Conference will reveal whether the Tories still have the recipe for survival | Andrew Rawnsley
This may be extremely hard to believe at the moment, but the British Conservative party is the most enduringly successful force in democratic politics anywhere. Love them, which not many do, or loathe them, as many always have, that is just a fact. The Conservatives have dominated the government of Britain. The party emerged in the 1830s, at a time when steam locomotives were the scary new thing and only very affluent chaps had the vote. Since then, the Conservative party has collided with economic and social movements so powerful that many people, including many Tories themselves, thought they were doomed to disappear. Yet this party originally rooted in reactionary privilege adjusted to universal male suffrage, to women securing the vote and to the transformation of an agrarian economy into an industrial one. It has survived world wars, the retreat from empire and the death of deference. Great winds of change have blown through Britain and there the old Tory party still stands, a gnarled and twisted ancient tree that no one has ever thought pretty, but no one has ever managed to uproot.
The Tories are survivors, something that cannot be said for their rivals. Their competitor in the 19th century and early decades of the 20th was the Liberal party. That is now a party with just a dozen MPs, which has been reduced to advertising a vacancy for its leadership in the hope that someone from outside might be interested. With Labour as their main rival, the Tories have won many more times than they have lost. Since 1945, just three leaders of the Labour party – Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair – have won a general election. Just five have been prime minister. Over the same period, nine Tory leaders have held the job.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2QonnlF
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