TORY EXPULSIONS

Much has been made of the withdrawal of the whip from a number of Tory MPs, including Nicholas Soames whose grandfather was Winston Churchill. This was repeatedly presented by Emily Maitlis on Newsnight on Tuesday as being something unprecedented (with a lot of face pulling and tones of horror).

The Newsnight discussion was briefly lifted with the attendance of Simon Schama, who compared the present Westminster crisis with the repeal of the Corn Laws or possibly the issue of Ireland for Gladstone in the 19^th century. There may be similarities, but a better comparison, surely, would be with the Tariff Reform Campaign at the beginning of the 20^th century. The schism is along the same fault lines. In The Ponzi Class: Ponzi Economics, Globalization and Class Oppression in the 21st Century, I wrote:

‘Next will be an examination of the impact of Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914) and the Tariff Reform Campaign – the historical importance of which is too easily understated if not completely ignored; at the start of the 20^th century there was a bitterly fought and titanic power struggle that, by comparison, makes Britain’s divisions regarding the EU a century later look like a teenage lovers’ tiff.’ (The Ponzi Class: Ponzi Economics, Globalization and Class Oppression in the 21^st Century, page 2).

In that titanic power struggle (see the chapter ‘Joseph Chamberlain and the Tariff Reform Campaign’), Balfour, the prime minister, split the Unionists (a coalition of the Conservatives and the Liberal Unionists) apart and there were a host of deselections of MPs, retiring MPs, resignations and defections – INCLUDING WINSTON CHURCHILL, an ardent unilateral free trader, who defected to the Liberal Party to Unionist cries of ‘Blenheim Rat’ and ‘Blackleg Blueblood’ as he crossed the floor in the House of Commons (page 75).

I wrote: ‘Balfour was as inept as he was treacherous and unprincipled, not seeing that it was more important to present an appealing programme to the voters and wider party. Instead, Balfour tried to trick his way through a series of Cabinet and parliamentary crises and resignations. The Unionist Party ceased to be a cohesive organization and split into warring factions.’ Theresa May went down the same path, and we are now witnessing the consequences.

The Unionists were held to ransom by a handful of grandees who refused to countenance any change to their own interpretation of early 19^th century free-trade theories. Of those grandees, Hugh Cecil was the only survivor, and that was in a university constituency in 1910.

By comparison, the plight of Nicholas Soames is piddling.