Another national party no more?

• Author: Hay, William Anthony
• Position: Singing the Blues: The Once and Future Conservatives - Book review

John Redwood, Singing the Blues: The Once and Future Conservatives (London: Politicos, 2004), 320 pp., $39.95.

Anthony Selden and Peter Snowdon, The Conservative Party: An Illustrated History (Stroud, UK: Sutton, 2004), 256 pp., 25 [pounds sterling].

Geoffrey Wheatcroft, The Strange Death of Tory England (London: Allen Lane, 2005), 336 pp., 20 [pounds sterling].

BRITAIN'S CONSERVATIVE Party today appears caught between crisis and malaise, prompting informed observers to speculate whether the trend since 1997 marks a realignment in favor of Labour or even a terminal decline for the Tories. As the world's oldest political party, the Tories have also been one of the most successful. Conservative governments or Conservative-dominated coalitions held power more often than not since 1874, and despite occasional setbacks, the Tories became Britain's natural party of government during the 20th century. Conservatives held so strong an electoral position by the late 1980s that some analysts speculated it might exclude other parties and become a permanent governing party akin to Japan's Liberal Democratic Party, with power shifting between factions. A series of failures in the 1990s, combined with the rise of New Labour under Tony Blair, shifted the political landscape dramatically. Not only have the Conservatives been excluded from power, but their defeat fed the factionalism that pushed them further to the margins.

Political journalists and Tories themselves have struggled to explain what happened and how it will affect the party's future, and these questions touch on broader issues. The Conservative Party's collapse or decline into a third party would radically change Britain's political landscape. Any possible successor for the Tories on the center Right seems unlikely to identify with the nation-state and traditional British institutions in the same way. A party grounded in either neo-liberal economics or national populism would introduce a very different character to politics, and what Geoffrey Wheatcroft, in The Strange Death of Tory England, predicts as the demise of Tory England might carry other things away along with it. But are things really as bad for Conservatives as they seem?

The Rise of Tory England

THE PRESENT Conservative Party dates from the 1800s, when the political heirs of William Pitt the Younger led Britain through the Napoleonic Wars and their aftermath. George Canning and Lord Liverpool revived the Tory label from 18th-century disuse, and governments up until 1830 defined the party as it would later develop after the 1832 Reform Act.

Anthony Selden and Peter Snowdon argue in The Conservative Party: An Illustrated History that the Conservatives have been far less settled a party than popularly believed, and it is their very flexibility that has allowed the party to survive for so long through seismic changes in the political landscape. Success came from the Tories' ability to align their party with powerful interests, identify it with the nation and find effective leaders. Internal divisions and weak leadership combined with disengagement from rising interests typically mark the periods of Tory weakness. While Selden and Snowdon elide the latter point, history shows that Tory factions squabble like cats tied in a bag when conditions permit.

Policy differences and personality conflicts among leaders periodically spill into divisive quarrels. Lord Liverpool's departure from politics after a stroke in 1827 began a confrontation between factions that continued until the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel resigned in 1830. Not only did Wellington face a revived Whig opposition, but he had also lost support from Tory factions on both Left and Right, who were alienated by his autocratic style and opposition to electoral reform. When Peel brought the Conservatives to office again in 1841, he quarreled...