Sir Eric Pickles Tells Students: "I think I'm now a Conservative"

The prominent Conservative MP, who was formerly the Communities and Local Government Secretary, spoke to Year 13 students at JFS, Kenton, yesterday, giving a speech about his turn from Communism to the Conservatives before answering questions from students.

Sir Pickles MP told students he was born into a family of “Labour and Cooperative Party” supporters. He fascinated students with his early love of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution, which he read “page to page.”

But he said that “I think I’m [now] a Conservative”, telling the story of how then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher “like a yeti, grabbing you” encouraged him to apply to stand as a Conservative Parliamentary in the next 1992 election. He concluded that “I owe a lot to Margaret Thatcher” and “she won me over.”

The MP for Brentwood and Ongar explained that he didn’t regret Cameron’s decision to “move [me] on” from his role as Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, claiming that sometimes “you’ve had your chips and got to go.”

And he said he was immensely proud of his work as Chairman of Conservative Friends of Israel (CFoI). Pickles, who had the night before addressed CFoI’s Parliamentary reception  referred to Israel as a “bastion of liberty and democracy” and “a good ally to this country.”  He emphasised that “our economy is extremely linked with Israel’s” and impressed students with the statistic that “one out of six prescriptions in the UK” is based on pharmaceutical knowledge from Israel.

Pickles further highlighted his most recent appointment as the UK’s Special Post Holocaust Envoy. “Views of the Holocaust… is forever faced with contemporary politics,” he said, adding: “there is a surprisingly large amount of Nazi loot floating around Europe now.”  Perhaps the most honest insight to his current role came when he described the use of “democracy, charm and damn-right blood rudeness at times” to affect change.

He criticised “people who want to rewrite their own history” and “the majority of people who obviously didn’t [do anything].” And when similarly asked his views on the controversy over the Cecil Rhodes statue in Oxford, the Special Envoy said: “No we shouldn’t [pull it down]… you can’t re-write history.” He added: “It’s like Isis” smashing ancient artefacts in a museum in Mosul.  

And in response to a further student’s testing question, the MP revealed he finds it “Frankly… really difficult to take a relaxed [approach]… to small numbers [being welcomed in the UK].” He praised the “major contributions” of “Kinder Transport [children]” and “the people who came from death camps.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note to Readers/Editors: I have written this in the style of a school report - other news stories are also published on this blog.