When was conservatives last in power

Six weeks earlier, at the U. These developments, for Burton-Cartledge, throw up a number of challenges that Johnson may or may not be able to meet. Can stoking an intergenerational culture war, fought over Brexit-adjacent issues like the BBC and the British national anthem, disguise the absence of a coherent Tory economic program?

Will the food and workers shortages associated with the Brexit crisis eventually prompt an electoral backlash for the Conservatives in middle England or push British business interests into the arms of Labour, now under the struggling centrist leadership of Keir Starmer? Frustratingly, large chunks of Falling Down read like a neutral overview of how the Conservatives have behaved in office, leaving the important analytical questions posed in the opening chapters of the book only partly answered by its end.

Equally, there is little sign of Brexit having disrupted Conservative ties to British capital. Moreover, Johnson has carefully bolstered his corporate credentials by appointing two former investment bankers—Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid, both stanch free-marketeers—as chancellor of the Exchequer and health secretary, respectively.

Brexit has confirmed the Conservatives as primarily a party of English nationalism, built around the demands and expectations of an English electorate increasingly indifferent to the future of the U. These tensions will be difficult to contain. In , a poll by YouGov found that 63 percent of Conservative Party members would be happy for Scotland to leave the U.

Granted, Brexit may have partially bridged the north-south divide in England, but it has at the same time wrenched open a deeper set of constitutional rifts across the U. As his victories in the Brexit referendum in and general elections in show, Johnson is an astute and effective political campaigner.

But he is not cut out for government. No country in Europe has lost more of its citizens, in absolute numbers, to the virus than the U. On Sept. Two days later, on Sept. If Johnson goes, he can always be replaced by a more competent successor. By the end of Falling Down , even Burton-Cartledge has lost faith in his premise. Commenting on this and other recent articles is just one benefit of a Foreign Policy subscription.

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Usernames may be updated at any time and must not contain inappropriate or offensive language. The European Union and Britain are confronting whether international politics is a matter of law or chaos. Shusha was the key to the recent war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Now Baku wants to turn the fabled fortress town into a resort. By Jamie Maxwell , a political journalist in Glasgow, Scotland. Under John Major two-thirds of the parliamentary party were pro-Europe, one third anti-Europe.

In the constituencies it was the other way round. Boris Johnson always calculated that, as long as he could get to the membership stage of the leadership ballot, the anti-EU credentials he had honed over many years would carry him to victory. The membership has also had an increasing hand in deciding the shape of the parliamentary party by selecting anti-EU candidates. This was one front in the civil war that has raged in the party over Europe for six decades, but which became particularly virulent in the s at the time of the passage of the Maastricht treaty founding the EU , and again under David Cameron and Theresa May.

When he was prime minister, Major withdrew the whip from nine of the Maastricht rebels because they were making his task of governing impossible, but later relented. Theresa May never did the same for the European Research Group rebels who refused to pass her withdrawal agreement, because of her unwillingness to split her party. Boris Johnson chose differently. In expelling 21 MPs, including two former chancellors, in September, Johnson signalled that he was happy for a formal split to take place and that only those in favour of a hard Brexit were welcome in the party.

Two-thirds of his own MPs voted against him. The Conservative party lost the battle on free trade and did not form a majority government for almost 30 years.

A second great schism took place at the start of the 20th century over free trade and tariff reform. The Conservatives became the party of tariff reform, seeking to transform the far-flung British empire into a cohesive economic bloc to rival the continental empires of Germany and the United States.

Conservative MPs who did not support reform were purged by their constituencies. Winston Churchill crossed the floor of the house and joined the Liberals. By there were very few supporters of free trade and liberal imperialism left in the Conservative party.

In the s, with the end of empire approaching, the Conservative party pivoted to become the party of Europe. Harold Macmillan saw the pooling of sovereignty in Europe and the economic and political cooperation it made possible as the new framework that would give Britain influence, security and prosperity.

But the decision was always contested, and the opposition never entirely went away, even after Britain successfully signed the Treaty of Rome and joined the community in , and after the referendum confirmed that decision with a two-to-one majority.

Under Thatcher the leadership became divided over the desirability of further integration. Thatcher herself was the architect of one of the most far-reaching acts of integration, the single market, but she balked at the further stages of integration that were planned, especially the idea of a social Europe. This ignited the civil war which is only now nearing its end. In the course of it the Conservative party has been transformed.

Long vilified by the Conservative press as traitors and wreckers, it is time for them to depart. Daily Telegraph columnists have been repeatedly calling for a purge, and the exodus is gathering pace. Johnson won the referendum and then the leadership by siding firmly with the Brexiters in the party, and has reshaped the cabinet and the parliamentary party accordingly.

The party risks shedding a large part of its base among moderate Conservative Remain voters, and is seeking to replace them with Labour working-class Leave voters. It treats the union as dispensable. In theory, IER, which requires voters to register themselves, is a modern, much-needed replacement for the old system of registering voters by household, which was rooted in 19th-century assumptions connecting voting to property ownership.

The system was occasionally exploited by electoral fraudsters, and more often was unable to cope with the fluidity of contemporary life — which meant that by , one voter in 10 was left unregistered. Yet since then it has become steadily more clear that, in practice, the new system does not work well for some types of voters.

London and Scotland were the worst affected areas, potentially losing 6. The electoral consequences of all this may be profound. London and Scotland, the inner cities, university towns, voters under 25 — these are all contexts where the Conservatives still struggle. Where is the opposition? How can we damage it?

The government denies that its voter registration reforms are in any way party-political. Which we will do. But there are already signs that this campaign, which has been cut short by a year by the early introduction of IER, may not have been as effective as advertised. This month, the university city of Cambridge, which has a Commons seat with a tiny Labour majority of , became one of the first places to publish a register of voters compiled using IER.

Its electorate had shrunk by more than 10, In Liverpool, which has no Conservative MPs, it was down by more than 14, Next spring, the latest review of parliamentary constituency boundaries is due to begin, based on the contentious new electoral register.

The results are to be published in the autumn of , well in time for the next general election in The body carrying out the review , the Boundary Commission, is respected and independent. But everything else about the review has long filled many non-Conservatives with foreboding. Some analysts say this is down to a long-term population drift away from the broadly Labour-supporting north and inner cities, and towards the broadly Tory south and suburbs.