It has been argued to me today that the DUP has replaced the UUP, that the SNP has taken over almost the whole of the once-mighty Tory vote in Scotland (manifestly, therefore, as mighty as ever, as a bloc of voters), and that the Lib Dems have taken over the Tory vote in the English cities. So, I was asked, why should UKIP not take over the rest?
But the UUP, though very much a Tory party in its heyday, only ever took the Conservative Whip at Westminster, and in any case stopped doing so long before the recent rise of the DUP. For most of their history, the Scottish Unionists were in much the same position.
And the Conservative Party's expansion into urban and suburban England was largely, and in many places entirely, due to the National Liberals. That was always a Liberal vote, not a Tory one, and it therefore ended up with the Conservative Party because that is fundamentally a Liberal party, not a Tory one.
The Conservative Party is indeed now confined to the Tory bastions. Its position bears no resemblance to the agricultural protectionism, the municipal and ecclesiastical communitarianism, and the bred-in-the-bone social conservatism of those areas. But then, does UKIP's, either?
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Electorally, I thought (after reading Robert Blake's history of the Conservative Party) that it was the other way round. The Home Counties and southeast England generally were the Conservatives' best area even under Disraeli. The Unionist Liberals formed the basis for modern Conservative strength in Scotland and northern English cities, which started receding after World War II.
ReplyDeleteYou seem to be referring to the National Liberals in the 1930s, but I don't remember these having as big an impact.
I still think it is worth watching, David. You yourself have often written about how the Conservative party went Liberal by becoming bound up with Liberal local, regional and sectional interests. Ukip could do the same, going Tory by becoming bound up with Tory local, regional and sectional interests.
ReplyDeleteI feel that I have arrived now, referred to on David Lindsay's legendary blog. Some of us knew you way back when.
The National Liberals were key to expansion into the cities and suburbs, and they remained in existence until 1968, with two Cabinet Ministers until Macmillan's Night of the Long Knives. The recent Liberals in Schism: A History of the National Liberal Party, by David Dutton, is the major work on them.
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