AH Challenge: Dismantle the Conservative Party

In British history even as late as the First World War, the U.K. operated as a two-party system with the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party dominant. Following the First World War, the Liberal Party became increasingly irrelevant, and was replaced as a major party by Labour. Your challenge is to dismantle or weaken the Conservative Party somtime after the First World War without converting Britain into a state dominated by only one party. As a result, there should not be a British party today called "Conservative and Unionist" that is of any consequence.

Go.
 
Very tricky. The Conservatives were very much the party of the establishment, aristocracy and traditionalists. The only way I can see it happening is a sharp swing to the left, and the only way I can see that really happening is through a republican revolution by leftist groups (but not necessarily Communist) which essentially puts the Liberals on the Right and Labour on the Left.
 
Wendell

As Alex said it's difficult. You might get Thatcher lasting a bit longer and pulling the Tory party down with her. Some following manouvers that mean that the party dies [or becomes irrelevant] but some equivalent to the SDP breaks away and becomes the main right wing party.

Alternatively just possibly something goes badly wrong in 1940 - or more wrong than it did and you get a pro-appeasement Conservative Party, which collaborates to a degree with the Nazis, accepting their domination of Europe. After say a US-Soviet alliance takes down the Nazis and their atrocities fully exposed this leads to the total discrediting of the party and their resultant electoral collapse. Again you would need some break-away group, possibly led by someone like Eden in 1940-41, taking over the mantle of the right wing in Britain. [However this is probably more unlikely than the previous option as I think appeasement was pretty much discredited by this time].

Steve
 

Thande

Donor
Too late a POD really. I thought DoD did it interestingly, with the Liberals pulling to the right and essentially taking the place of the OTL Tories as Labour rises earlier than OTL, and after spending some time as an irrelevant third party the Tories re-invent themselves as an English regionalist/nationalist party.
 

maverick

Banned
Well, one guy did it by giving the Premiership to Enoch Powell in the 1970s and it was an amazing read. The Best Enoch Powell TL and the only good one ever done.

I had this idea for an old TL in which Lord Kitchener becomes PM in 1916 rather than Lloyd George, then is reelected in 1918, replaced by Churchill and Chamberlain and the party grows more reactionary over Ireland and an even more leftist labor, but it really got silly when Labour took over and I started planning for the Tories to collapse after some of its members backed a coup. Really crazy stuff.
 

Technocrat

Banned
Earlier neoliberal party in the UK then? Rather than waiting for Thatcher and still having the trappings of aristocracy and statist traditionalism, the Liberals (who were very reformist, weren't they? I think I remember them being the equivalent of the Progressive Era reformers in America, with things like labor laws and some hospital reforms and the like) turning right would not likely take on the aristocratic/nationalistic trappings, would they?

Instead of King and Country versus Freedom and Equality, it would be Free Trade Liberals as the only large party that the rich would see fit to donating to versus Labour.

And without a more centrist option between Liberals and Labour, more of the social liberal reformist types would end up in Labour, giving it more of a middleclass presence than it traditional has had.

Or, to avoid parallelisms with OTL, it would be funny if the religious conservatives via some sort of even greater Methodist boom ended up attaching to Labour. Labour for socialism and religious conservatism, Liberals as Right Libertarians who also like military intervention (liberty for all, plus it's good for the military-industrial complex who of course donate to the party of free trade).

Of course I know very little about British politics, so correct me if I am making false assumptions.
 
It is actually a lot easier than it seems at first sight. A SDP style breakup could happen during the 1990 or even the noughties over Europe or something similar say if Kenneth Clarke somehow becomes leader for example.
 
Near Future

In a couple years a disagreement starts over continuing the coalition or attempting a Conservative majority. Some say it's worth the risk and was a merrage of convience anyway. Others don't want to risk the influence now enjoyed by Conservatives. The row becomes evadent during a party convention. It gets more heated as time gos on. As elections get closer some Conservatives campaign as colalitionists. others as Conservatives. Some rideings have two candates who are otherwise conservative. This alows Liberal. Scots Nationalists and even Labour candidates to cary rideing that Conservatives held previously.
 
It is actually a lot easier than it seems at first sight. A SDP style breakup could happen during the 1990 or even the noughties over Europe or something similar say if Kenneth Clarke somehow becomes leader for example.

But the majority of the membership would stay with the Tories and like the SDP any left-wing breakaway would be crushed between the Tories and Labour sooner or later.
 
There is a really easy way for the conservative party to be dismantled, that I can't believe hasn't been mentioned yet. In WWI Lloyd George ruled as PM in a liberal-conservative coalition. After the warm he wanted to keep the coalition together the "win the peace" and so he contested the 1918 election as the head of the National Liberal party, with former PM Asquith refusing to join his coalition. What then happened was this split led to the conservatives taking over Lloyd George's coalition and then breaking away and destroying the liberal party forever in the next election. Yet, had Asquith stayed loyal to Lloyd George, their political power and the rising "threat" of the labour party could have resulted in the conservatives being largely absorbed into the Liberal party, with only a few rogue Tories on the far right. Its not unfeasible, at this point Churchill would have remained a liberal and could have been Lloyd George's heir, resulting little other changes to OTL only that the Liberals and not the conservatives would be the center right party of 20th century Britain.
 

Thande

Donor
Well, one guy did it by giving the Premiership to Enoch Powell in the 1970s and it was an amazing read. The Best Enoch Powell TL and the only good one ever done.

Damn you with your links! I've just read that all the way through. Heard about it before but never seen it linked to. It is really rather good indeed. Just once though I'd like to see an Enoch Powell TL where PM Powell actually acts the way Powell did all the way before then without turning into a fascist because that's what everyone wants for their nice fun dystopia. (In fairness the author does acknowledge and justify that in the TL though).
 
Hear hear, Thande, I think Powell's portrayal in 'Banks' is plausible - he would have become deeply paternalistically authoritarian if the events that occur in that TL took place.

Plausibility check - Ken Clarke becomes leader in 1997? The Wilderness years of the Tories are now plagued by splits on Europe? Perhaps a gradual breaking apart. But I don't think it's that possible, really. The Tories really believe they are the party of government, and will always at the end of the day come together to keep themselves in the game of winning elections. The party of Tebbit and Thatcher's rhetoric proclaiming 'compassionate Conservatism' and going into coalition with the party of civil rights and social liberalism, all in the space of 20 years? Say what you will about the Tories, they will do absolutely anything to get into power - and they're irritatingly good at it.
 
Bumping not unjustly.

I was pleased to see replies to this topic. Moving forward, however, I sort of find it interesting that the British have never had a credible Christian Democratic Party or analogue. Most of the rest of Europe has them to one extent or another, but the British right is more united, nominally at the very least. Is there some way for such a party to have emerged out of the Tories before the 1990's in Britain?
 

Valdemar II

Banned
In most west European countries we have a slit between a major conservative and social democratic one with liberals being the minor parties. There are a few exceptions. The problem are that to large extent this is a natural split, because liberals run from heartless capitalists to bleeding heart progressives, which mean that they can often fit into the other two blocks. So the important aspect are seing why exceptions exists. In Denmark which have a liberal/Social Democratic split, it's a result of the conservatives completely delegitimise themself and the elite by setting up a defacto dictatorship, and elements of it was kept alive for decades afterward, reminding people about how the conservatives was scum.

To how practical to do it, You need to make the liberals the rural vote, and limit the Tories support in the country side too, limiting them to fighting over urban areas with Labour, while they at the same time use their position in the Upper House to stay in power, that would both destroy their base, while completely delegitimise them for decades into the future.
 
There is a really easy way for the conservative party to be dismantled, that I can't believe hasn't been mentioned yet. In WWI Lloyd George ruled as PM in a liberal-conservative coalition. After the warm he wanted to keep the coalition together the "win the peace" and so he contested the 1918 election as the head of the National Liberal party, with former PM Asquith refusing to join his coalition. What then happened was this split led to the conservatives taking over Lloyd George's coalition and then breaking away and destroying the liberal party forever in the next election. Yet, had Asquith stayed loyal to Lloyd George, their political power and the rising "threat" of the labour party could have resulted in the conservatives being largely absorbed into the Liberal party, with only a few rogue Tories on the far right. Its not unfeasible, at this point Churchill would have remained a liberal and could have been Lloyd George's heir, resulting little other changes to OTL only that the Liberals and not the conservatives would be the center right party of 20th century Britain.
Actually a pretty good way of getting this would have been for Lloyd George and Churchill to succeed in building a Centre/National Party from the Coalition Liberals and Conservatives - something which I have never seen a TL about on here! You'd have right wing Conservatives splitting off and perhaps joining one of the fringe right wing groupings that were floating around in the early 20s and have the rest of the Tory Party and Lloyd George Liberals 'fusing' into an explicitly anti-socialist alliance - probably occupying the same political ground as Baldwin but with a heavier anti-socialist/radical tinge. Actually rather like the Unionist Party in EdT's TL 'Fight and Be Right', but thirty years later.
 
Too late a POD really. I thought DoD did it interestingly, with the Liberals pulling to the right and essentially taking the place of the OTL Tories as Labour rises earlier than OTL, and after spending some time as an irrelevant third party the Tories re-invent themselves as an English regionalist/nationalist party.

I haven't read DoD but this doesn't make sense to me - the differences between the Tories and the Liberals was for a long time small; if anything, the Liberals in the Gladstone era were in some respects the more right-wing party.

This is difficult precisely because the Tories have been so adaptive and un-ideological. My impulse would be to go for a bigger Free Trade split (with the tariffistas eventually winning out, the free traders joining the Liberals; this would effectively destroy the Tories credibility as the working class vote grows) but I'm not sure.

Moving forward, however, I sort of find it interesting that the British have never had a credible Christian Democratic Party or analogue.

Well, what would you define as the basic feature of Christian Democracy? If you're talking of a party of the right which hugs very close to the political centre then the Tories were usually that from Disraeli until the 80s - which is the main reason they were so electorally successful. They weren't an explicitly confessional party but then denominational differences have never been strong in Britain. (Though don't underestimate non-conformism in building Labour and Liberalism and Anglicanism in Toryism)
 
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Thande

Donor
(Though don't underestimate non-conformism in building Labour and Liberalism and Anglicanism in Toryism)

Indeed - you and I will know the quote, but I will mention it for the foreign members who may not - "The Church of England is the Tory party at prayer".
 
Indeed - you and I will know the quote, but I will mention it for the foreign members who may not - "The Church of England is the Tory party at prayer".

There's an interesting little mini-study which was done of Labour in the early years about the reading preferences of Labour MPs. They were asked what books or writers had inspired them.

A few said standard 19th century writers - Twain, etc. One said Karl Marx. A few mentioned Bunyan. But the vast majority mentioned the Bible.
 
I haven't read DoD but this doesn't make sense to me - the differences between the Tories and the Liberals was for a long time small; if anything, the Liberals in the Gladstone era were in some respects the more right-wing party.

This is difficult precisely because the Tories have been so adaptive and un-ideological. My impulse would be to go for a bigger Free Trade split (with the tariffistas eventually winning out, the free traders joining the Liberals; this would effectively destroy the Tories credibility as the working class vote grows) but I'm not sure.



Well, what would you define as the basic feature of Christian Democracy? If you're talking of a party of the right which hugs very close to the political centre then the Tories were usually that from Disraeli until the 80s - which is the main reason they were so electorally successful. They weren't an explicitly confessional party but then denominational differences have never been strong in Britain. (Though don't underestimate non-conformism in building Labour and Liberalism and Anglicanism in Toryism)

So then, could we see a successful* Thatcherite split from a Tory Party that continues to hug so close to the center?

*As in regularly having a significant contingent of MPs, a la the LbDems.
 
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