Product Description

Has the most successful species in British political history finally become extinct? The Conservative party dominated British politics for 120 years from Disraeli’s victory in 1874, culminating in an unprecedented eighteen-year spell in government after 1979. And yet at the very end of the century the Tories imploded so disastrously as to suggest the party might be doomed to follow the Liberals into oblivion. Geoffrey Wheatcroft has observed this extraordinary drama at close hand, interviewing all the key players on (and, more often, off) the record. In this provocative and often acerbically funny book he examines how the Tories came to enjoy their unlikely triumph - and their spectacular decline.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #156516 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Sunday Times
‘Rarely has a wake proved so much fun'

Spectator
‘A rattling good read’

Peregrine Worsthorne, New Statesman
‘Immensely readable and sardonic … one puts the book down chuckling, as well as feeling wiser’

Customer Reviews

political history and comment at its brighest and best
This is a splendid book. Journalist Geoffrey Wheatcroft explores the reasons behind the slow decline of the British Conservative (Tory) Party, once the undisputed mistress of the British political scene, now reduced to a rump of quarrelsome, factional schisms, disunited, directionless and with no sense of being able to return to power. It's a wonderful read and I recommend that anyone interested in politics, contemporary history or ploitical thought packs this thoroughly enjoyable tale of a fall into the political wilderness in their holiday reading.

The tale is told by a canter through Tory party history; although the book was completed prior to Tony Blair's historic third Labour Party win in May 2005, the writing is clearly on the wall. Wheatcroft ably describes the twists and turns of policy and personalities in recent British history and his evocation of ideas and individuals, often with a few carefully chosen sentences, is superb. He (correctly in my view) identifies and dissects the reasons for the fall of the Tory party - disunity, the stealing of Thatcherism's thunder by Tony Blair and above all a total change in social outlook and mores to which point a recent Daily Telegraph correspondent could state 'we are all social democrats now'.

And the tale is told with admirable clarity and a wonderful acerbic humour. Here is Geoffrey on the Referendum Party - 'in many ways it was a risible affair, noisily supported at one glitzy gathering after another by such notabilities as...and altogether a fine cross-section of rich white trash; there has been nothing like it since the flapper in 'Vile Bodies' complained, 'The Independent Labour Party? Why haven't I been asked?'. And on the hapless William Hague - 'In an age of appearances his own did not help, part foetus and part death's head, apparantly without having gone through the usual intervening phase of human life'. And on the Countryside Alliance march - 'To watch that parade of the rural classes and what was left of the landed gentry was like peering at something from a nature reserve'. His comment on puritanism that 'whether taking religious or secular form, Puritanism is a minority taste; most people want to build the just city less than they want their cakes and ale, particularly the ale' deserves an immediate place in any book of political quotations.

Of course there must be quibbles despite Geoffrey's generally sound analysis and his acute judgement. Although most of his glancing sideswipes hit their target, some are heavily off beam. To describe the liberation of a friendly, harmless small nation from the clutches of a psychopathic dictator and his appalling bullies as 'raising more questions than it answered' (his comments on the First Gulf War) raises some difficult moral and political questions of its own. And Geoffrey's opposition to ID cards seems more rooted in a 1950s schoolboy libertarianism than a recognition of current world realities. But on the main issues, Geoffrey is sharp and sound and even if one disagrees with him, there's plenty to engage with and mull over.

Perhaps the book's one great weakness is that Geoffrey can never quite pin down the essential nature or philosophy of the Tory Party. To many of us outside, it represents little more than an attempt to conserve the lifestyle and views of a priviliged and affluent minority, disguised as a political party. Once this is appreciated, the decline and fall becomes inevitable. And the party seems utterly unable to learn. Just a couple of weeks ago a group of Right wing Tory MPs, no doubt to the delight of the party's incrasingly elderly and reactionary membership, launched a platform for a new direction based on an American style religious conservatism that has not, nor ever has had, any market in Britain. A suitable subtitle for this acute and worthwhile read (and the Tories themselves) would have been 'They just don't get it'.

Essential Reading, but flawed.
The first thing to say about this book is that it is written by a conservative, so for those not of this political persuasion, parts of the book, such as the general praise of Thatcher will be hard to swallow. But I would still recommend it to all as an excellent study of the Tory party from within. It is written with real wit and carefull analysis. What's better, is that once you pick it up, you can't put it back down, and this is very much to the authors credit.

The attack on the Fogey Right and their obsession with Europe is particularly vehement, and fair. This section of the party which seems to have been in control for some time has repelled more voters than it has attracted, and for the forseeable future, this is something that does not look like it will be remedied. The author's lament of the fall of the old patrician spirit of the Tory party is just, and in many ways, is also the root of the problem. His demonstrates this well through examining the history of the Tory party. Truthfully, the party today appears to be in a wilderness similar in form to that it sruggled under against the power of the Whig party in the 18th century.

However, some of his analysis of some issues seems too one-sided, and his Conservative views overcome his judgement. This is lacking particularly in his section outlining the problems the Tory party had in The Troubles, in Scotland, the anti-Thatcher crusade of the 'intellectual left' and much of his narrative on Thatcher and her acheivements. With regards The Troubles, he rightly condemns Seinn Fein, but leaves it at that. He doesn't really expand on the problems the unionists created, or the frequently good causes fought by moderate elements such as the SDLP. He also fails to condemn Thatcher's policy of fighting fire with fire against the IRA. With regards Scotland, he rejects out of hand Scotland's demand for devolution as being economically unviable, willfully ignoring the fact that Scotland's institutions required more governance than one day a month in parliament - but also by nasty coincidence displaying the same contemptuous attitude which caused the Scots to desert the Tories in the first place. With regards the intellectual left, he takes a long time to take a very easy pot-shot at a collection of people who he holds partly responsible for the downfall of Thatcher. The fact is, the Intellectual left are a parody of themselves, and have taken pot shots at prime ministers before and after Thatcher, Tory and non-Tory anyway. Thatcher just made it easier for people to dislike her because of her bullying and aggressive manner. With regards Thatcher herself, the author is obviously enraptured by her, and given that so much of the problem the Tories have to today is because of what she did and the way she did it, this critical link is almost fatally weakened. Thatcher repelled as much as she attracted when in power, and as time has worn on, the admirers are shrinking in number. She is a large part of the problem, and needs more objective analysis than this book gives her.

Otherwise it is an excellent read, and to anyone who wants to know how to fix the Tory party, this book is as good as any as a place to start. Highly recommended.

Funny, incisive and totally wrong
Great book, full of wit and insight into how it went so wrong for the Tories. Unfortunately, of course, with the benefit of hindsight, the main plank of the book - that the Tories are finished - proved premature; strange that the author came to this conclusion, as there are frequent references to Labour returning from the dead after 1983. Wheatcroft seems to think that Blair killed the Tories, but failed to look at what would happen post 2005 - Blair discredited and Brown a dismal failure. Read it for the wit, but not the crystal-ball gazing.