Professor Tim Bale writes for the Financial Times about how Conservative pragmatists and purists have long been locked in a struggle over the EU. He writes: “One reason why the Tory party can lay claim to being the world’s longest surviving and most successful political party is its ability to meld together, more or less convincingly, several contradictory strains — not least the longing of some of its adherents for (neo) liberal clarity and its more pragmatic members’ instincts towards messier compromise and incrementalism. As a consequence, there will always be tensions within the party — profound faultlines that Europe, perhaps more than any other issue, has a nasty habit of exposing.”
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