James Forsyth James Forsyth

Can anyone unite the Tory tribes?

Victory at the next election will go to the party that does a better job of managing its own electoral coalition

issue 16 September 2017

One of the reasons that coalition governments are so unusual in Britain is that both main parties are coalitions themselves. The Tories have long been a party of both social conservatives and libertarians, Eurosceptics and Europhiles, buccaneering free traders and economic nationalists. Labour has always brought together Methodists and Marxists, middle-class liberals and working-class trade unionists, hawks and doves.

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