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Party fragments? Intra-Party Dynamics in the Conservative Party after the 2016 Referendum

Un parti fragmenté ? Dynamiques intra-partisanes au sein du Parti conservateur à la suite du référendum de 2016
Axel Bercq

Abstracts

The victory of Leave in the 2016 Referendum inaugurated a long period of instability within the British Conservative Party. Several intra-party groups, often called factions, emerged with different structures, memberships, objectives, and impacts on the party’s ideological and organisational stability. Using Rose’s theory, this article explores the phenomenon of factionalism and explains why the post-Referendum period contributed to its development. It focuses on six intra-party groups: the European Research Group (ERG), the China Research Group (ChRG), the Common Sense Group (CRG), the Northern Research Group (NRG), the Covid Recovery Group (CRG) and the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG). The article evaluates these groups’ impact on the party’s stability by looking at their characteristics and objectives and argues that despite not impacting its organisational stability, these groups helped shift the party’s ideological focus in a new direction in the post-Brexit context around populism and social conservatism.

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Introduction

  • 1 Evans, Geoffrey and Menon, Anand, Brexit and British Politics (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2017), p. 9 (...)

1The 2016 referendum opened a long period of instability for the Conservative Party and the British political system.1 The party was helmed by five leaders in eight years, and only one of them left Downing Street by way of general election while the other four resigned due to intra-party divisions. This period also witnessed the cohabitation of different cohorts of MPs, the Parliamentary Conservative Party (PCP) being renewed twice, in 2017 and 2019, under different leaders and different manifestos. Over the eight years following the referendum, several groups of MPs emerged within the PCP, with diverging objectives, different structures, different memberships, and different influences on the party’s ideological trajectory.

2The objective of this paper is to understand why the post-referendum period has been conducive to the emergence of such groups, study their relationships and understand the implications of the existence and activity of these groups on the stability of the Conservative Party and its ideological trajectory in the post-Referendum period.

3To this effect, and using Rose’s conception of intra-party groups, this paper studies the organisational structure and activity of various groups which were particularly active throughout Theresa May’s and Boris Johnson’s premierships: the European Research Group (ERG), the China Research Group (ChRG), the Common Sense Group (CSG), the Northern Research Group (NRG), the Covid Recovery Group (CRG) and the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG). This selection including groups active during May’s premiership and groups active after the UK’s withdrawal from the EU during Johnson’s premiership enables one to analyse whether the completion of Brexit changed intra-party dynamics.

4The paper begins by exploring the concept of factionalism and the reasons as to why the post-referendum period has been conducive to its development within the Conservative Party. It then goes on to describe the organisational characteristics of the ERG, arguably the most disruptive intra-party group since the Maastricht rebels, to understand why it was able to have such an impact on May's premiership. Analysing the groups active during Boris Johnson’s premiership, mostly imitator groups of the ERG created by former members, the final part of this paper assesses the Conservative Party’s post-Brexit ideological evolution and stability by using the angle of intra-party dynamics. This leads us to understand that, even if intra-party groups have mushroomed in the wake of the Brexit referendum, their development did not translate into ideological fragmentation as they have mostly been single-issue groups sharing members and relying on a similar ideological foundation: populism and social conservatism.

The post-Referendum period: an era ripe for factionalism?

  • 2 Bale, Tim, “Rebels with a cause: Backbench groups in the parliamentary Conservative Party”, Hansard (...)
  • 3 Walker, Peter, “ERG out, CRG in: the Tory factions Boris Johnson is struggling to appease”, The Gua (...)

5Since the referendum, the Conservative Party has often been described as ungovernable due to the formation of groups of MPs composed of disruptive backbenchers within the PCP,2 which have generally been labelled by the media and observers of British politics as “factions”.3

  • 4 Factionalism has been conceptualised by scholars in different ways, this paper focuses on Rose’s fr (...)
  • 5 Rose, Richard, “Parties, Factions and Tendencies in Britain”, Political Studies 12(1) (1964), pp. 3 (...)
  • 6 Bale, Tim, “Rebels with a cause: Backbench groups in the parliamentary Conservative Party”, Hansard (...)
  • 7 Rose, Richard, “Parties, Factions and Tendencies in Britain”, Political Studies 12 (1) (1964), p. 4 (...)
  • 8 Beech, Matt, “Conservative Party Ideology in the Age of Brexit”, in Beech, Matt and Simon, Lee (ed. (...)
  • 9 Alexandre-Collier, Agnès, “L’avenir du parti conservateur britannique”, Conférence AFGB-CRECIB, 202 (...)

6In his seminal article, Rose4 categorised intra-party groups according to their organisational structure, which enabled him to distinguish “factions” from “tendencies”.5 In this paper, “intra-party groups” is used as a neutral, generic phrase to designate groups of MPs within the PCP while the terms “faction” and “tendency” are used to designate certain types of intra-party groups with distinct organisational characteristics. Factions are groups of MPs persisting through time, with wide-ranging ideological claims, consciously organised to achieve their objectives, which implies a high level of discipline and cohesion. To achieve their objectives, factions build a distinctive leadership structure, possess technical expertise, cadres, communication networks, and a system of rewards (whether material or psychological). On the other hand, tendencies are sets of attitudes, not individuals. Tendencies are not consciously organised, membership is not fixed and discipline is not expected, which means that MPs are free to align with one tendency and then another without any consequence. These groups are held together by a more or less coherent political ideology, less specific and less binding than the ideological claims gathering MPs into factions. Factions, as groups with party-like characteristics make parties less easy to govern6 while tendencies, as incohesive and fluctuating alignments, are less likely to undermine party stability. The Conservative Party has traditionally been described as a party of tendencies7 due to the coexistence of several traditions and dispositions tolerating each other at its heart, giving it a “broadchurch” image.8 The fluidity and temporary character of tendencies have enabled the party to remain pragmatic and adapt to changes to remain relevant and counter the image of immobilism associated with conservatism.9

  • 10 Alexandre-Collier, Agnès, “‘L’Euroscepticisme’” au sein du parti conservateur britannique’”, (PhD d (...)

7The presence of factions, expressing the need for MPs to consciously gather into groups with a high level of discipline and organisation to defend a particular ideological outlook, seems to indicate the existence of far-reaching ideological conflicts within the party. It is acknowledged that the ratification process of the Maastricht Treaty and the issue of European integration in general introduced factionalism in the Conservative Party.10

  • 11 Williams, Ben and Hickson, Kevin, “Factions and Splits in British Politics”, Political Insight, 12( (...)
  • 12 Webb, Paul and Bale, Tim, “Conflict and cohesion within parties” in Webb, Paul and Bale, Tim (ed.), (...)
  • 13 Boucek, Françoise, Factional Politics (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 70.
  • 14 Ibid, pp. 55-62.

8The first-past-the-post gives birth to two-party systems,11 these systems are stable, the number of operating parties varies only slightly, which means that divisions often remain internalised. The result of this situation is that politicians select parties that are not fully consistent with their ideological outlooks. Mainstream parties are to be considered as broad coalitions of actors carrying varied political values and attitudes, making intra-party conflict and the emergence of intra-party groups inevitable.12 However, barriers to the rise of factionalism relating to the nature of the British political system and to the characteristics of the Conservative Party exist. Two-party systems discourage factionalism as internal divisions increase the risk of losing office, divided parties being considered unfit to govern.13 Also, the disciplinary power of the party leader and their direct control over MPs’ career paths and the principle of collective responsibility14 have limited factionalism in the Conservative Party for most of its history.

9Considering the existence of such barriers, the natural predisposition of British political parties to the surfacing of intra-party groups does not seem sufficient to explain the presumed factional turn taken by the Conservative Party after the referendum.

  • 15 Boucek, Françoise, “Rethinking Factionalism: Typologies, Intra-Party Dynamics and Three Faces of Fa (...)
  • 16 Schnapper, Pauline, “Brexit, or Theresa May’s Headache”, Observatoire de la Société Britannique 21 (...)
  • 17 Lynch, Philip and Whitaker, Richard, “All Brexiteers now? Brexit, the Conservatives and party chang (...)
  • 18 Peele, Gillian, “Post Brexit and Post-Covid: Reflections on the Contemporary Conservative Party”, T (...)
  • 19 Sowemimo, Matthew, “The Conservative Party and European Integration 1988-95”, Party Politics 2(1) ( (...)
  • 20 Ibid., p. 78.

10Boucek describes factionalism as a “dynamic process of subgroup partitioning”15 that transforms over time according to the context. The victory of Leave was not adequately anticipated,16 which gave way to a period of uncertainty as to what form Brexit should take. The necessity to deliver Brexit seemed to go against the nature of the Conservative Party as a broadchurch since it quickly appeared necessary to unite the party behind one version of Brexit despite the plurality of Eurosceptic sensibilities within the party.17 This situation created pressures within the party and initiated a competition for ideological predominance between the different political actors constituting this broadchurch. By pitting against each other the different ideological trends constituting the party, it appears that the outcome of the referendum created the conditions for the Conservative Party to transition from a party of tendencies to a party of factions. From the Thatcher period to the achievement of Brexit on January 31, 2020, Europe was “a major source of ideological discord”18 for the party because it was considered “a proxy for unresolved conflicts within the party19 relating to the very nature of conservatism; the demands of supranational politics prompted the party to reconsider its commitment to free-market economics and the preservation of the nation-state.20 To prevail in this far-reaching, if not existential, ideological conflict, some MPs decided to gather into the European Research Group (ERG) to maximise their chances of seeing their vision of Brexit prevail.

The European Research Group (ERG): a case of post-Referendum factionalism

A party within a party

  • 21 Riley-Smith, Ben and Yorke, Harry, “Heavyweight Brexiteers among 60 Tory MPs to demand clean break (...)
  • 22 Fernandes, Suella, “Britain must untie itself from EU shackles to leave the customs union”, The Tel (...)
  • 23 Baker, Steve, “We must have a real EU exit, not a fake one”, 20 November 2016, <https://www.steveba (...)
  • 24 The Independent, “Theresa May’s keynote speech at Tory conference in full”, 5 October 2016 <https:/ (...)
  • 25 Ibid.
  • 26 Ibid.

11The ERG was launched on November 19, 2016, with the publication of two articles in the Telegraph, one penned by journalists,21 the other by Suella Fernandes MP,22 the deputy chair of the group. An article on Steve Baker’s website,23 MP and chair of the group, was also published on the following day. Fernandes’s and Baker’s articles both make the case for a hard Brexit by highlighting the opportunities that would be offered to the UK by leaving the customs union and the single market, an approach less nuanced than the one defended by Theresa May in her speech delivered a month earlier at the conference of the Conservative Party, in which she mentioned a “tough negotiation”24 requiring “give and take”25 and stated that she wanted to give “[…] British companies the maximum freedom to trade with and operate within the Single Market – and let European businesses do the same here”.26

  • 27 Riley-Smith, Ben and Yorke, Harry, “Heavyweight Brexiteers among 60 Tory MPs to demand clean break (...)
  • 28 Tomlinson, Michael, “Human beings are not bargaining chips”, 25 November 2016.

12These articles demonstrate the ERG’s strength and resoluteness, and the consequences May would face should she fail to deliver a version of Brexit in line with the group’s vision. The Telegraph’s article describes a group of 60 MPs, among which some “heavyweight Brexiteers”27 and Baker’s claims are backed by a briefing put together by the Legatum Institute, a free-market pro-Brexit think tank, giving credibility to the ERG’s case. On November 25, 2016, Michael Tomlinson, an officer of the ERG, sent a letter to Donald Tusk in which he wrote that 80 UK Parliamentarians belonged to the ERG. 51 Conservative MPs signed this letter,28 among which some key figures of the Leave campaign such as Michael Gove and Dominic Raab. Whether 51, 60, or 80, the ERG benefitted from adequate numerical strength to defeat the Prime Minister in the House of Commons.

  • 29 Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, “Assurance Review: Pooled Services Assessment of ris (...)
  • 30 Ibid., p. 12.
  • 31 Ibid., p. 13.

13More than a simple combination of MPs, the ERG took the form of what the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) calls “pooled research services”, which can be defined as “a collection of specialist research organisations that provide research support for groups of MPs of different political parties”.29 The ERG, as a research service, employed a researcher who produced research relating to the UK’s relationship with the EU and Brexit.30 To benefit from this material, MPs wishing to join the service paid an annual subscription which could then be claimed as a parliamentary expense. The research material could take the form of briefings, talking points, questions to be asked by members in the House of Commons, and material to be used in select committees.31 The research service was a keystone of the ERG’s organisation, its circulation enabled the group to produce a standardised, uniform speech backed by facts, contrasting with the government’s failure to present a united front over Brexit. The ERG was coordinated through group meetings taking place in Westminster and a WhatsApp group, whose membership was not limited to the subscribers of the group’s research service and which enabled the group to escape the control of the whips.

  • 32 Cross-checked lists of ERG members were found on the following media: BBC.com, FT.com, Buzzffeed.co (...)
  • 33 Booth, Oliver, Butler, Chris, Jeffery, David and Roe-Crines, Andrew, “Selecting Sunak: Conservative (...)
  • 34 Walker, Peter, “ERG out, CRG in: the Tory factions Boris Johnson is struggling to appease”, The Gua (...)

14Thanks to the cross-checking of membership lists published by various media outlets,32 IPSA’s record of MPs’ parliamentary expenses and the dataset used by Booth et al. (2023),33 the number of MPs belonging to the ERG during the premiership of Theresa May has been estimated to 129. This number should however be treated with caution as it includes both subscribers to the ERG’s research service and members of the WhatsApp group. It should be noted that some MPs joined the WhatsApp group for information purposes, while others did not know they were in the group.34 Fig. 1 shows that the majority of the group’s members voted to leave the EU and entered parliament at least six years before the referendum, testifying to the group’s generational and ideological homogeneity.

Fig 1. Generational and ideological breakdown of the ERG’s membership

Fig 1. Generational and ideological breakdown of the ERG’s membership
  • 35 Murray, C. R. G. and Armstrong, Megan, “A Mobile Phone in One Hand and Erskine May in the Other: Th (...)
  • 36 Alexandre-Collier, A. “‘L’Euroscepticisme’” au sein du parti conservateur britannique’, (PhD disser (...)
  • 37 Ibid., p. 537
  • 38 Paterson, Owen, “Brexit Witness Archive Interview”, UK in a Changing Europe, 4 June 2021, <https:// (...)
  • 39 Bale, Tim, The Conservative Party After Brexit: Turmoil and Transformation (Cambridge, Polity, 2023 (...)

15Based on its organisational features, the ERG seems to comply with Rose’s definition of a faction. The ERG is a group that has been persisting through time (it was first created in 1992 by Michael Spicer to oppose the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty),35 it had wide-ranging ideological claims (Brexit and euroscepticism being issues influencing diversified policy areas),36 it was consciously organised and had a high degree of discipline and cohesion with a leadership structure distinct from that of the party (chair, co-chairs, officers, whips), it had technical expertise thanks to its research service, possessed a distinct communications network thanks to its WhatsApp group and could be considered to have a rewards system in place as taking part in the ERG allowed backbenchers excluded from the party’s power centres to exert influence over a key policy area.37 The ERG had a clear objective, was a homogeneous and tight-knit group composed of like-minded and experienced MPs and had sufficient numerical strength to undermine May. It is the combination of these features that has enabled the group to form a faction as defined by Rose and allowed it to impact May’s premiership and, considering the nature of the selection process of the Conservative leader, the future of the Conservative Party in a broader sense as its support was instrumental in Johnson’s election, who gained the group’s support after pledging to deliver a version of Brexit that fitted with the group’s vision.38 39

Circumstances favourable to the group’s activities

16The ERG’s organisational features were instrumental to its success, however, the group was only able to harness the opportunities offered by its solid organisation thanks to a combination of favourable circumstances.

  • 40 Kam, Christopher, Party Discipline and Parliamentary Politics, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Pre (...)
  • 41 Kavanagh, Dennis, “Preface”, Observatoire de la Société Britannique 21 (2018), pp. 17-19.
  • 42 Murray, C. R. G. and Armstrong, Megan, “A Mobile Phone in One Hand and Erskine May in the Other: Th (...)
  • 43 Ibid., pp. 539-545.
  • 44 Ibid., p. 551.
  • 45 Bale, Tim, The Conservative Party After Brexit: Turmoil and Transformation (Cambridge, Polity, 2023 (...)
  • 46 Francois, Mark, Spartan Victory: The Inside Story of the Battle for Brexit (Kindle Direct Publishin (...)

17The 2017 general election which resulted in a minority government for Theresa May weakened her position as Prime Minister by lowering the costs of parliamentary dissidence and mathematically increasing the ERG’s leverage over her premiership. As the party leader controls career prospects through ministerial appointments,40 dissent is usually discouraged. However, being in a minority position, May no longer possessed the strength to impose tough sanctions on free spirits campaigning for their own versions of Brexit,41 making her more vulnerable to the whims of backbenchers. The 2017-2019 parliamentary arithmetic allowed the ERG to engage in filibustering by resorting to parliamentary procedure.42 The use of devices such as the Urgent Questions and the Humble Address allowed the group to hijack the parliamentary agenda.43 The group was also able to infiltrate several select committees with direct influence over Brexit and use these instances’ culture of consensus to modify the content of some of their reports and influence their processes.44 The ERG was also instrumental in May’s defeats in the so-called meaningful votes on Brexit, the ERG organising rebellions thanks to its whipping operation called “The Buddies” supervised by Mark Francois MP.45 The ERG built a voting database in which every MP of the PCP was given a grade according to their probability of voting for or against May’s Withdrawal Agreement, each “Buddy” (ERG whip) was given a list of MPs to sway so that they would vote against it; the “Buddy” operation was consciously built and conducted as an alternative Whips Office.46

18Moreover, it can be argued that the result of the Referendum created a sense of entitlement among Leavers which discouraged compromise.47 This sense of entitlement was strengthened by opinion polls highlighting the electorate’s concern for Brexit, Britain leaving the EU being considered the most important issue facing the country from July 2016 to January 2020.48

19While the ERG has been portrayed by the media as “arguably the most influential group of MPs in contemporary political history”, 49its concrete power can be qualified. Theresa May survived the 2018 no-confidence vote in her leadership of the Conservative Party triggered by the ERG,50 and the number of rebels in the three meaningful votes never reached the full number of members of the ERG. The fact that only 34 rebels were enough to defeat May in the third meaningful vote evidences the fact that the ERG was only able to make use of the possibilities offered by its status as a faction and be influential because it benefitted from favourable parliamentary arithmetic.

  • 51 Alexandre-Collier, Agnès, “From Rebellion to Extinction: Where have all the Tory Remainer MPs Gone? (...)
  • 52 Gamble, Andrew, “The Remaking of Conservatism: Boris Johnson and the Politics of Brexit”, The Polit (...)
  • 53 Augé, Luca, “Johnson and ‘Let’s keep Brexit done’: the instrumental use of the UK’s policy on Europ (...)

20With the election of Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party and the Brexit saga ending on January 31, 2020, the ERG’s influence as a disruptive force progressively waned. By purging Remainers from the party and overhauling the ideological composition of the PCP thanks to the 2019 general election, Johnson enabled hard Brexiteers to take over the party.51 The comfortable majority obtained by the Conservatives in this election and the newly restored Conservative political and ideological hegemony52 should have inaugurated a period of stability for the Conservative Party. But a few months after the UK’s exit from the EU, new factional groups appeared and disrupted Johnson’s premiership, with protests over policy areas all pertaining to post-Brexit issues53 such as levelling-up, health, foreign affairs and climate policy. While the finalisation of Brexit could have been expected to solve the party’s internal divisions, it rather seemed to have amplified them.

Post-Brexit factionalism: same old, same old?

Johnson’s premiership: a favourable ground for the rise of intra-party groups

  • 54 Ibid., pp. 55-79.
  • 55 Ridge-Newman, Anthony, “Communication strategy, change and the British Conservative Party”, Observa (...)
  • 56 Augé, Luca, “Johnson and ‘Let’s keep Brexit done’: the instrumental use of the UK’s policy on Europ (...)
  • 57 ConservativeHome, ‘2019 General Election: Meet the 107 newly-elected Tory MPs’, 13 December 2019, <(...)
  • 58 Walker, Peter, “ERG out, CRG in: the Tory factions Boris Johnson is struggling to appease”, The Gua (...)

21The emergence of new intra-party groups protesting over various policy areas could be accounted for by the lack of ideological substance of Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit statecraft.54 Johnson became Prime Minister because the period required “an outlier of a leader”55 who would see Brexit through, but once Brexit was over, he was not able to find “a new essence to his statecraft”56 enabling him to govern and implement his manifesto pledges. It can also be argued that Covid influenced party discipline, the first lockdown being implemented three months after the 2019 general election. 107 new Conservative MPs were elected in this election,57 a malleable material which the whips did not have time to shape and who was then exposed to a variety of WhatsApp groups promoting various policy claims.58 Three general elections were held in four years (2015, 2017, and 2019), in which the party was led by three different leaders and in which MPs campaigned defending three different manifestos. The generational heterogeneity of Boris Johnson’s PCP, composed of MPs coming from various parliamentary cohorts, might have made the 2019 PCP hard to govern and discipline.

Groups with varied forms and varied objectives

22Shortly after the completion of Brexit, several copycat groups emerged within the Conservative Party. These groups, often created and joined by former ERG members, tried to replicate the ERG’s model by setting up pooled research services. For the most part, these groups have been temporary and built around single-issue concerns pertaining to the diverse policy areas aforementioned. The following table presents an overview of these groups’ characteristics.

Fig 2. Generational and ideological breakdown of the ERG’s membership

  • 59 Members of the ChRG have been identified thanks to the group’s website, and MPs members of the Inte (...)
  • 60 Payne, Sebastian, “Senior Tories launch ERG-style group to shape policy on China”, Financial Times,(...)
  • 61 Members of the CSG have been identified thanks to the signatories of the group’s manifesto and of a (...)
  • 62 Walker, Peter, “What are the different Conservative factions?”, The Guardian, 8 January 2022, <http (...)
  • 63 NRG members have been identified using the group’s website, MPs’ record of parliamentary expenses, (...)
  • 64 Connolly, John, “Introducing the Northern Research Group: the trade union for Tory MP”, The Spectat (...)
  • 65 CRG members have been identified by identifying recidivist rebels on a selected list of Covid relat (...)
  • 66 Hope, Christopher, “Tory lockdown rebels unite to form Covid Recovery Group”, The Telegraph, 10 Nov (...)
  • 67 NZSG members have been identified thanks to the signatories of several letters sent by the group to (...)
  • 68 Walker, Peter, “What are the different Conservative factions?”, The Guardian, 8 January 2022, <http (...)

Size

Creation

Leadership

Key ideas

IPSA-registered research service

China Research Group (ChRG) 59

25

04/202060

Tom Tugendhat MP and Neil O’Brien MP

Sinoscepticism

No

Common Sense Group (CSG) 61

31

Summer 202062

John Hayes MP

Fight against the alleged ‘woke’ agenda

Yes

Northern Research Group (NRG) 63

54

10/202064

Jake Berry MP

Support the ‘levelling-up’ agenda

Yes

Covid Recovery Group (CRG) 65

50

11/202066

Steve Baker MP and Mark Harper MP

Opposition to Covid restrictions

No

Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) 67

39

10/202168

Craig Mackinlay MP and Steve Baker MP

Opposition to the net-zero target

No

23Apart from the founders of the ChRG and of the NRG, every founder of these groups was a member of the ERG, moreover, two of these groups were also set up as research services. These groups also differed in regard to their operational capacities, while it was possible to identify CRG members thanks to the rebellions of its members over Covid-related votes, members of the other groups could not be identified thanks to a series of votes on a given issue. The three groups registered as research services published newsletters (ChRG, weekly and daily) and manifestos (CSG, NRG) while the two other groups’ public actions were limited to the signing of letters and opinion columns published in newspapers.

  • 69 Hooghe, Liesbet, Marks, Gary and Wilson, Carole, “Does Left/Right Structure Party Positions on Euro (...)

24Some of these groups were successful in seeing their claims seized by the leadership, while some others did not manage to have a lasting effect, if any at all, on the party’s policy orientations. The evaluation of the impact of these groups draws on the parameters previously used to assess the ERG’s influence: meeting the characteristics of a faction as set out by Rose, homogeneity of the membership (generational, based on the year of entry in parliament and ideological, based on how MP voted in the Referendum), popularity of the claims with voters and impact on the leadership. The Leave/Remain divide has been used as a basis to define ideological profiles as Hooghe, Marks and Wilson established that euroscepticism can be linked to other attitudes such as traditionalism, authority and nationalism (TAN, social conservatism), while pro-Europeanism can be linked to GAL/socially-liberal attitudes (green, alternative, libertarian).69

Low-impact groups

  • 70 Summers, Tim, Chan, Hiu Man, Gries, Peter and Turcsanyi, Richard, “Worsening British views of China (...)
  • 71 Timsit, Annabelle, “Tom Tugendhat, the politician warning of China’s ‘cage-rattling’”, Quartz, 18 M (...)

25The ChRG and the NRG are arguably the two groups which have had the least impact on the party’s policies. This can be understood by looking at these groups’ objectives and their memberships.
Sinoscepticism has been a consensual issue well before the setting up of the ChRG, whether at intra-party level, inter-party level, or within the public.70 The group did not see itself as an ERG-like faction but rather as a resource for MPs to be informed on China,71 and therefore did not need to set up a structure as solid as that of the ERG to impose its ideas on the leadership.

  • 72 Northern Research Group, ‘“The NRG is a group comprised of MPs supporting each other by geography, (...)

26The NRG’s impact can be evaluated considering the progress of the levelling-up agenda, Sunak’s decision to downgrade HS2 in October 2023 dealing a serious blow to the programme’s flagship policy. The group’s weakness can also be explained by its territorial nature. The NRG was, as acknowledged by its leaders, not an ideological but a geographical group72 promoting the interests of only a part of the United Kingdom’s territory. Its claims, not as polarising and mobilising as Brexit can also explain why it has not been as successful as the ERG.

Fig 3. Generational and ideological breakdown of the ChRG’s membership

Fig 3. Generational and ideological breakdown of the ChRG’s membership

Fig 4. Generational and ideological breakdown of the NRG’s membership

Fig 4. Generational and ideological breakdown of the NRG’s membership

27As shown by Fig 4., the ChRG was a generationally and ideologically heterogeneous group. Though dominated by Leavers, this dominance was not as absolute as in the ERG. This heterogeneousness might have made it hard for the group’s leadership to create a structure as disciplined and cohesive as the one implemented by the ERG. On the other hand, Fig.3 shows that the NRG’s lack of performance might be explained by its generational makeup. Most of its members (37) were elected after the referendum, 32 of them were elected in the 2019 General Election. This lack of experience might have been a shortcoming preventing the group from exerting sufficient pressure on the leadership to maintain the Levelling-Up programme alive.

Impactful groups

  • 73 Bale, Tim, “Rebels with a cause: Backbench groups in the parliamentary Conservative Party”, Hansard (...)
  • 74 Tournier-Sol, Karine, “La droite britannique et les guerres culturelles”, Observatoire de la Sociét (...)
  • 75 The Guardian, “Rishi Sunak rolls back net zero targets in reset of UK climate policies – video”, 20 (...)

28Contrary to the ChRG and the NRG, the CSG, CRG and NZSG managed to impact the party’s policy orientation: the CRG exerted a substantial amount of pressure on Johnson,73 and culture war issues74 dear to the CSG and challenges of net zero75 were taken over by Sunak after he became Prime Minister. These three groups have in common the fact that they are direct descendants of the ERG as they were all formed by former ERG members and were all composed of a majority of former ERG members: 20/31 for the CSG, 36/50 for the CRG, and 29/39 for the NZSG. The experience of their members as veterans of the ERG could partly account for these groups’ achievements. But these groups’ performance can also be understood by looking at their objectives and memberships.

  • 76 Harper, Mark, “Lockdown cost lives – we need a different strategy to fight Covid-19”, The Telegraph(...)
  • 77 Yorke, Harry, “Tackle cost of living crisis by scrapping energy bill tax, Tories urge Boris Johnson (...)
  • 78 Mudde, Cas, “The Populist Zeitgeist”, Government and Opposition 39(4) (2004), p. 543.

29Just like the ERG’s fight for a hard Brexit, the CSG’s fight against the alleged ‘woke’ agenda, the CRG’s opposition to the decisions of unelected experts depriving people from their freedoms and putting the economy at risk,76 and the NZSG’s fight against climate policies, blamed by the group for the cost-of-living crisis,77 are objectives that are polarising and have a high mobilising potential, which can be explained by their populist nature if one adheres to the consensual definition of populism set out by Mudde, who defines populism as a thin-centred ideology separating society into two homogenous and antagonistic groups, the pure people and the corrupt elite. 78

Fig 5. Generational and ideological breakdown of the CSG’s membership

Fig 5. Generational and ideological breakdown of the CSG’s membership

Fig 6. Generational and ideological breakdown of the CRG’s membership

Fig 6. Generational and ideological breakdown of the CRG’s membership

Fig 7. Generational and ideological breakdown of the NZSG’s membership

Fig 7. Generational and ideological breakdown of the NZSG’s membership

30Figs. 5, 6, and 7 show that these three groups are homogeneous, both on the ideological perspective as they are almost exclusively composed of Leavers, and on the generational perspective as they are mostly composed of MPs elected around the same time.

31After studying the organisational characteristics and objectives driving the formation of these six groups, it appears that, to be successful, an intra-party group needs to be homogeneous, both generationally and ideologically, have strong objectives with a high mobilising potential, and must benefit from a favourable context. The ERG benefitted from a minority government situation, the NZSG linked its anti-net zero claims to the cost-of-living crisis, the CRG made use of opposition to freedom restrictions, and the CSG benefitted from the party’s repositioning on the Leave vote, as discussed later in the paper. It should however be noted that only the ERG seems to fully comply with Rose’s definition of a ‘faction’. None of the other groups lasted a long or possessed a party-like structure similar to the one of the ERG, and none of them had claims which were not single-issue.

Party fragments?

  • 79 This does not apply to the ChRG as the fact that its members were part of several groups can be exp (...)

32The study of post-referendum and post-Brexit intra-party groups seems to indicate that contrary to media portrayal, the Conservative Party did not become an overly fragmented party. The majority of ChRG, CSG, CRG, and NZSG members have been involved in several groups, testifying to the porosity existing between them. Far from being in competition against each other, these groups seemed to point towards the same ideological direction, to belong to a same tendency directed towards culture wars and populism.79 The party did see the emergence of several intra-party groups, but they have rarely been in competition against each other as they were composed of similar members and were focused on complementary issues.

33Breckwoldt has defined a culture war issue as:

  • 80 Breckwoldt, James, “Who Cares about the Culture War? Evidence from a Vote Choice Conjoint Experimen (...)

“1) a primarily non-economic issue that attempts to entrench a moral worldview in one part of society with the hope this will help alter the wider society’s dominant value system; 2) this is done by trying to change the rules, social norms or symbols of an area democratically elected politicians do not traditionally directly control; 3) the specific issues is subsumed into a wider division between ‘progressive’ and ‘orthodox’ attitudes; and 4) debate involves mutual hostility between activists.” 80

  • 81 The CRG and the NZSG have mostly been concerned with economic liberalism and the impact of Covid re (...)

34The CSG’s focus on identity politics and social conservatism, the CRG’s anti-establishment rhetoric, and the NZSG’s challenging of climate policies seem to converge towards attitudes linked to the culture wars. 81These groups have all been trying to entrench a particular moral worldview to alter society’s prevalent value system by pitting one side of society against the other, and promoting hostility between these two sides: the ‘woke’, liberal elite against the morally virtuous people for the CSG, and the out-of-touch establishment elite and unelected experts imposing unfair policies on the righteous people, depriving them from their liberties and economic resources for the CRG and the NZSG. It clearly appears that, on top of fitting with Mudde’s definition of populism mentioned earlier, these groups also seemed to fit within Breckwoldt’s culture war framework.

  • 82 Evans, Geoffrey, de Geus, Roosmarijn and Green, Jane, “Boris Johnson to the Rescue? How the Conserv (...)
  • 83 Sobolewska, Maria and Ford, Robert, Brexitland: identity, diversity and the reshaping of British po (...)
  • 84 Butt, Sarah, Curtice, John and Clery, Elizabeth “Broken Britain?: Public attitudes in an era of cri (...)

35From Brexit and Euroscepticism during May’s premiership, it appears that intra-party groups have shifted their focus towards populism and culture war issues in the post-Brexit context. The movement set off by these groups continued during Truss’s and Sunak’s premierships, with the creation of two culture war-sensitive groups: the New Conservatives (NC) and Popular Conservatism (PopCon). This shift is not surprising as it is characteristic of the Conservative Party’s repositioning on the Leave vote in the 2019 general election.82 The party’s electoral strategy necessarily implied a repositioning on culture war issues and greater emphasis on identity politics, as the Leave vote has been motivated by identity and social conservatism,83 and because attitudes towards culture war issues align with the Brexit divide.84

Conclusion

36It is possible to notice an evolution in the party’s intra-party dynamics from the referendum to Britain’s actual withdrawal from the European Union and the end of Boris Johnson’s premiership. While the ERG can be called a faction as more than half of its members only belonged to this group, had a strong leadership structure and a high level of cohesion, the five other post-Brexit groups cannot. These groups were mostly single-issue and temporary: the CSG and the NZSG are now hardly ever heard, the CRG disappeared with the extinction of Covid, the NRG receded as it lost most of its members in the 2024 general election, and the ChRG stopped publishing its daily and weekly newsletters in December 2023 and its website went down. Apart from the CRG, most of them did not plan regular common parliamentary actions, and members were free to join other groups. However, it appeared that these single-issue groups belonged to the same tendency.

  • 85 Ellis, Charlie, “A Narrowing of the British Conservative Mind”, Society 59 (2022), pp. 688-689

37From an organisational perspective, the Conservative Party has therefore remained stable. It entered Brexit as a party of tendencies and left Brexit as a party of tendencies despite experiencing a factional parenthesis during May’s premiership with the ERG. However, the party’s post-Brexit shift towards populism, identity politics and culture wars, illustrated by protests and dissent over a series of temporary and changing issues (Covid for the CRG, climate policy for the NZSG, immigration, the ‘woke’ agenda, minority rights and the legacy of colonialism for the CSG), seems to have created ideological instability. Johnson’s electoral strategy of repositioning on Leave voters for the 2019 general election did enable the party to restore its political hegemony, but the subsequent loss of ideological diversity weakened conservatism as an intellectual force and the party’s ability to govern effectively, the lack of viewpoint diversity within the PCP threatening the party’s intellectual health.85 It now remains to be seen if the Conservative Party will be able to recover the ideological diversity that has for so long characterised its ‘broadchurch’ and return to government.

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Notes

1 Evans, Geoffrey and Menon, Anand, Brexit and British Politics (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2017), p. 91.

2 Bale, Tim, “Rebels with a cause: Backbench groups in the parliamentary Conservative Party”, Hansard Society, 30 March 2023, <https://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/blog/rebels-with-a-cause-backbench-groups-in-the-parliamentary-conservative-party> [22 January 2025].

3 Walker, Peter, “ERG out, CRG in: the Tory factions Boris Johnson is struggling to appease”, The Guardian, 8 January 2022, <https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/08/erg-out-crg-tory-factions-boris-johnson-struggling-appease> [23 January, 2025].

4 Factionalism has been conceptualised by scholars in different ways, this paper focuses on Rose’s framework as it is authoritative when it comes to the British system.

5 Rose, Richard, “Parties, Factions and Tendencies in Britain”, Political Studies 12(1) (1964), pp. 33-46.

6 Bale, Tim, “Rebels with a cause: Backbench groups in the parliamentary Conservative Party”, Hansard Society, 30 March 2023, <https://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/blog/rebels-with-a-cause-backbench-groups-in-the-parliamentary-conservative-party> [22 January 2025].

7 Rose, Richard, “Parties, Factions and Tendencies in Britain”, Political Studies 12 (1) (1964), p. 40.

8 Beech, Matt, “Conservative Party Ideology in the Age of Brexit”, in Beech, Matt and Simon, Lee (ed.), Conservative Governments in the Age of Brexit (Springer, 2023), pp. 11-24.

9 Alexandre-Collier, Agnès, “L’avenir du parti conservateur britannique”, Conférence AFGB-CRECIB, 2023.

10 Alexandre-Collier, Agnès, “‘L’Euroscepticisme’” au sein du parti conservateur britannique’”, (PhD dissertation, Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, 1998) .

11 Williams, Ben and Hickson, Kevin, “Factions and Splits in British Politics”, Political Insight, 12(1) (2021), p. 16.

12 Webb, Paul and Bale, Tim, “Conflict and cohesion within parties” in Webb, Paul and Bale, Tim (ed.), The Modern British Party System (2nd edn) (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2021), p. 213.

13 Boucek, Françoise, Factional Politics (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 70.

14 Ibid, pp. 55-62.

15 Boucek, Françoise, “Rethinking Factionalism: Typologies, Intra-Party Dynamics and Three Faces of Factionalism”, Party Politics 15(4) (2009), p. 469.

16 Schnapper, Pauline, “Brexit, or Theresa May’s Headache”, Observatoire de la Société Britannique 21 (2018), p. 24.

17 Lynch, Philip and Whitaker, Richard, “All Brexiteers now? Brexit, the Conservatives and party change”, British Politics 13 (2018), p. 38.

18 Peele, Gillian, “Post Brexit and Post-Covid: Reflections on the Contemporary Conservative Party”, The Political Quarterly 92(3) (2021), p. 406.

19 Sowemimo, Matthew, “The Conservative Party and European Integration 1988-95”, Party Politics 2(1) (1996), p. 77.

20 Ibid., p. 78.

21 Riley-Smith, Ben and Yorke, Harry, “Heavyweight Brexiteers among 60 Tory MPs to demand clean break from the EU”, The Telegraph, 19 November 2016, <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/19/heavyweight-brexiteers-go-public-as-60-tory-mps-demand-clean-bre/> [23 January 2025].

22 Fernandes, Suella, “Britain must untie itself from EU shackles to leave the customs union”, The Telegraph, 19 November 2016, <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/19/britain-must-untie-itself-from-eu-shackles-by-using-brexit-to-le/> [23 January 2025].

23 Baker, Steve, “We must have a real EU exit, not a fake one”, 20 November 2016, <https://www.stevebaker.info/2016/11/a-real-eu-exit-not-a-fake-one/> [23 January 2025].

24 The Independent, “Theresa May’s keynote speech at Tory conference in full”, 5 October 2016 <https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-speech-tory-conference-2016-in-full-transcript-a7346171.html> [04 June 2025].

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid.

27 Riley-Smith, Ben and Yorke, Harry, “Heavyweight Brexiteers among 60 Tory MPs to demand clean break from the EU”, The Telegraph, 19 November 2016, <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/19/heavyweight-brexiteers-go-public-as-60-tory-mps-demand-clean-bre/> [23 January 2025].

28 Tomlinson, Michael, “Human beings are not bargaining chips”, 25 November 2016.

29 Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, “Assurance Review: Pooled Services Assessment of risks, controls and compliance, 2015-16”, June 2017, <https://assets.ctfassets.net/nc7h1cs4q6ic/6803Gs6Hwoy1wSBWddNEve/702af7ba6b0908c683a468529d7cf9bd/pooled-services-assurance-report_final.pdf> [23 January 2025].

30 Ibid., p. 12.

31 Ibid., p. 13.

32 Cross-checked lists of ERG members were found on the following media: BBC.com, FT.com, Buzzffeed.com, openDemocracy.net, TheWeek.com and LeftFootForward.com.

33 Booth, Oliver, Butler, Chris, Jeffery, David and Roe-Crines, Andrew, “Selecting Sunak: Conservative MPs Nomination Preferences in the (Second) British Conservative Party Leadership Election”, Parliamentary Affairs 77(3) (2023), pp. 450-469.

34 Walker, Peter, “ERG out, CRG in: the Tory factions Boris Johnson is struggling to appease”, The Guardian, 8 January 2022, <https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/08/erg-out-crg-tory-factions-boris-johnson-struggling-appease> [23 January, 2025].

35 Murray, C. R. G. and Armstrong, Megan, “A Mobile Phone in One Hand and Erskine May in the Other: The European Research Group’s Parliamentary Revolution”, Parliamentary Affairs 75 (2022), p. 537.

36 Alexandre-Collier, A. “‘L’Euroscepticisme’” au sein du parti conservateur britannique’, (PhD dissertation, Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, 1998), p. 413.

37 Ibid., p. 537

38 Paterson, Owen, “Brexit Witness Archive Interview”, UK in a Changing Europe, 4 June 2021, <https://ukandeu.ac.uk/brexit-witness-archive/owen-paterson/> [13 February 2025].

39 Bale, Tim, The Conservative Party After Brexit: Turmoil and Transformation (Cambridge, Polity, 2023), p. 101.

40 Kam, Christopher, Party Discipline and Parliamentary Politics, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009).

41 Kavanagh, Dennis, “Preface”, Observatoire de la Société Britannique 21 (2018), pp. 17-19.

42 Murray, C. R. G. and Armstrong, Megan, “A Mobile Phone in One Hand and Erskine May in the Other: The European Research Group’s Parliamentary Revolution”, Parliamentary Affairs 75 (2022), p. 538.

43 Ibid., pp. 539-545.

44 Ibid., p. 551.

45 Bale, Tim, The Conservative Party After Brexit: Turmoil and Transformation (Cambridge, Polity, 2023), p. 78.

46 Francois, Mark, Spartan Victory: The Inside Story of the Battle for Brexit (Kindle Direct Publishing, 2021)..

47 Sumption, Jonathan, “Brexit and the British Constitutions: Reflections on the Last Three years and the Next Fifty”, The Political Quarterly 91(1) (2020), p. 108.

48 YouGov, “The most important issues facing the country”, 2025, <https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/trackers/the-most-important-issues-facing-the-country> [23 January 2025].

49 Whale, Sebastian, “The ERG: a party within a party?”, The House, 27 September 2018, <https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/the-erg-a-party-within-a-party> [25 January 2025].

50 BBC, “The Brexit Storm: Laura Kuenssberg's Inside Story”, 2019 <https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003wxb> [25 January 2025].

51 Alexandre-Collier, Agnès, “From Rebellion to Extinction: Where have all the Tory Remainer MPs Gone?”, The Political Quarterly 91(1) (2020), pp. 24-30.

52 Gamble, Andrew, “The Remaking of Conservatism: Boris Johnson and the Politics of Brexit”, The Political Quarterly 92 (2021), p. 464.

53 Augé, Luca, “Johnson and ‘Let’s keep Brexit done’: the instrumental use of the UK’s policy on Europe in Conservative Party management”, Observatoire de la Société Britannique 31 (2024), pp. 55-79.

54 Ibid., pp. 55-79.

55 Ridge-Newman, Anthony, “Communication strategy, change and the British Conservative Party”, Observatoire de la Société Britannique 27 (2021), p. 96.

56 Augé, Luca, “Johnson and ‘Let’s keep Brexit done’: the instrumental use of the UK’s policy on Europe in Conservative Party management”, Observatoire de la Société Britannique 31 (2024), p. 74.

57 ConservativeHome, ‘2019 General Election: Meet the 107 newly-elected Tory MPs’, 13 December 2019, <https://conservativehome.com/2019/12/13/2019-general-election-newly-elected-conservative-mps/> [23 January, 2025].

58 Walker, Peter, “ERG out, CRG in: the Tory factions Boris Johnson is struggling to appease”, The Guardian, 8 January 2022, <https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/08/erg-out-crg-tory-factions-boris-johnson-struggling-appease> [23 January, 2025].

59 Members of the ChRG have been identified thanks to the group’s website, and MPs members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China and of the All-Party Parliamentary China Group have been considered to be aligned with the group’s sinosceptic positions.

60 Payne, Sebastian, “Senior Tories launch ERG-style group to shape policy on China”, Financial Times, 24 April 2020, <https://www.ft.com/content/b354c58b-06fc-4848-a823-584bcc0c3869> [24 January, 2025].

61 Members of the CSG have been identified thanks to the signatories of the group’s manifesto and of a letter sent by the group to Boris Johnson and published in the Telegraph on 9 November 2020.

62 Walker, Peter, “What are the different Conservative factions?”, The Guardian, 8 January 2022, <https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/08/what-are-the-different-conservative-factions> [23 January, 2025].

63 NRG members have been identified using the group’s website, MPs’ record of parliamentary expenses, and thanks to the list of signatories of a letter sent by the group to Boris Johnson and published in the Guardian on 26 October 2020.

64 Connolly, John, “Introducing the Northern Research Group: the trade union for Tory MP”, The Spectator, 17 October 2020, <https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/introducing-the-northern-research-group-the-trade-union-for-tory-mps/> [25 January 2025]

65 CRG members have been identified by identifying recidivist rebels on a selected list of Covid related votes.

66 Hope, Christopher, “Tory lockdown rebels unite to form Covid Recovery Group”, The Telegraph, 10 November 2020, <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/10/headache-pm-dozens-conservative-mps-set-covid-recovery-group/> [25 January 2025]

67 NZSG members have been identified thanks to the signatories of several letters sent by the group to Boris Johnson that have been published in The Telegraph.

68 Walker, Peter, “What are the different Conservative factions?”, The Guardian, 8 January 2022, <https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/08/what-are-the-different-conservative-factions> [23 January, 2025]

69 Hooghe, Liesbet, Marks, Gary and Wilson, Carole, “Does Left/Right Structure Party Positions on European Integration?” Comparative Political Studies 35(8) (2002), pp. 965-989.

70 Summers, Tim, Chan, Hiu Man, Gries, Peter and Turcsanyi, Richard, “Worsening British views of China in 2020: evidence from public opinion, parliament, and the media”, Asia Europe Journal 20 (2022), pp. 173-194.

71 Timsit, Annabelle, “Tom Tugendhat, the politician warning of China’s ‘cage-rattling’”, Quartz, 18 May 2021, <https://qz.com/2007290/tom-tugendhat-the-politician-warning-of-chinas-cage-rattling> [24 January 2025].

72 Northern Research Group, ‘“The NRG is a group comprised of MPs supporting each other by geography, not (always) policy. There was no collective decision to abstain this evening.”’, X, 12 December 2023, <https://x.com/NRG_Comms/status/1734664406137545095> [11 February 2025].

73 Bale, Tim, “Rebels with a cause: Backbench groups in the parliamentary Conservative Party”, Hansard Society, 30 March 2023, <https://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/blog/rebels-with-a-cause-backbench-groups-in-the-parliamentary-conservative-party> [22 January 2025].

74 Tournier-Sol, Karine, “La droite britannique et les guerres culturelles”, Observatoire de la Société Britannique 31 (2024), pp. 15-32.

75 The Guardian, “Rishi Sunak rolls back net zero targets in reset of UK climate policies – video”, 20 September 2023, < https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2023/sep/20/rishi-sunak-rolls-back-net-zero-targets-in-reset-of-uk-climate-policies-video> [6 June, 2025].

76 Harper, Mark, “Lockdown cost lives – we need a different strategy to fight Covid-19”, The Telegraph, 10 November 2020, <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/10/lockdowns-cost-lives-need-different-strategy-fight-covid-19/>, [6 June 2025].

77 Yorke, Harry, “Tackle cost of living crisis by scrapping energy bill tax, Tories urge Boris Johnson”, The Telegraph, 1 January 2022, <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/01/01/tackle-cost-living-crisis-scrapping-energy-bill-tax-tories-urge/>, [6 June 2025].

78 Mudde, Cas, “The Populist Zeitgeist”, Government and Opposition 39(4) (2004), p. 543.

79 This does not apply to the ChRG as the fact that its members were part of several groups can be explained by the consensual nature of sinoscepticism.

80 Breckwoldt, James, “Who Cares about the Culture War? Evidence from a Vote Choice Conjoint Experiment” (2023), p.3.

81 The CRG and the NZSG have mostly been concerned with economic liberalism and the impact of Covid restrictions and the net-zero target on the economy, but their attitudes and rhetoric fit with the overall framework of the culture wars.

82 Evans, Geoffrey, de Geus, Roosmarijn and Green, Jane, “Boris Johnson to the Rescue? How the Conservatives Won the Radical-Right Vote in the 2019 General Election”, Political Studies 71(4) (2021), p. 2.

83 Sobolewska, Maria and Ford, Robert, Brexitland: identity, diversity and the reshaping of British politics (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2020), p. 224.

84 Butt, Sarah, Curtice, John and Clery, Elizabeth “Broken Britain?: Public attitudes in an era of crisis”, National Centre for Social Research, 22 September 2022, <https://natcen.ac.uk/publications/british-social-attitudes-39-broken-britain> [13 February, 2025].

85 Ellis, Charlie, “A Narrowing of the British Conservative Mind”, Society 59 (2022), pp. 688-689

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List of illustrations

Title Fig 1. Generational and ideological breakdown of the ERG’s membership
URL http://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/docannexe/image/14279/img-1.png
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Title Fig 3. Generational and ideological breakdown of the ChRG’s membership
URL http://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/docannexe/image/14279/img-2.png
File image/png, 75k
Title Fig 4. Generational and ideological breakdown of the NRG’s membership
URL http://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/docannexe/image/14279/img-3.png
File image/png, 60k
Title Fig 5. Generational and ideological breakdown of the CSG’s membership
URL http://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/docannexe/image/14279/img-4.png
File image/png, 68k
Title Fig 6. Generational and ideological breakdown of the CRG’s membership
URL http://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/docannexe/image/14279/img-5.png
File image/png, 69k
Title Fig 7. Generational and ideological breakdown of the NZSG’s membership
URL http://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/docannexe/image/14279/img-6.png
File image/png, 85k
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References

Electronic reference

Axel Bercq, “Party fragments? Intra-Party Dynamics in the Conservative Party after the 2016 Referendum”Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique [Online], XXX-3 | 2025, Online since 15 September 2025, connection on 16 December 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/14279; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/14qke

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About the author

Axel Bercq

Axel Bercq is a PhD student at the University of Toulon and member of the Babel Research Laboratory. His research focuses on factionalism within the Conservative Party during the pre- and post-Brexit period.

Axel Bercq est doctorant contractuel en civilisation britannique à l’Université de Toulon et membre du laboratoire Babel. Sa recherche porte sur l’étude du factionnalisme dans le Parti Conservateur pendant la période pré- et post-Brexit.

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The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) may be subject to specific use terms.

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