With friends like these, who needs enemies ? The Conservative Party and the British Constitution

Abstract

This article challenges the idea that the British Conservative and Unionist Party is, or has ever truly been, ‘conservative’ when it comes to the British Constitution. It emphasises not only the degree to which the party’s self-appointed role as a bastion of constitutional heritage and moderate reform has often overlapped with self-interest, but also the remarkably radical ideas that the party has been prepared to embrace from time to time. Despite frequent electoral use of the constitutional issue as means to paint its political opponents as dangerous, the modern Conservative Party has now brought itself to a position where its approach to constitutional debate and niceties has become coloured by populism, albeit a populism still cloaked in a veneer of traditionalism.