Waiting for the inevitable Conservative split

The universe does not want David Cameron to lead a united Conservative party.

To an extent, I think what we're seeing here is party sorting whereby politicians (and "civilians") held together in uneasy coalitions within parties start to rearrange themselves into structures that fit their views better. Namely, someone like Mark Reckless moving from the Conservatives to UKIP because of his views on immigration and the EU.

Despite them being personally very close (along with Daniel Hannan), Reckless is quite different to Douglas Carswell, the first UKIP defector (with apologies to Bob Spink). The article I linked to there mentioned that for Carswell, his Euroscepticism stems from his convictions about direct democracy and legitimacy while for Reckless, his belief in referendums comes from his desire for one on EU membership where he believes people will vote to leave. In this way, Reckless seems a more appropriate fit for UKIP than Carswell who seems closer to a Whig than a Ukipper. In a fascinating interview with the Guardian just after his re-election there is clearly a thought out and coherent philosophy to Mr Carswell's beliefs but the overwhelming question you are left with is "why did this man join UKIP?!"

Mark Reckless is closer to what the media think of as a typical UKIP defector. Not withstanding the compelling evidence that most UKIP support since 2010 has come from working class voters, Mr Reckless is a typical small state Thatcherite and it appears that it's his views on immigration and the EU that have caused his defection. UKIP itself is starting to see the contradiction between its Thatcherite origins and the more left wing views of many of the voters who have joined it in the last year or two as the attempted defenstration of former Express journalist Patrick O'Flynn demonstrates.

All of which draws attention to the ongoing civil war taking place within the Conservative party which has been simmering away since Margaret Thatcher's resignation. The tensions between the various factions that make up the Tory tribe are becoming harder to contain and more than one columnist is talking about the benefits of the 'UKIP' faction leaving for the benefit of the remaining party.

The Conservatives have always been a combination of "patriotism" (stressing the importance of state institutions and 'traditional values' like the family and church) and what we'll call "economism" (pro-business, resistant to new protections for workers or new forms of state spending). In other words, between social conservatism and what the Americans refer to as fiscal conservatism. Traditionally the interests of those groups have aligned, or at least not directly conflicted. The last time they conflicted was when the Tories split over free trade and the corn laws in the 1850s. There are starting to conflict again now, most clearly over Europe and immigration.

Whatever the complaints about over-burdensome regulation, the free trade and pro-business side is firmly pro-immigration and is happy to take the rough with the smooth of EU membership as long as it retains access to the single market.

In the other corner is the "patriotism" side, concerned about being told what to do by foreigners and the disruptive effect of immigration. Despite the economic benefits of immigration they dislike it on a cultural and emotional level which trumps any perceived benefit. Nigel Farage indeed once said he'd be happy for the country to be a little poorer if it meant less immigration while Jose Manuel Barroso's criticism of the current Conservative line on Europe is that it is a betrayal of the Thatcher era when the economism side was firmly in control but, more accurately, when the conflicts between the economism and patriotism sides weren't sufficient to affect the party system.

Even if the Conservatives don't win a majority in 2015, holding a referendum on EU membership will be a deal-breaker for any coalition agreement with another party, particularly since David Cameron has promised to give Tory MPs a vote beforehand. The pro and anti EU sides will split and become viceral enemies and, as Scotland has shown, divisions are hard to heal after taking a different side in a high-stakes referendum.

If UKIP is here to stay then the potential is there for a much more significant realignment than has taken place so far with Nigel Farage's party becoming a primarily socially conservative party.

All parties are coalitions based on the compromises of members and voters between competing values. Wealthier voters for whom social liberalism was more important than potentially higher tax rates voted Labour. Socially conservative working class voters went with the Conservatives. What's happening now is that there is a new party which, unlike almost any other, social conservatives are more influential than social liberals.

Labour, having absorbed much of the social democratic faction of the Liberal Democrats (in many ways reversing the original split from 1981),  is finding splits between wine and beer drinkers pitting socially conservative working class voters against the 'metropolitan elites' epitomised by Ed Miliband. It's not hard to imagine a large chunk of the beer drinking faction who value social conservatism over economic interests, moving to UKIP.

There's a line in one of the later, more forgettable, series of the West Wing where someone says "if this were Europe the Republican party would be three parties" and there are a few interesting models for how British parties could divide if we had a more proportionate, continental style electoral system.

Tim Montgomrie, the conservative commentator who had a fascinating debate with Matthew Parris a few weeks ago on this subject, wishes there were a "National party" of the kind in this split and the Economist has another inspired by the excellent Danish series Borgen. In both cases, there's a party containing Nigel Farage and prominent Tory right-wingers (Norman Tebbit or Liam Fox).

It's hard to believe that David Cameron wouldn't prefer to be in a party with Kenneth Clarke than with either of those two.