'The party's been found out': William Cash on why he's left Ukip for the Conservatives

It cost £25 and took less than a minute online. But it has been a long personal political odyssey; a journey that included being so disaffected with the Tory 'lite' liberal brand of so-called Conservatism espoused by Cameron/Osborne that threatened to fasten us with iron cuffs to the EU in perpetuity, that I voted Ukip in 2015.

I always supported Ukip more for reasons of saving our parliamentary sovereignty rather than concerns over 'immigration' that Nigel Farage thinks should become the party's defining issue. But that was not why I joined Ukip. For me it was more about saving the aesthetic soul of Britain rather than controlling borders, not that this wasn't an issue.

Indeed so deeply did I feel about standing up for the Great British Countryside (I am lucky enough to live in magical hamlet of Upton Cressett in the Shropshire Hills near Bridgnorth) I stood for Ukip in the Midlands seat of North Warwickshire on a pro-countryside ticket campaigning to fight to save the very 'aesthetic soul' of England from George Osborne's bulldozers parked on every village green.

I can recall exactly the day I decided to join Ukip . It was the day that Nigel Farage won the European elections in May 2014 after I entered the 22-mile Bridgnorth Charity Walk.

Other than the wild beauty of the countryside what struck me most as I trudged along was the number of Vote Ukip signs on wooden stakes displayed proudly in the houses and cottage gardens of the quintessentially English rural villages I passed.

Villages and places such as Neenton, Cleobury North and Ditton Priors. The sort of sleepy hamlets that never feature in Mori polls but whose rural communities were sick of planning battles. The result was a shire revolt against the anti-countryside policies of Osborne/Cameron as former Tory voters abandoned the Conservative party in hundreds of thousands.

Shropshire was in the front trenches of the countryside wars. After posters were pinned to village notice boards around the county declaring 'Our Shropshire countryside Under Threat!' over 500 people crammed into a Shrewsbury's Lord Hill hotel to hear speakers speak out against the governments' pro-build policies.

Most looked like they should have been middle-class rural Tory voters. But many most likely voted Ukip in the European elections, where Ukip won three out of seven seats in the West Midlands and polled 428, 010 votes against the Tories polling just 330,470 votes. Packed into the hotel were voters who felt betrayed by a Tory-led Coalition that seems at best indifferent to the countryside and heritage that is so important for rural economies.

By the time it came to the 2015 election, I had decided that I could not support the Tory party's anti-countryside polices and ended up falling out with my Eurosceptic father Sir Bill Cash MP when I decided to fight the marginal seat of North Warwickshire where the Tories had a majority of just 50. My father's thinking was that votes for Ukip would rob the Conservatives of victory in critical shire seats that were needed if the Tory party was going to get the majority required to give the people a Referendum.

In fact, the very opposite happened. Ukip candidates like myself (I won over 8,000 votes in a working class seat that had been Labour throughout the Blair years) took votes way from Labour and ensured that the Tories won enough seats to give the people the Referendum that Cameron had promised; and was only forced to promise because of being squeezed by Eurosceptic MPs like my father and Shropshire MP Owen Paterson and and the rise of Ukip .

After the historic Brexit victory I resigned from Ukip as soon as it was clear that Osborne/Cameron era was reduced to political ashes. I did not join the Tories then as I wanted to wait and see how Theresa May handled Brexit negotiations. Following the historic by-election victory in Copeland, and Ukip leader Paul Nuttall's failure to win in Stoke – Brexit capital of Britain – it is clear to me that Ukip has no future as a party of credible government.

I would certainly not rule out standing as a Tory MP for a Midlands seat in 2020 should I be selected by a local Conservative association. When I debated minister Philip Dunne MP over Brexit in St Mary's Church just before the Referendum, I was pleased to see the amount of local support I had for my pro-Shropshire countryside and pro-British sovereignty views – our right to govern ourselves free from interference from Brussels.

I support the 'moral conservatism' (in action and deed) that lies at the heart of Theresa May's vision for a one nation 'Brexit Britain' that reaches out to both the hard working middle class and working class across the country.

I like to think that the moral Conservatism of Theresa May is now returning the party to the days of the late 1950s when Quintin Hogg, then chairman of the party, said: 'Conservatism is not so much a philosophy as an attitude, a constant force... corresponding to a deep and permanent requirement of human nature itself'.

In other words leadership requires an act of faith, or even more a 'belief' in human nature. The Toryism of Osborne/Cameron was a divisive betrayal of this idea that politics and leadership requires even a view of human nature and a sense of what entering the calling of politics is really for. Whilst Osborne seemed consumed by the saturnine politics of Faustian strategy, self-interest, ego and legacy – standing for no real personal or religious belief other than the gospel of liberal EU free trade, freedom of movement and globalisation – Theresa May is the very opposite.

I voted Ukip in the election of 2015 because I felt the Tory party of David Cameron and George Osbrone had betrayed the Conservative party, not only in their appeasement of the EU nomenclature but in a series of policies that made betrayed the very principles of Conservatism that used to make the Tory party the natural party of the rural shires and home counties.

As for Ukip, it looks like the party has been 'found out' by the electorate as not really being a party at all – but rather just a cause or a movement. Albeit a hugely successful one at that under Nigel Farage which is why I resigned last year when he resigned as party leader.