How the Conservative party became Maoist

Photo: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo

In far-off days, the Conservative party used to be conservative. The dictum of one of its great 19th-century leaders, Lord Salisbury, was: “Change, change, aren’t things bad enough already?”

A generation later, in the 1920s, Winston Churchill left the Liberals and rejoined the Conservatives—then often called the “Constitutional party”—claiming that stable, orderly, patriotic government was in jeopardy. Cheers, Mr Churchill!, a brilliant new book by Andrew Liddle about Churchill’s 14 years as MP for Dundee, includes his bitter tirades against Labour and Communist opponents in the 1922 election, when he was defeated in that heavily working-class Scottish city…