Parliament too. We hope to extend membership to non Parliamentarians in 2009."