Dr Daniel Pitt is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Buckingham.
Being courageous and ensuring the independence of your political party can pay off electorally.
Kemi Badenoch has been clear: “If you want Conservative, you have to vote Conservative.” Adding that “if there was no overall majority”…“we’d have another election.” No deal with Reform UK.
This should surprise no one.
After all, as Benjamin Disraeli put it, “England does not love coalitions.” The Tories have a long history of hostility towards unprincipled coalitions and political deals.
We can go back to at least the Fox–North coalition of 1783, which Tory satirists called a “monstrous wedding”, and King George III said it was “the most unprincipled coalition the annals of this or any other nation can equal.”
All this was on my mind a few days ago when I attended Lee David Evans’ book launch. It was held at the Carlton Club on the 104th anniversary of the famous and pivotal meeting of Conservative Party MPs at the club, but at its former premises. This meeting, or the result of the meeting, saved the Conservative Party from extinction through a merger or, to use the term of the day, fusion.
Let us take a quick look at the political backdrop to this famous Carlton Club meeting. There was a Liberal-Conservative Coalition with the Liberal David Lloyd George as Prime Minister, and the Tory leader was Austin Chamberlain.
The main political question was about what the Conservatives should do at the next General Election. Should they fight it as part of a Coalition or as an independent party?
There was no agreement, and two Conservative camps were formed. The Coalitionists were led by Austen Chamberlain and desired to fight the election as a Coalition and had intentions to fuse the party with the Lloyd George Liberals. This had been on the cards for quite some years. However, the anti-coalitionists desired to fight the election as an independent Conservative Party. Yet they had a core problem because they did not have a big-beast leader.
Austen Chamberlain needed to carry his party with him by getting them to vote on the issue. The party’s conference, which was scheduled for November 1922, may have seemed like an obvious place, but in fact it was seen as too risky, so Chamberlain chose to hold the vote at the Carlton Club. To be clear, it was Chamberlain, and not the anti-coalitionists, who chose the venue and the date of the meeting.
Indeed, Chamberlain was confident of victory because he thought the Conservatives needed him and his Cabinet colleagues. Only two Cabinet Ministers, Stanley Baldwin and Arthur Griffith-Boscawen, desired to fight the General Election as an independent party. At this point Lord Curzon was not sure, but he did back the anti-coalitionists in the end. So, Chamberlain thought there was no one else to replace him as leader of the Conservatives.
Looking back, it is clear that the outcome of the meeting all hung on what the ill-of-health and former leader Andrew Bonar Law was going to do. Would he even attend the Carlton Club meeting, and if he did, would he speak? Moreover, which side would he back? Bonar Law gave much thought to the question at his house, Onslow Gardens, and he did decide to attend. Most importantly, he backed the anti-coalitionists. His speech was not great; he was still unwell and weak, but he was greeted with enthusiasm by a large section of the Conservative MPs.
Bonar Law was back, and now the anti-coalitionists had a legitimate leader who could also replace Lloyd George as Prime Minister. His presence at the meeting spoke volumes.
Stanley Baldwin also spoke and gave a fine speech; here is the nub of the speech:
“The Prime Minister was described this morning in The Times, in the words of a distinguished aristocrat, as a live wire. He was described to me, and to others, in more steady language, by the Lord Chancellor, as a dynamic force, and I accept those words. He is a dynamic force, and it is from that very fact that our troubles, in our opinion, arise. A dynamic force is a very terrible thing; it may crush you, but it is not necessarily right.”
Baldwin went on to say: “It is owing to that dynamic force, and that remarkable personality, that the Liberal Party, to which he formerly belonged, had been smashed to pieces; and it is my firm conviction that, in time, the same thing will happen to our party.”
The Conservatives were saved from fusion or being smashed to pieces because Bonar Law and Baldwin carried the day. The motion against the Coalition was 187 to 87. The Conservatives had reestablished their independence. Both Lloyd George and Chamberlain knew the game was up. In short, Bonar Law became Prime Minister and won a majority at the General Election.
Yes, standing up for your party can pay dividends. We can learn this from our own history, but we can also turn to corporate strategy for a moment. Michael E. Porter, an Emeritus Professor at the Harvard Business School, has shown that mergers and acquisitions have a high rate of failure. Porter put it thus, “It is difficult to win at the acquisition game.”
The Conservatives have done a reasonable job of winning the acquisition game in the past; for example, the Liberal Unionists and National Liberals were merged within the party, but the acquisition must be attractive, low-cost, and create a competitive advantage. A deal with Reform UK does not pass any of Professor Porter’s tests; the lessons of history are clear, and Kemi Badenoch knows this.