Bloody Panico: Or, Whatever Happened to the Tory Party

A history and obituary for the British conservative party

As the Tories face the voters at the next General Election. Leading political commentator Geoffrey Wheatcroft argues that the party is not just facing the loss of government but also an existential crisis.

The Tory Party has been the most electorally successful party in the history of modern Europe. It has been in power for eighty-five of the past 135 years. In 2019 they won their largest parliamentary majority in more than thirty years. So what went wrong?

In Bloody Panico, Geoffrey Wheatcroft charts the collapse of not just the party but its shattering of its very foundations. 2022 will be remembered as the year of two monarchs and three prime ministers, not to mention four chancellors of the exchequer, five education secretaries, and more than thirty resignations from the government.

Beyond the pantomine of Boris, Truss and the managerial dullness of Sunak, the fabric of the party is frayed. At long last the Tories’ ancient instinct for survival appears to have deserted them, along with any concern for the public good, and the prevailing mode of dissension and vicious feuding. This could see them cast into the political wilderness for decades.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft is a journalist and author. He contributes regularly to the Guardian, TLS, New York Times and the New York Review of Books, and his books include The Randlords, The Controversy of Zion, which won an American National Book Award, The Strange Death of Tory England, Yo, Blair! and Churchill’s Shadow. He lives in Bath.