Brexit: Tories on the verge of a nervous breakdown

The Tories last split 100 years ago. Struggling to govern and wondering how to make it through Christmas, another split seems likely.

The Conservative Party is suffering something like a nervous breakdown.

To watch the Tories in the Commons is to watch a group that has lost much of its self discipline. Members openly insult each other, the leader has only just survived a vote of confidence, and the pro-Brexit European Research Group of backbenchers appears to have its own whipping system and policy platform.

The idea of a formal split cannot be dismissed; indeed in parliamentary terms it already seems far advanced. When the ERG announced that its members — who, let’s not forget, are all Conservative members of parliament — had decided after much consideration not to support Labour in a vote of confidence in Theresa May, this counted as news.

When strong and healthy, the Tories can be a formidable party of government. Right now, however, it can scarcely govern and wonders how best to make it through Christmas.

Nearing the end of its program of austerity, trying to cope with a changing public mood and a changing country (for instance its greater ethnic diversity or the rise in use of social media), the party’s self-confidence has abandoned it. The same sort of disorientation that can leave individuals vulnerable is afflicting the party as an organisation.

As has happened repeatedly in Conservative history, when the party goes through periods of uncertainty it fractures in the same way. It has, as it were, an inherited biological flaw.

The Conservative Party is the home of those who believe in an open trading economy, offering people pragmatic government and limited state control. It also adapts to social change, and it is often Tories who legislate to reflect the nation’s liberal mood, such as making laws to introduce equal votes for women or to institute gay marriage.

Yet the party also has a romantic, nationalist streak. This can tempt it into dreamy ideas about Britain and our role in the world. It can give itself up to nostalgia about the nation and empire. And it tends towards protectionism.

At moments of Conservative strength these two elements, the pragmatic and the dreamy, the trader and the nationalist, coexist peacefully within the party, each bringing new voters to the other. At moments of weakness, they clash and can tear the party asunder.

The most frequently cited example of this is the crisis over the Corn Laws in 1845. The protectionists under Lord Stanley split with the smaller group of free traders under the party leader Robert Peel. Less often referred to, but more relevant to our times, is the Conservative division over tariffs in the early 20th century.

By 1902, after a long period in power, the Conservatives and Unionists had begun to run out of ideas. Their confidence in Britain’s economic supremacy and imperial destiny was being tested by the rise of rival industrial powers such as Germany and the United States. The internal arguments over how to respond caused the party to split.

Joseph Chamberlain, the most dynamic member of the cabinet, believed that the answer was an imperial union: an empire forged into one economic bloc by a system of tariffs known as Imperial Preference that would deter imports from other countries. As a bonus, the revenues could fund Britain’s nascent welfare system, allowing the party to win support among the industrial working class.

The free-traders in cabinet thought this an impractical nationalist project. They believed it would cost them the votes of everyone but the rich when citizens realised that tariffs would put up the price of basic goods like food.

It was the classic Tory division between nationalists and free-traders and it produced the classic Tory breakdown. The prime minister, Arthur Balfour, found himself buffeted this way and that by zealots on either side. He tried to broker several compromises including, at one point, getting the party to agree to hold a national referendum on Imperial Preference.

The split over tariffs went the way of all similar divisions. The nationalist position swept the grassroots (Chamberlain won the support of virtually the entire party organisation) before taking over the leadership (under Bonar Law and Baldwin) and only abated once it led the party into repeated election defeats. Even then, some remained drawn to it. In 1949 Margaret Thatcher, on being selected to fight Dartford, told the local association that “Imperial Preference was still the cornerstone of Conservatism”.

The lesson of the party’s history is clear. The electoral system dictates that for a party to succeed it must be broad and united. As John Ramsden argues in An Appetite for Power, the Conservative Party’s success has been built upon this. In the short run, a fit of enthusiasm and ideology may lead it to favour dreamy nationalism above all other considerations, but however promising an avenue it may look, it always leads to a dead end.

The Conservative Party is constantly tempted to establish “clear blue water”, marking itself out from its opponents. When Chamberlain set out his support for Imperial Preference in Birmingham in 1903 his radical vision earned him a euphoric reception among Tory supporters. [Former foreign secretary] Boris Johnson’s speech about Brexit in the same city this autumn at the Conservative Party conference got a similar reception for much the same reason.

Yet this clarity, however seductive, eventually comes up against political reality. Some of Chamberlain’s supporters thought retaliatory tariffs might one day lead to universal tariff-free trade. Some of Mr Johnson’s friends think that imposing tariffs on European goods will usher in an era of open trading. The electorate, while at first quite taken with it, in the end are more worried about price rises.

Just as it did by the 1920s, the Conservative Party returns to pragmatism and prosperity. The party goes with the grain of the nation. As Britain becomes more urban, more diverse, more liberal and more internationalist, so the Conservative Party will too. It might, however, take its time.

And while it dawdles, it will flounder at elections.

The Times