Napoleon was history on a horse. Since the Brexit referendum, Britain has been history in a clown car. We are now on our fifth prime minister in the six tumultuous years since that fateful vote. Some describe this revolving door of chaos as the “Italianisation” of our politics. Many have marvelled at how a country that used to have an international reputation as boringly predictable has so often resembled a banana republic with crap weather. And these years of almost unremitting mayhem have been unleashed by the Conservatives, a party that traditionally marketed itself as made up of hard-headed realists who could be relied on to provide stable, credible and professional government.
A lot has been written about what the Brexit misadventure has inflicted upon our country. Here, Tim Bale, one of the very best of our political historians, examines what it has done to the Conservative party. He contends persuasively that the Brexit virus has transformed the Tories from a mainstream party of the centre-right into an unstable amalgam of radical rightwing populists, hyper-libertarians and market fundamentalists.
