The Conservatives are actually good at coalitions, but under their own name

Churchill’s own personal history as a Liberal Cabinet minister made him a natural for this strategy. He was willing to do a lot to win over liberals including offering to abandon the Conservative name – he suggested “The Union Party” instead.

This is not just Conservative pragmatism.

It rested on a confident broad account of what Conservatism stands for. It is better than today’s willingness to denounce other conservatives one disagrees with as not true Conservatives – denunciations which often rest on a failure to understand our own British Conservative tradition. Conservatism is about belonging, roots, national identity and national pride. It is also, especially after the incorporation of many Liberals, about free markets, property rights, mobility, and economic growth. These two instincts are apparently in conflict. But both of them form recognisable parts of our lives. They are both protected by British institutions and rule of law. They are both part of modern Conservatism.

How these are interpreted changes over time. Indeed Conservatives  thrived for so long by rebalancing them as circumstances changed. The thermostat of political opinion tends to mean voters always react against the strand which is dominant – after Mrs T they wanted John Major. After this government they may well want more markets and choice.

The breadth of the Conservative tradition makes it possible to assemble Coalitions, internal or external. That is also the logic of Parliamentary process. You get much further if you can build cross-party coalitions. Shadowing Work and Pensions during the long years of Labour ascendancy I learnt that there was much greater chance of making an impact, getting legislation amended and getting the Party treated seriously if I could work with the late great Frank Field MP, the Labour back-bencher and Steve Webb the expert LibDem spokesman. That helped get the Party treated seriously and broadened the electoral base we could appeal to.

I see similar processes at work in the Lords today. Mel Stride’s column yesterday referred to Conservatives forcing a Labour u-turn on their “dangerous attempts to dictate how pension funds invest people’s savings”. That victory was only possible because Conservative peers worked with Lib Dems and cross-benchers. Ironically the more fragmented Parliament becomes so the greater the need to work with other parties to achieve anything. Apparent ideological purity doesn’t get you very far. Electors lose too as it is hard to know in advance what will emerge as the Government’s programme if it is negotiated between different parties after the Election.

The formation of the Coalition in 2010 is the most vivid example. The Coalition Agreement superseded the two party manifestos. Indeed there was explicit advice to ministers and civil servants that policy could only be based on that Agreement not on the manifestos. Such negotiations could have been avoided if there had just been a minimal commitment to voting through supply but then it would have been hard for the Government to have any real programme at all.

All this starts becoming very relevant again as we appear to be heading for even more fragmented politics. There are Conservatives who envisage a deal with Reform. There is also a counter-argument set out very well by David Gauke in his column yesterday to go for those younger pro-business voters alienated by Brexit. There is no need for Conservatives to decide now who possibly to form a Coalition with and in what circumstances. It is not inevitable we will find ourselves in such circumstances. Moreover some uncertainty about what Conservatives could do is a political asset.

The Lib Dems in 2010 got a good deal partly as it was credible that they could go with Labour instead of us. If Gordon Brown had shown a bit more finesse that might even have happened. It would be very bad indeed for Conservatives if we seemed to be destined to be a junior partner in a Reform led Coalition. That weakens our negotiating position if such a scenario were to arise. It would put off voters who see us as the last bastion of protection against Reform. And it would understandably anger former Conservative councillors watching Reform councillors failing to deliver wild uncosted pledges.

The best way to avoid these scenarios is to do what Conservatives used to be so good at – building up broad coalitions behind big all-embracing Conservative principles recognising that there will be different interpretations of those principles. If we won’t create our own coalition that way then the electorate are going to force us into one on someone else’s terms.