Xander West: (part 3) Party splits over Europe and beyond tell us much about what it will take to rebuild

Xander West is an independent writer and author of the Grumbling Times substack. 

In this short series, Xander is exploring the Conservative Party’s long and tortured relationship with protectionism. Read part one here and part two here

The European Economic Community, later the European Union, was the primary source of modern factionalism and splits over trade within the Conservative Party.

Since the events remain well-known to living memory, this article cannot seek to recount them in any great detail or comprehensiveness. Instead, it will highlight certain parallels with the equally dramatic episodes described in the previous articles, as well as proffer some general lessons from this history for contemporary Conservatives.

If the doomed notion of imperial preference promised free trade within the empire but unified protectionism from without, then the EU offers a sort of European preference with similar dynamics.

Whilst the bloc does not oppose freer trade with nations outside it, it has discovered the inherent difficulties of aligning so many nations, localised industries desiring special treatment and its own zeal for regulation in bilateral negotiations. It is the latter fact, combined with the bureaucracy it produces, that has made the EU such a stifling force and one which is less economically open or dynamic than it perhaps wishes.

However, when it came to Britain’s accession in 1972, the EEC represented something greater in a new sense of direction for the uncertain economic and especially foreign policy of the post-Suez years. There were reassuring symbols and salves to be found in internationalism and supranationalism, more so than in a still decolonising Commonwealth with plenty of then recent sorer legacies. Additionally, the Common Agricultural Policy appealed to Conservatives, led at the time by Edward Heath, in answering their perennial hobbyhorse of agricultural protection.

As the EEC evolved and integration deepened, the symbolic power of its proponents was rivalled by the rise of euroscepticism, founded on the erosion of parliamentary sovereignty to common European policies or institutions. That removing regulatory, bureaucratic or trade barriers to economic prosperity could be more efficiently pursued outside the bloc was another important component to opposition within the Conservatives from the 1980s.

Thus, two powerful opposing factions were shaped as that decade continued and the bitter splits soon began. Margaret Thatcher was brought down by her Europhiles, John Major by his Eurosceptics. David Cameron fell on the sword the Eurosceptics handed to him, whilst Theresa May was felled by both sides.

Of course, the mutual animosity and polarisation peaked between Cameron’s announcement of a referendum on EU membership in 2015 and the United Kingdom’s eventual departure in January 2020. For a while in 2019, the minority Conservative government under Boris Johnson attempted to purge the Europhiles from the party on the charge of obstructionism, but this was a fruitless act of frustration and almost spite given Parliament’s composition before the December election that year. It was unwise to make such a demand for effectively doctrinal purity, since there was as much variance of opinion amongst Eurosceptics as there was between them and the Europhiles.

Although the exit agreement was not one ideally envisaged by some, especially over Ireland where questions remain, it is an agreement nonetheless, thus Britain is out on its own again in the world.

This has not produced a nativist insularity, as some critics unreasonably thought would occur, but implementation of the potential benefits of Brexit has been mixed.

Whereas reams of EU law remain on the statute books, encouraging progress was made under the previous government towards freer trade, most notably accession to the CPTPP. As factional differences took hold for reasons other than trade, some of these new agreements have perhaps gone underreported.

Still, unless the current Labour government backtracks on its pledges significantly more than reportedly anticipated, the core dispute over EU membership has been resolved in favour of free trade.

What can be gleaned today, then, from nearly two centuries of Conservative splits between protectionists and free traders?

Certain Eurosceptics have been proven right that the UK is a free trade nation.

The electorate, whether under the exclusive system of the late 1840s or the universal suffrage enjoyed today, has almost always voted for free trade over protectionism when presented with the choice. There is an obvious interest in voting for reducing costs on goods, whilst the case for protection to do the same by encouraging increased domestic production has proven less persuasive. Although both have periodically become symbols for animating and even all-encompassing causes, neither are intrinsic to conservatism except when considering electoral viability.

However, protectionism has often been combined with more negative spirits and aims, seemingly brought on by senses of urgency or desperation about elements mistakenly perceived as vital to the nation’s existence. Occasional splits in opinion within a party over one issue or another may be unavoidable, but purges based on an ideological dogma are zero-sum affairs in which nobody wins and a period in the wilderness is all but guaranteed. British parties are broad churches for a reason, after all, as a variety of reasonable strains of thought existing in creative tension with one another is a crucial source of political strength.

Quashing all but the most preferred is not how a sustainable electoral coalition is built, nor a party renewed following defeat.

Currently, the Conservatives seem to be incidentally abiding by these lessons.

Factionalism has subsided and party unity has improved, neither of which were necessarily guaranteed after the end of the last leadership contest. Shadow ministers and the co-chairmen are charting a path, albeit artificially slowed despite impending elections, towards a principled intellectual renewal.

Kemi Badenoch’s stated preference for classical liberalism has not yet come at the direct expense of any strains of conservatism, but neither has it promoted any serious revival. Moreover, a rediscovery and reapplication of principles need not entail her seeming retreat towards abstraction and aloofness, states which are fundamentally dislocated from the party’s dire political reality. Nevertheless, a future party split over trade policy remains possible, for instance, if a successfully implemented programme of reindustrialisation spurs calls to protect rejuvenated or fledgling industries from foreign competition.

There might be a relative Conservative consensus on the EU now, but as recent years have shown almost anything can cause factions to emerge in the right conditions.

As the continued squabbling of the Unionist remnants after the 1906 election demonstrated, there is no parliamentary party too small to divide and self-destruct for no gain whatsoever. Indeed, this was how the Liberals destroyed themselves as a party of government after the First World War; parties may grow venerable, but never immortal.

A little over a century ago, the Conservatives only just survived their crisis of conservatism, despite riven over trade, through ultimately competent leadership and their steadfast refusal of subjugation by radicalism.

Now the existential crisis has returned and the stakes are even higher, the consequences of the kinds of disunity explored in this series, or indeed of a leadership incapable of rising to the challenge, would be no less than the party’s final dismemberment, conservatism’s obliteration and everlasting political oblivion.