Britain today faces political upheaval on a scale unprecedented for a century, with Labour and the Conservatives both dissolving before our eyes. Yet if the strange death of Liberal England in the Twenties clearly has parallels to today, the most apt comparison may, in fact, be the first age of party politics, the Whig versus Tory “rage of party” of the early 18th century. For if Keir Starmer could learn a thing or two from Britain’s first Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, Reform, bolstered by new recruit Danny Kruger, should heed the example of the distant ancestors of the party they are now trying to supplant: the Tories of Queen Anne and George I.
The period between 1688 and the 1740s was roiled by culture wars and economic change as dramatic as our own. Long before today’s keyboard warriors stereotyped their enemies online — either as skinhead flag-shagging gammons or spittle-flecked blue-haired harpies — Grub Street partisans were doing much the same. Instead of mocking lager louts in England shirts, Whig propagandists attacked a target that was, in many ways, the 18th-century equivalent: the ruddy-cheeked fox-hunting squire who made up the backbone of the Tory Party.
Urbane Whig essayist Joseph Addison depicted the average Tory backwoodsman as being a savage boor with a passion chiefly for dogs, inebriation and xenophobia. He was depicted as a bluff, insular patriot hostile to travel (good only to teach a man how to “jabber French”) and foreigners, whom, he splutters, “will never be loved in England”. With Addison presenting the squire as a half-educated gout-ridden oaf, it’s not far off those online progressives sneering at the “Raise the Flag” movement today.
Such political caricatures, then as now, were rooted in the passionate hatreds inspired by both cultural divides and clashes of economic interests in a time of disorientating change.
The Tories had, in the period following the Glorious Revolution, become classic provincial “populists”. Their base — the staunchly Anglican landed gentry and their rural dependents — not only despised the Whigs for being the defenders of their religious enemies, the more radical Protestant Dissenters outside the Church of England, but also for material reasons. The Whigs, partisans of the new Dutch King William III, supported their new master’s expensive wars with France, wars which gave rise to higher taxes, rising state debt, and a new web of corrupt state clients in the form of government contractors, “stock-jobbers” and army officers. The cost of all this fell disproportionately on the Tory squires while a new financial elite prospered.
As a result, in the 1690s there was a dramatic political realignment as the old party of state authority and monarchy — the Tories — became the “country” party, hostile to the depredations of the central state. All the while, the old libertarianism of the Whigs faded as they became the party of a new, courtly “progressive establishment”.
The parallel with now is obvious. Just as the triumph of post-revolutionary Whiggery created fresh culturally inflected classes of economic winners (financiers, speculators) and losers (the rural gentry and their tenants), globalisation over the past 30 years has created urban-progressive economic beneficiaries and provincial small “c” conservative economic casualties. Back then, Tories and Whigs clashed on the status of the Church of England and religious toleration, whereas now we debate trans rights and Net Zero. But if these debates are separated by hundreds of years, both nonetheless pitted “rooted” cultural conservatism versus the radicalism of a new “Anywhere” class. Then as now, meanwhile, such bitter divisions also reflect the material resentment that economically “left-behind” groups — the Red Wall and angry farmers now, the gentry interest then — have for their urban, “sophisticated” rivals who benefit from both economic openness and state patronage.
“Back then, Tories and Whigs clashed on the status of the Church of England and religious toleration, whereas now we debate trans rights and Net Zero.”
Both periods saw a new division — put crudely, nation and tradition versus international economic entanglements and cosmopolitan openness — replace the old political binary. What matters now as then is a dichotomy between those championing national cohesion, rooted in the ways of the provinces, versus those championing new paths of global dynamism rooted in innovation and “progress”. It’s Tory versus Whig all the way down.
There is, however, one major contrast between the two eras. As the Whigs went from being libertarian opponents of state overreach to defenders of a new economic status quo, one dominated by financial interests, so Labour has gone from being the champions of the provincial working classes to the party of socially liberal cosmopolitan graduates. That political realignment has its limitations for Labour, given urban progressives are always in a minority. But the modern Conservative Party has an even bigger problem: they have not made the “populist” transition that their ancestors did. Married to a world of globalisation and neoliberalism, thanks to their donor class and backbench Thatcherites, they missed their chance to exploit realignment under Boris Johnson.
This mantle has instead been grasped by Reform. Farage’s revolt against the Blairite state resembles the populist Tory rebellion against the post-Glorious Revolution Whig settlement. Starmer, for his part, looks like a Whig desperate to hold back the tide against the dangers of an insular reactionary neo-Tory backlash. These parallels, in their complexities, hold lessons for both Reform and Labour.
The strength of the appeal of the “country” Tories of the early 18th century was that they combined all the energies of a provincial populist insurgency with a deep sense of tradition. They wanted to dismantle what they saw as illegitimate and alien innovations that were distorting the traditional constitution and endangering liberty — the power of a new breed of financiers and a new class of parasitic state toadies that leeched off the bloated post-revolutionary state — without mostly abandoning the essentials of the post-1688 constitutional settlement. They were genuinely sceptical about the destabilising implications of incipient financial capitalism, and prepared to countenance major “radical” reforms to ward off its ill effects, while still remaining the party of the church, constitution and squire. In other words, then, the Tories were both profoundly radical and profoundly conservative.
The contrast with Reform seems glaring. Firstly, there is every risk that Reform will be nobbled by the same donor class that rendered the Tories irrelevant, with the power of capital transforming Reform into another appendage of the uniparty. Secondly, elements within Reform appear to be ultra-liberals, albeit of a Right-leaning kind, who want to sweep away the Lords (or perhaps appoint their own cronies to it, Farage isn’t clear) and allow non-parliamentarians to sit in a US-style “cabinet”. They give the impression of scepticism towards a “woke” monarchy and of holding a desire to trash many of our institutions. Either or both of these tendencies may prove far from popular with precisely the marginalised provincial voters Reform is banking on, especially if they win power and the white-hot resentment of voters against the old two established parties fades with time.
This is why the defection of Danny Kruger seems surprising, but perhaps also hopeful. He is, after all, a Tory of the old school: a communitarian Christian and no “Right-Jacobin”. Given all this, he seems well-placed to help Reform negotiate these contradictions and channel the strengths of 18th-century Tory “country” radicalism. That there might also be more than an element of political calculation in the move as Kruger seeks to save his seat is probably true. Principle and pragmatism are, of course, not necessarily enemies, although he might find it a struggle to overcome the very different instincts of men like Richard Tice. We shall see how such a tension plays out.
Meanwhile, Keir Starmer (or whoever succeeds him) will not avoid being swept away by a provincial populist backlash in the way that the original Whigs did: by the accession of George I, a king more than prepared to rig the political game in the Whigs’ favour. Nonetheless, Starmer might learn a lot from the man who helped secure Whig hegemony back in the early 18th century: Robert Walpole. Walpole wanted the Whig settlement to be truly secure, and he knew that the best way of doing that was to dampen down the deep economic and religious divisions that, when provoked, tended to work against the Whigs and in favour of the Tories.
So Walpole managed his new Whig economic and religious settlement very carefully. He gave the Tories much of what they wanted: he scrupulously avoided foreign wars and entanglements, kept taxes low and left the Church of England mostly alone. He reined in radical elements on his own side — defying his supporters from the ranks of Protestant Dissent who wished to curtail the privileges of the Church of England further — and compromised. In short, the economic and cultural wounds of the preceding generation were given time to heal. Political partisanship certainly didn’t disappear. But the temperature dropped, and Walpole remained in power for 20 relatively stable years.
The same principle could work today. There is no majority in the country for neo-Whig policies of open borders and neoliberal globalisation. But Labour could — in theory — do what Walpole did and make his peace with the provincial patriots who otherwise look likely to power Reform to victory. He could give them what they want on immigration, just as Walpole gave the gentry what they wanted on peace. Starmer could also take real steps to assuage the economic pain of the hundreds of small cities and towns decimated by globalisation, as Walpole reduced the land tax and bolstered domestic manufacturing. Starmer and Reeves could actually pull some of the economic levers available to the government: an industrial strategy with teeth and resources behind it, capitalising regional investment banks, and a return to protective tariffs for key industries.
Alas, one fears that Reform will end up as a debased version of the current Tory Party and Labour will be unable to respond in any convincing way to the electoral tsunami that threatens to engulf them. The result could be a never-ending spiral of voter discontent and rising provincial fury. Let’s hope that Starmer and Kruger get mugging up on their 18th-century history, and soon.
