The extent to which the major parties are internally divided

Today I want to look at divisions within the parties. You may get a question in your exam asking you to look at the splits, how the dividing lines between within each of the political parties, and you would have to talk about both the Labour and the Conservative parties of course, but also the example would expect you to talk about the Liberal Democrats if the question was on the major political parties. So you'd have to weave them in somewhere because the example does regard them as a as a major political party. Now I think you can divide up any potential essay into three sections. You can have as your first section the biggest split that currently exists between within the parties and VATs for split over Europe followed by the second big area of disagreement within the parties and VATs over the economy and lastly you can have a fairly broad section called social policy. Within this section you can include, for example, law and order, education, policy, perspectives on things like gay marriage, and these are still dividing lines, probably less so, still dividing lines between the major political parties. So let's start with Europe, the most important split I think between the parties is over the issue of Europe. Ever since the 2016 referendum the Tories and Labour have struggled to find a coherent policy that could carry both their parties. The government of Theresa May has maintained a Brexit means Brexit rhetoric and throughout 2017 and 2018 May suggested she was ready to commit to a no deal if her red lines were not met. However, the deal she brought back from Brussels sought to align the UK to a transition period that could keep Britain in a customs union for a long time due to the Irish backstop. Her party saw this as a failing and many of her members in particular of a European research group saw it as a form of soft Brexit. Even the remainers within her party and the soft Brexit here could not really back the deal and so they failed to back it on three separate occasions and we also saw the defeat of the party, the largest defeat of the of any party in living memory in the House of Commons. But also we saw the resignation some cabinet of David Davis and Boris Johnson but also Dominic Raab as Brexit Secretary after Davis resigned feeling that the deal was did not go as far as it should have. The split within the Conservative parties really significant because the parties now torn between those who want a compromise with Europe and those like the ERG who want a clean break Brexit. The Labour parties also pretty much disunified over Europe. Corbyn is known to be a lexeter, having voted on every occasion in the past against giving further powers to Europe. He reluctantly supported remain but since the result has resisted calling from, resisted calls from the Labour centrist like Kair Starmer and Tom Watson to commit to a second referendum. In fact, Tom Watson sent a tweet out yesterday where he described the position of the party as sitting on the fence and he would rather have the party come down on the side of remain voters completely. Corbyn has dealt with the divisions by as we said sitting on the fence and appealing to both sides and both factions have really been angered by Corbyn's position. So around a third of Labour voters and 60% of Labour constituencies are in leave areas and Corbyn fears that he will lose well predominantly working class Brexit voters who have now moved to the Brexit party. So the results, although I'm speaking before the European Parliament results are issued but it's pretty clear that both of the main parties are going to do very badly in these elections. We also know of the split within the Labour party where a group of Labour remainers like Chukaramuna moved to and formed a new party, Change UK and although the significance of Change UK is probably overstated and it seems that they're going to do pretty poorly in these European Parliament elections. Nevertheless, it's significant because it reduces the the size of the seat share of not only the Labour party but also free members of the Conservative party like Heidi Allen and Anna Subry left to form Change UK. When it comes to the count of you on Europe the Lib Dems have the most coherent and unified policy. They've called for a confirmatory vote a second referendum and this really helped them in a recent council elections where they successfully regained around 1300 votes and individual councillors which they lost when they formed the coalition government in 2010 with the Conservatives. However, it is fair to say that the majority of Labour members, many of them young and the majority of the Parliamentary party, including key members of the shadow cabinet, would rather reverse the referendum result and the division is not as stark within the Labour party as it is as it is currently within the Conservative party and this shows that in modern politics there is sometimes a division between the party leaders and the rank and file and indeed in the case of Labour the Parliamentary party. Conservative parliamentarians are also on the whole unified but there should be a deal and in a recent indicative vote in Parliament they all agreed largely agreed with the let-win amendment that took a no deal off the table so although the Conservatives are split over Europe it seems to me that the Parliamentary party at least would not stomach a no deal. It's also true to say that the divisions over Europe are often exaggerated. If you look at the long term both the main political parties have had an uneasy relationship with the EU they both agree that economic union makes sense but actually historically they've always worked against political union so the Labour party worked against the euro and the Conservative party really saw the treaty arrangements, the treaty amendments in particular forming a constitution for Europe was unacceptable. Another significant area of disagreement is really in relation to the economy. We've both the party split over how they view their stance on faturite economics but Labour party under Blair's third way had embraced the market and the forces of globalization however since the 2008 economic crash Labour members have questioned the wisdom of a deregulated economy. This led to the surprise election victory of the new party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Now Corbyn is accused of being a left-wing socialist with a commitment to regulation, high taxation, more government spending even if that means borrowing more money and crucially re-nationalising rail and energy companies. His brand of socialism has created tensions within the parliamentary party with two failed attempted coups against him. Now these coups failed because the membership of the Labour party are firmly behind Corbyn's economic policies. Centrist Labour members sometimes called Blair writes believe that Labour cannot win unless it has a credible stance on the economy. Ed Miliband failed in 2015 because he could not convince voters that he had learnt from the last time Labour were in power and racked up large accrued large deficits. So that's one big faction within the Labour party, the division between the centrist on the economy who are more blareight and the left-wingers who called for more of a radical economic policy. Now there is another faction within the Labour party and we call them the Blue Labour faction. It argues that free markets have failed but calls for more economic nationalism and restrictions on migration. So unlike the left-wingers who are more internationalists, the Blue Labour faction believe that maybe there should be more migration controls and maybe we should prefer workers from the UK over workers from the outside and maybe we should protect for example the steel industry. British steel has recently gone into administration. Blue Labour would argue that in order to safeguard the employment of the workers we should we should put restrictions on foreign steel entering the entering UK market. So it's very much a nationalistic Labour. Now within the Conservative party there's a split between the faturites and the one nation wing of the party. Remember the faturites are very much in favour of free market deregulated economies. However the one nation group in argue that government intervention sometimes is necessary especially on things like energy pricing or failing industries. So for example an Asubri was business minister. She called for interventions even though her party under David Cameron when she was business minister under the Cameron really argued that if an industry was failing governments shouldn't intervene. So she famously called for intervention when the when British steel on the first occasion was going to go into administration. There still is a very Anasubri left the party of course so did Heidi Allen to one nation conservatives. But there is still a one nation wing or a caucus was established within the Conservative party led by Amber Rudd and it calls for more of a pragmatic use of the state and even the Liberal Democrats have disputes between economic liberals on the one hand. So your orange bookers you call them and social Democrats that call for more government intervention on issues such as welfare and creating more opportunity. The orange bookers were in ascendancy before the 2010 general election and this element of the party called for more classical liberalism and in effect accepted the basic assumptions of factorism. However on the economy there is more of a consensus within the parties on a number of areas. For example all Labour factions except for need to reduce the deficit. Even the Corbyn wing of the Labour party in the last election called for a manageable reduction of the deficit and they called for a long term manageable deficit. So they would never they argue have a deficit the size of the Labour government in 2010. Both centuries and left wingers accept that borrowing in the Labour party except that borrowing should be for exceptional reasons and the Corbyn element of the Labour party have called for borrowing just for capital spending not borrowing to play to pay for public services like the NHS. Both sides believe migration is crucial for the health of the economy and call for a managed migration after Brexit. The Tories have also found consensus on the reduction of the deficit and although there are debates about the role of the state intervention most now accept that there are some markets like the energy markets and railways where some government intervention is pretty necessary. The Liberal Democrats can also be said to have less of a disagreement over the economy since the coalition government and you would probably argue that the Liberal Democrats have moved in a more social democratic position when it comes to when it comes to the economy trying to take over that space in the centre ground that was left that was vacated after Labour was accused of moving more further to the left. Lastly on social policy the parties have a number of divisions the Conservatives have splits over education policy some argue that grammar schools should be extended others argue that grammar schools are quite regressive and we shouldn't be moving back to the 1970s where we had a two-tier education system. There are still divisions within the Conservative Party between the Social Liberals and the so we call them the Liberal Conservatives and the Social Conservatives who like Jacob Reece Mark who have got more socially conservative views and believe in traditional family values and marriage being a union between men and women. This is largely reflected now in the party membership who the average age is 58 and they seem to have more socially conservative views and less are less in tune with the more metropolitan views of the Conservative leadership. Many of these members also believe for example that migration has diluted British culture. The Conservatives are also split over issues of law and order. Ken Clark famously said prisons don't work and he was a responding to Michael Howard's original statement that prison works and that's a traditional Conservative view which has always been quite strong on law and order. So these divisions are quite significant between the more liberal Conservatives who feel that there should be a relaxation of how the government treats prisoners to call for more rehabilitation and those who believe in more and a foritarian state with more punitive laws. There's also splits within the Conservative Party on civil liberties so we've got the runny me Tories who campaign for more of a libertarian view towards the state and so they campaign against the maze snoopers charter the internet that the internet should be a deregulated space and should be free. They believe that we overlegislate when it comes to hate speech for example and there should be more relaxation. There should be a relaxation when it comes to things which are not going to create real harm in society and they call harm harm should have a very high threshold. They campaign against the removal of the human rights act and so both Cameron and Theresa May had called for the repeal of the human rights act and and they believe that's a step too far. So you know we've got a diverse range of Conservatives who we would call libertarian or runny mead Conservatives but they do you know well split still remain within the Conservative Party. Recently Esther McVey established the blue collar Conservative faction. It's probably not going to get very far but her argument is that if the Conservative if the Conservative Party is to win it needs to appeal to the sort of small sea conservatism of the the British working class and the lower middle classes and her argument is that you know the party should move away from the social from social liberalism to a more sort of socially conservative position on issues like migration and on issues like same-sex marriage. So Esther McVey's faction is is probably one to look out for. On social policy however the Labour party are more unified. It's fair to say the blue Labour faction within the within the Labour party campaign for faith, family and flag and suggest that the Labour party has in effect betrayed its traditional roots by adopting more liberal metropolitan sensitivities so they characterize the Labour leadership as as falafel eating vegans who are out of touch with the again the small sea conservative values of the British working class who tend to believe in in family values and tend to have very strong Christian ethic and tend to be deeply patriotic and so when the Labour leadership call for for for trident to be to be deconstructed and not to be renewed they think this goes against what a traditional Labour voters believe in. They argue both for they argue that the left and centrist within the party have adopted identity politics at the expense of the traditional working classes. However the extent to which social policies now a major divide in line really is exaggerated probably on on a recent vote in Parliament on teaching sex relationships in primary schools only there was only 21 votes against and there were over 500 votes for the notion and so it seems to me that Parliament is becoming more socially liberal and it's probably the case that voters are less inclined to vote for political parties on social policy. Even blue labour is seen to be a smaller faction now within Labour party and the Liberal Democrats really have very few divisions between themselves on on a on on social policy they would probably prefer a more relaxation on on certain drug laws for example. So I think the the biggest divisions within the parties would be divisions on Brexit and the economy and I think these are substantial divisions it's probably fair to say that these divisions are going to going to continue for a long time to come and we may be seeing a real alignment in British politics. Now that's difficult because of the first past supposed electoral system but it's very possible that further splits within the parties are going to be forthcoming and so you may get a split within the Labour party between the left and the more centuries wings and that may lead to a realignment in the the traditional two-party system and you may get a split within the conservative party between an effect the Brexit is the hard Brexit is and the remainers and this may happen in some you know in the future especially since both the economy and Brexit in particular has divided the parties and continues to do so.