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Michael Keith Smith (born 1953), commonly known as Mike Smith, has been chairman of the Conservative Democratic Alliance, a British right-wing pressure group. In December 2008, he announced on the group's forum that it would be disbanding.

He was the successful claimant in Keith-Smith v Williams, a 2006 English libel case that confirmed that existing libel laws applied to internet discussion.

Michael Smith was active in the Conservative Monday Club, and for several years sat on its Executive Council. In 2001 the club's links with the Conservative Party were suspended because of its anti-immigration policies, which had not changed for decades. After attempts by the Monday Club hierarchy to re-establish links with the Conservative Party, Smith proposed three motions at the Club Annual General meeting in April 2002, reaffirming the Club's opposition to mass immigration, empowering Club officers to institute legal action against the Conservative Party and calling for the sacking of John Bercow, then shadow Chief Secretary, and former Monday Club member, for "hypocrisy". The first two motions were passed, with the one on Bercow being narrowly defeated.

In 2002, Iain Duncan Smith expelled Smith from the Conservative Party for threatening to stand candidates against Conservatives. Smith responded with a High Court writ and Duncan Smith was forced to reinstate Smith's party membership. Iain Duncan Smith then reportedly said that he had "plans to make the Conservative Democratic Alliance a proscribed organisation, which would ban party members from belonging to it." In the event, no such action was taken.

Mike Smith left the Conservative Party, and stood as a parliamentary candidate for the United Kingdom Independence Party in Portsmouth North where the Labour victory was claimed by the Conservative candidate to be a result of the UKIP candidacy, a claim also made by Richard North of the Bruges Group.

In some ways Smith is an unusual figure for the role he has taken on the political Right. Formerly associated with the "Libertarian" wing of the Tories he has admitted to experimenting with "soft" drugs in his youth. He also claims African-American family connections and has recently championed a "Barry Goldwater" approach to gay rights.

More recently he has moved the CDA closer to the centre ground, warmly endorsing party leader David Cameron's "Agenda for Change" and declaring in a speech that he wants to see more members of minority groups taking senior positions within the Conservative Party. In December 2008, he announced on the CDA's forum that he was disbanding the group so as to support the Tory party in the run-up to the next UK general election.

References

1. ^ Tory expelled over rival election plan, by Marie Woolf, The Independent, May 18, 2002
2. Warning to chatroom users after libel award for man labelled a Nazi, Owen Gibson, March 23, 2006, The Guardian
3. Right-wing club appeals for Tory return, BBC, 10 May, 2002
4. The Independent, 18 May 2002
5. Tory leader expels far right alliance chairman by Nicholas Watt, The Guardian, Saturday May 18, 2002
6. Looking down on Armageddon, Searchlight Magazine
7. The Independent, 18 May 2002
8. UKIP candidate wins £10,000 for internet libel
9. Election analysis: The effect of UKIP/Veritas, Richard North, The Bruges Group

• British conservatives
• 1953 births
• United Kingdom Independence Party politicians
• Living people
• Politics of Portsmouth