A Liberal Conservative

"I am a Liberal Conservative." So said David Cameron, not for the first time, during his warm-up act to yesterday's EU debate. And, of course, he is. For a very long time, the Conservative Party has been defining itself by hoovering up Liberals: Liberal Unionists, Liberal Imperialists, National Liberals, Alfred Roberts's daughter, those around the Institute of Economic Affairs (although its founders and its founding backer, like Roberts, never actually joined), and now the Liberal Democrats.

The Conservative Party is itself therefore two parties in one, which would be entirely separate in many other countries, competing hardly at all for the same votes and co-operating hardly at all on any issue of policy. The metropolitan, urban, capitalist, secular, libertarian, make-the-world-anew party has finally defeated and banished the provincial, rural, protectionist, church-based, conservative, mind-our-own-business party. The Whigs have finally defeated and banished the Tories, just as they have finally defeated and banished the Radicals. This side of electoral reform, anyway.

Cameron and his courtiers have now told the Tories frankly to clear off to UKIP and lose their seats, probably to the Lib Dems who would most obviously benefit from a split Conservative vote under First Past The Post. Then again, most and possibly all Lib Dem MPs seeking re-election in 2015 are expected to do so as "Conservative and Liberal Democrat" candidates with no Conservative opponent, recalling the "Conservative and National Liberal" candidates of old, and the "Conservative and Liberal Unionist" ones before that. The favour could cheerfully be returned.

And even after electoral reform, would there be anyone in a Tory party? The ideological takeover of the Tory machine by successive waves of Liberals has been so successful, in its own terms, that most of the dutiful, deferential, donkey-like voters whom that machine delivers honestly have no idea that it is a Liberal, rather than a Tory, idea to oppose the protection of British agriculture and industry from foreign competition, or to subscribe to the sorts of arguments advanced in support of changes such as the legalisation of drugs, or to value "personal liberty" over the definition of marriage as only ever the union of one man and one woman, or to scorn the Catholic and classically Protestant (frequently Tory) critiques of capitalism, or therefore to resist substantial State action against social evils, or to view with anything other than the most profound scepticism the founding mythoi and numerous of the subsequent policies of the United States, or to advocate the use of armed force in order to spread "freedom and democracy".

Are there really any Tories left for David Cameron to purge?