The Conservative party must split soon. That's the only conclusion you can reach from the intervention by Steve Baker, the former DEXEU minister who resigned along with David Davis at the beginning of July, and is now saying that 80 Conservative MPs are prepared to vote against the Chequers plan (HERE). I have written before about this problem which threatens to blow Brexit apart in the next six months (HERE), (HERE) and (HERE).
All political parties are coalitions to some extent with a variety of different views, but normally within reasonable limits. At the moment inside the Tories the views are now so spread out and divergent that they actually embrace the next party along to the right, UKIP and probably some would find the Liberal Democrats to the left quite acceptable. There are serving Tory MPs (Craig McKinley and George Eustace) who were members of UKIP. It's hard to know where JRM stops and UKIP begins, their extreme views are virtually identical. At the moment the line which separates UKIP and Conservatives is drawn well inside mainstream Tory thinking.
Baker himself says:
"If we come out of conference with her hoping to get Chequers through on the back of Labour votes, I think the EU negotiators would probably understand that if that were done, the Tory Party would suffer the catastrophic split which thus far we have managed to avoid."
Adding: "We are reaching the point now where it is extremely difficult to see how we can rescue the Conservative Party from a catastrophic split if the Chequers proposals are carried forward.
"It is absolutely no pleasure whatsoever to me to acknowledge that, but I look at the mood of colleagues and the mood of the Conservative Party in the country and I am gravely concerned for the future of our party."
When things reach such a point it seems inevitable that something will have to give.
If a governing party cannot get its own flagship legislation through parliament, it cannot survive intact and the ideological differences over Europe are now so deep and so toxic it must only be a matter of time. Personally, speaking as a life long Conservative voter, up to 2017, I think this will be a good thing. The party has moved a long way to the rights and it doesn't reflect my own views any more.
The electorate will be better served having a clearer idea who to vote for and what to expect if the party is in government. Two separate manifestos will be easier to write and easier to understand.
