By BAGEHOT
THE first thing that you notice in Birmingham is that the Conservative Party is hopelessly split on Brexit. The government is united (for now) over Chequers. Most of the party faithful hate it. On September 30th hundreds of people queued for more than an hour—the queue snaking down the stairs; people locked in animated conversations—to hear eight leading Brexiteers address a “conference rally” put on by a pro-Brexit website, Brexit Central. To burnish their “party within a party” credentials Brexit Central provided attendees with a purple ribbon to replace the regular blue ribbon issued by the Tory Party to hang the all-important conference passes on.
The Conservative Party has always been an alliance of what might be called the City and the Country. The City consists of big business and big finance. It believes (for the most part) in global markets and liberal economic policies. The Country consists of country squires and the provincial bourgeoisie. It believes in conserving all that is best in Britain from country estates to market towns. This is Benjamin Disraeli’s “villa conservatism” and Stanley Baldwin’s “property-owning democracy”. Brexit has driven a coach and horses through this alliance. The more numerous Country faction is determined to make its voice heard in Birmingham.
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