Original members of the CDA's steering committee included: On 27 June 2002, The Daily Telegraph carried a letter from the CDA, signed by Mike Smith, attacking the Conservative Party and its chairman Francis Maude for "the sleaze, double-dealing, arrogance, incompetence, Europhilia, indifference and drift with which the party is still associated.
[12][13] The CDA's June 2005 Summer Dinner in Fleet Street, London, was addressed by the 'metric martyr', Neil Herron, who led the campaign against the adoption of the metric system in the UK.
The previous year Herron had stood as an independent candidate in European Elections for North East England, gaining almost 40,000 votes, over 5.1%.
Smith branded the incident "an untoward event" and promised that CDA will take a more "forward-looking and inclusive role in future".
[19] Mike Smith issued a writ claiming Breach of Natural Justice and the party was obliged to re-admit him to membership.
[20] Soon afterwards, Smith resigned from the Conservative Party, and stood in the May 2005 general election as the UKIP parliamentary candidate for Portsmouth North, where the Labour victory was claimed by the Conservative candidate to be a result of the UKIP candidacy,[13] a claim also made by Richard North of the Bruges Group.
[12] During 2008 Mike Smith rapidly changed his stance and announced on the CDA's forum that he had rejoined the Conservative Party: "After wide-ranging initial doubts, Mike Smith has now enthusiastically accepted David Cameron's reform agenda and returned to the Conservative Party from UKIP."