The Political Quarterly, Vol. 83, No. 3, July–September 2012

DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-923X.2012.00000.x

Reluctant Coalitionists: The Conservative Party and the Establishment of the Coalition Government in May 2010
STEPHEN EVANS

Introduction
According to Michael Laver and Norman Schofield, the study of coalition governments revolved around two central questions: ‘who got in?’ and ‘who got what?’1 The literature on the establishment of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government, in the United Kingdom on 11 May 2010, has also sought to answer these two questions. First, who got in: in other words, options and outcomes. There have been detailed accounts of the chain of events which led to the establishment of the coalition government in the aftermath of the inconclusive general election held on 6 May 2010 which, at the extremes of argument, have emphasised either the logic of numbers or personal chemistry.2 This has been accompanied by well-informed accounts of the five days of intense and sometimes difficult negotiations which followed, between all three main parties, and the twists and turns which took place during that period of time, as both Labour and the Conservatives courted the Liberal Democrats.3 Second, who got what: in other words, policy and personnel. In terms of policy, as Thomas Quinn, Judith Bara and John Bartle have argued, both the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats made important gains in their respective priority areas: fairer taxes, a pupil premium, a green economy and political reform (Liberal Democrats); deficit reduction, immigration, defence and Europe
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(Conservatives).4 In terms of personnel, according to Marc Debus, the Conservatives used their position as the strong party in the coalition game to ensure that during the process of portfolio allocation they were able to capture the most important ministries in the new coalition government.5 Now that the coalition government has been established it is possible to ask another question: who was the awkward partner in the relationship? Philip Cowley and Mark Stuart have highlighted the potentially record-breaking degree of rebelliousness which backbench MPs of both governing parties have displayed since May 2010.6 They have also shown that the Conservative wing of the coalition has been even more wobbly than the Liberal Democrat wing in important respects. Whilst a greater proportion of Liberal Democrat MPs have rebelled against the government, Conservative MPs have rebelled more often. By December 2011, Liberal Democrat MPs had rebelled in 21 per cent of divisions, whilst Conservative MPs had rebelled in 31 per cent of divisions. Further, those Conservative MPs who had first been elected to the House of Commons in May 2010 have been even more rebellious than those who had just been re-elected. Over half of those Conservative MPs who have voted against the coalition government since May 2010 were new intake MPs. The largest Conservative rebellion against the coalition (so far) occurred on 24 October 2011 when 81 Conservative

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MPs (including 49 new intake MPs) defied a three-line whip and supported a motion calling for a referendum on Britain’s continued membership of the European Union. Indeed, Conservative rebellions on Europe have, on average, attracted twice as much support as rebellions on other issues since May 2010. It could thus be argued that the Conservative party has been the real awkward partner in this particular relationship at the parliamentary level. At first sight, this would appear somewhat surprising. In returning the Conservatives to office in May 2010, albeit as part of a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats, David Cameron has given his party its first taste of power for thirteen years. By doing so, he has also ensured that, for the first time in a generation, the Conservatives will fight the next election as a party of government. In this way, it could be argued, the Conservative party has finally managed to break free from the cycle of division, disunity and defeat which has characterised its history since the 1990s.7 It is argued here, however, that we should not really be surprised by the rebellious behaviour of backbench Conservative MPs in the House of Commons since May 2010 because they were reluctant coalitionists to begin with. There were four reasons for this: they would have preferred to see a minority Conservative government, they had made far too many concessions to the Liberal Democrats, they had been bounced into accepting a coalition deal by a controlling party leadership, and they had lost out on those ministerial positions now held by Liberal Democrats.

Should have done better
There has always been an implicit bargain in the relationship between David Cameron and the parliamentary Conservative party. Timothy Heppell and Michael Hill argued that, after three consecutive election defeats, it was ‘electabil-

ity’ rather than ‘ideological acceptability’ which explained Cameron’s success in the second ballot of Conservative MPs.8 Even though a clear majority of Conservative MPs had voted for the two rightwing candidates, David Davis and Liam Fox, in the 2005 leadership election, those on the right of the party were prepared to tolerate Cameron’s leadership if the changes he made were popular with the wider electorate. In other words, if his efforts to reposition the Conservative party in the centre ground of politics enabled it to win the next election. This was why Cameron’s interest in environmental issues may not have been shared by many other Conservatives, but nevertheless attracted little internal opposition. The conditional nature of the relationship between Cameron and his right wing became evident in the spring of 2007 when opposition to the policy of refusing to build new grammar schools coincided with a decline in the party’s opinion poll fortunes which culminated in the ‘Brown bounce’. This showed that those who disagreed with Cameron on the right of the Conservative party were only prepared to swallow his reforming medicine if it was working upon the electorate.9 The outcome of the 2010 general election showed that it was not: the Conservative party failed to win a majority of its own under highly favourable conditions. For the first time since 1992, the Labour party was vulnerable where the economy was concerned. It was now clear that New Labour had not ended the cycle of ‘boom and bust’, and that some of its economic policies had even contributed to the bust. In political terms, the Labour government was in a similar predicament given the apparent unpopularity of Gordon Brown. Indeed, the election campaign, as it progressed, visibly exposed the limits of his people skills. Cameron’s emphasis upon the ‘big society’ during the campaign was clearly intended to convince the electorate that the Conservative party had changed since
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Thatcher’s day, but it proved to be a tactical mistake as voters were themselves uncertain what the term actually meant. To be merely the largest single party in the new House of Commons under these circumstances was, to put it mildly, somewhat disappointing to many Conservatives. To use a football analogy, it felt like their party had failed to score in front of an open goal. Five years of modernisation had only enabled the Conservative party to increase its share of the vote by 3.7 per cent. The Conservative party may not have done as well as it should have at the polls but, as the largest single party in the new House of Commons, it could still go it alone and establish a minority government. That was the outcome which most Conservative MPs, particularly those on the right of the parliamentary party, would have preferred.10 Quite simply, after thirteen years in opposition, they wanted to see a Tory government pursuing Tory policies. The option of a minority Conservative government did not preclude the establishment of some sort of confidence and supply arrangement with the Liberal Democrats, and the other smaller parties of course, but there was no need to go any further than this. It was true that minority governments could be unstable, but neither Labour nor the Liberal Democrats would surely want to precipitate a second election in the near future, if only for financial reasons. Further, a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats would be even more unstable than a minority Conservative government. At lunchtime on 11 May 2010, two senior members of Conservative Way Forward, Don Porter and Mark Allatt, issued a statement in which they outlined what they believed was the ‘appropriate way forward’: ‘David Cameron should become Prime Minister of a minority Conservative government.’ Cameron’s preference for a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats rather than a minority Conservative gov480 Author(s)
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ernment was also the product of his party’s ultimately disappointing performance in the 2010 general election. The establishment of a five-year fixedterm coalition government was the best way to secure the political stability necessary to convince the markets that Britain could deal with its debt crisis. The levels of financial instability which now afflicted the wider eurozone, after spreading outwards from Greece, made this a particularly important consideration. A minority Conservative government raised the prospect of a second election within a short period of time— an election which the Conservatives could not be sure of winning, given that they had just failed to win an election in what would have undoubtedly been more favourable circumstances. A coalition government with the Liberal Democrats also enabled Cameron to claim that he had indeed returned the Conservative party to the centre ground of politics. It offered him an opportunity to complete the process of brand decontamination. A minority Conservative government would have made Cameron more dependent upon the support of those on the right of the parliamentary party who had begun to doubt the wisdom of his modernisation strategy in the aftermath of the election.

It’s all too much
Cameron’s preference for a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats was not universally popular inside the parliamentary Conservative party. It seemed to Conservatives that Cameron was now prepared to compound his failure to achieve a majority of his own by joining forces with a party which, in terms of history, tradition and outlook, was very different from the Conservative party. There was certainly some common ground between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. There was a shared commitment to the decentralisation of

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political power and localism, for instance. Support for civil liberties and more open government was also forthcoming from both parties. Environmentalism and green issues provided another important point of contact between them. There was also a degree of ideological empathy between Conservatives and those ‘Orange Book’ Liberal Democrats—Vince Cable, Nick Clegg, Ed Davey, Chris Huhne and David Laws—who had called for a revival of classical liberal economic ideas in 2004. These sentiments were not, however, shared by the majority of Liberal Democrat MPs who continued to champion the merits of state intervention over market forces. Nor was there sufficient compatibility on other core issues to convince Conservatives that a formal coalition with the Liberal Democrats would work. It was not just that Conservatives and Liberal Democrats held different views on important subjects, but that their views upon them were often diametrically opposed to each other. This was true with regard to Europe, immigration, taxation, law and order, and electoral reform. The prevailing view among Conservative MPs was that the overwhelming majority of Liberal Democrats were ‘pinko federalists’ whom it was best to keep at arm’s length. Those in the Conservative party who doubted the wisdom of making a deal with the Liberal Democrats did so because of the compromises which this would inevitably entail. A coalition government would enable them to foist the worst excesses of ‘Lib Demmery’ upon the Conservatives. The possibility of concessions over electoral reform was a constant cause of concern to many Conservatives (given its likely impact upon them personally, as well as their party, it must be added). Party grandees such as Lord Heseltine cautioned against precipitate action on this subject; such senior figures as Liam Fox did not want the party to be ‘held to ransom’ over it; Douglas Carswell remained the only

known Conservative MP to support proportional representation. Europe was an issue which specifically exercised the minds of those on the Conservative right: it had to be one of the ‘red lines’ which could not be crossed during the negotiations in the view of such stalwart sceptics as Bill Cash. On 7 May 2010, Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, urged Cameron, in a typically extravagant metaphor, to ensure that most of the ‘meat in the sausage’ was Conservative. The Liberal Democrats were certainly not in a position to dictate terms after their own disappointing performance in the 2010 election. It was hard to escape the conclusion, or so it looked to many Conservatives, that the Liberal Democrats had done exactly that in the five days which followed the election. The multiple concessions which the Conservative party had been forced to make in order to secure their support included the abandonment of proposals to: repatriate powers from Brussels on a range of issues including employment law, abolish targets in the National Health Service, raise the inheritance tax threshold to £1 million, replace the Human Rights Act with our own Bill of Rights, and impose an automatic jail sentence on anyone carrying a knife. The one-sided nature of the deal, in Conservative eyes, was confirmed by the fact that it was only the Liberal Democrats who could abstain in votes on issues which they felt particularly strongly about (such as an increase in university tuition fees, an expansion of nuclear power and the introduction of tax breaks for married couples). To add insult to injury, Conservative MPs were also expected to vote in favour of measures which they profoundly disagreed with (most notably the legislation paving the way for a referendum on the Alternative Vote). Even though the Conservatives had done just as well as the Liberal Democrats in terms of securing their respective pol481

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icy priorities in practice, as noted above, the overriding impression among them was that the Liberal Democrats had still done disproportionately well out of the negotiations. This was partly a product of the fact that the Liberal Democrats had begun to ‘listen’ to what the Labour party had to say whilst continuing to ‘talk’ to the Conservative party. Indeed, Conservatives believed that Vince Cable was not a member of the Liberal Democrat negotiating team because he was holding separate talks with Labour. The purpose of such ‘double-dealing’ (the phrase used by Sir Malcolm Rifkind) was obviously to ensure that Liberal Democrat support went to the highest bidder. The Liberal Democrats did use the prospect of a deal with Labour to exert leverage in their negotiations with the Conservatives, but they also knew that their party would only accept a deal with the Conservatives, which was always the more realistic option given the parliamentary arithmetic, if they had at least tried to negotiate with their more natural coalition partner. It could also be argued, however, that Conservative suspicions about the outcome of the negotiations with the Liberal Democrats were fanned by the way in which Cameron had conducted them.

Out of the loop
There was a feeling among Conservatives that they had been kept in the dark during the negotiations with the Liberal Democrats. This reflected the fact that there was an important cultural difference between the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats. The Liberal Democrats had established a formal mechanism which enabled their party to check the power of its leader. Nick Clegg was unable to act unilaterally because his freedom of action was constrained by the existence of a ‘triple-lock’ of MPs, peers and federal executive, special conference and party members. This ensured that
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genuine consultation and consent were uppermost in his mind in May 2010. The Conservative party was very different when it came to the degree of autonomy which it has traditionally allowed its leaders. The party possessed a leaderfollower structure of power in which authority cascaded from the top downwards and obedience flowed from the bottom upwards. This gave Cameron considerable room for manoeuvre in May 2010 because it enabled him to control the degree of influence which the parliamentary party exerted upon the negotiations, and therefore their outcome, whilst concurrently maintaining the semblance of participation and accountability. Cameron carefully controlled the consultation process in the Conservative party in the aftermath of the election. He took informal soundings from party grandees, former leaders, senior colleagues and such backbench figures as David Davis. Cameron also met with members of the Shadow Cabinet and Conservative MPs during the evening of Sunday 9 May 2010. He chose to hold a group meeting with the MPs at which the Chief Whip, Patrick McLoughlin, was present. This tactic was obviously designed to make it more difficult for those present to raise objections. Indeed, party Whips had telephoned Conservative MPs that afternoon to remind them not to rock the boat at a time when the national interest was paramount. Cameron had, in fact, adopted a similar approach with regard to the Shadow Cabinet two days earlier. Forty-five minutes before he was due to speak at the St Stephen’s Club in Westminster, in the afternoon of 7 May 2010, Cameron informed the Shadow Cabinet, in a conference call rather than in a face-to-face meeting, that he was going to make ‘a big, open, and comprehensive offer to the Liberal Democrats’. Once negotiations had commenced, later on 7 May 2010, the Conservative negotiating team

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(George Osborne, William Hague, Oliver Letwin and Ed Llewellyn) took their instructions directly from Cameron, spoke for him, and reported back to him. As Hague made clear, at that first meeting: ‘We inform the leader and then he decides what we do.’11 It seemed to Conservatives that meaningful consultation about the talks which took place at 70 Whitehall was conspicuous by its absence. Cameron only sought the approval of his MPs at heavily stagemanaged meetings where the Whips ensured that supportive voices were heard first and dissenting interventions were kept to a minimum, and where the issues were not put to a formal vote after the carefully choreographed discussion had taken place. The meeting held in Committee Room 14 on 10 May 2010, at which Conservative MPs agreed to offer the Liberal Democrats a referendum on the Alternative Vote, after being told by Cameron that Labour had offered them the same without a referendum, followed this pattern. Another party meeting took place after Cameron had been appointed Prime Minister, on 11 May 2010, and he had made his intentions clear outside Number Ten: ‘I aim to form a proper and full coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.’ At this meeting, held later that evening, Conservative MPs were not even shown the draft coalition agreement let alone given an opportunity to vote upon it, unlike Liberal Democrat MPs and peers. Conservative MPs would be equally disappointed when it came to the final draft of the coalition agreement. When Cameron called an emergency party meeting on 19 May 2010, Conservative MPs assumed that they were going to be briefed about The Coalition: Our Programme for Government, which was scheduled for publication the following day, and which Nick Clegg was concurrently discussing with his own MPs. This proved not to be the case at all: Cameron told his MPs that he wanted to change the

constitution of the party’s 1922 Committee so that ministers as well as backbenchers could attend and vote at its meetings in future (in a move which was widely perceived as an attempt to stifle internal party dissent). The lack of consultation only succeeded in creating the impression among Conservatives that Cameron had bounced them into a coalition deal with the Liberal Democrats. He certainly used the prospect of a Labour–Liberal Democrat deal to persuade his party to accept a referendum on the Alternative Vote. The way in which Cameron went about doing so, however, left a sour taste in the mouths of many Conservatives. This was because he gave them a misleading impression of exactly what Labour had offered the Liberal Democrats on electoral reform when he met his MPs in Committee Room 14 on 10 May 2010. Cameron told them that Labour had offered the Liberal Democrats the Alternative Vote without a referendum, when no such formal offer had ever been made to Nick Clegg, in order to persuade them to support a referendum on the Alternative Vote. Cameron’s subsequent efforts to justify the position he took in Committee Room 14 only served to confirm just how misleading it had been. Cameron later argued that the introduction of the Alternative Vote without a referendum had been in the air but, at the time, he maintained that it was already on the negotiating table. Further, the fact that Cameron was already Prime Minister when he met his MPs during the evening of 11 May 2010, and had been introduced to them as such by the Chief Whip, made it difficult for those Conservatives who had doubts about Cameron’s decision to establish a ‘proper and full coalition’ with the Liberal Democrats, to speak out openly against it without incurring the charge of disloyalty to the leader.

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Fewer jobs for the boys
The establishment of a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats was also bound to create tensions within the parliamentary Conservative party because the process of ministerial allocation became more complicated in a multiparty administration. Cameron could not automatically appoint who he wanted to where he wanted them to go. As Prime Minister, Cameron could only exercise his traditional powers of appointment and dismissal with the agreement of the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg. This was made clear in the Coalition Agreement for Stability and Reform which the Cabinet Office published on 21 May 2010. Section one of the agreement, which related to the composition of the government, stated that Clegg had agreed to the initial allocation of appointments between the two parties, his agreement was needed if any subsequent changes were made to the initial allocation, he had the right to nominate Liberal Democrat ministers in future reshuffles, and he had to be consulted before any Liberal Democrats were removed from office. The formal powers which Clegg enjoyed in the sphere of ministerial allocation ensured that government reshuffles became an inherently intricate business. Indeed, ministerial reshuffles provided a potentially huge area of conflict for the coalition government. The agreement for stability and reform indicated that all future appointments would be made ‘approximately in proportion to the size of the two Parliamentary parties’. Even though larger parties tended to be under-represented in coalition governments, and smaller parties over-represented within them, the absence of strict proportionality could still create its own problems, and it certainly did so in May 2010. The Conservative party provided 84.3 per cent of the coalition’s MPs, but held 80.7 per cent of the government’s frontbench positions. The Liberal Demo484 Author(s)
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crats provided 15.7 per cent of the coalition’s MPs, but held 19.3 per cent of the government’s frontbench positions. This nevertheless raised the prospect of disproportionate influence in Conservative eyes because the Liberal Democrats clearly held more positions, and the Conservatives clearly held fewer positions, than their numbers warranted: 23 of 57 Liberal Democrat MPs held office (40.4 per cent of the total) whilst 96 of 307 Conservative MPs held office (31.3 per cent of the total). The perceived numerical imbalance was important because it reinforced the prevailing impression among Conservatives that, in their relationship with the Liberal Democrats, it was the tail that wagged the dog. Bill Jones argued that the establishment of the coalition government increased the size of the talent pool which was available to Cameron, but also created resentment among those Conservative backbenchers who had been overlooked as a result.12 Conservatives were excluded from office because it was necessary to include Liberal Democrats in the government. Some 37 Conservative MPs who had served on the frontbench prior to the 2010 election did not become ministers in the new coalition government. After thirteen years of opposition this was bound to create bad feeling among individuals who were first and foremost career politicians. What made matters worse was that places had still been found in the government for some of the newer Conservative MPs—for example, Chloe Smith became an Assistant Whip in May 2010 (she had only been an MP since July 2009). It should also be remembered that the Conservative party returned 148 new MPs to the House of Commons at the 2010 election (48 per cent of its parliamentary total). About 30 of them could reasonably have expected to take their first steps on the ministerial ladder in a purely Conservative government. That they were now denied even junior office may, at least in part, help to

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explain the particularly marked rebellious streak among new intake Conservative MPs. It was certainly more difficult for the Whips to maintain the loyalty of backbenchers when there were fewer jobs to go around. The need to accommodate the Liberal Democrats also meant that Cameron did not have an entirely free hand when it came to constructing his Cabinet. Not only did he have to include Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister, as well as four other senior Liberal Democrats, but Cameron was once again forced to include Liberal Democrats at the expense of Conservatives. The most high-profile Conservative casualties in the process of Cabinet formation in May 2010 were Chris Grayling and Theresa Villiers, who had both served in the Shadow Cabinet before the election, but who now became Ministers of State in the coalition government. Grayling and Villiers had also spoken out against offering the Liberal Democrats a referendum on the Alternative Vote when it was discussed by the Shadow Cabinet. Three other senior Conservatives—Oliver Letwin, Francis Maude and David Willetts— were not full members of the Cabinet, but were entitled to attend its meetings. During the process of Cabinet formation in May 2010, some members of the Shadow Cabinet found themselves switched to different portfolios in order to accommodate their new Liberal Democrat colleagues. Kenneth Clarke had served as Shadow Business Secretary, but in order to accommodate Vince Cable, who had held that position for the Liberal Democrats, Clarke became Justice Secretary instead. These two appointments were important because they provided those on the right of the Conservative party with valuable ammunition with which to attack the coalition government. Cable was known to be both hostile towards the banks and a supporter of radical banking reform (which angered economic neo-liberals). Clarke’s

more liberal stance on law and order issues gave the impression that he was soft on crime (which angered traditionalists). Nick Clegg later said that there were five Liberal Democrats in the Cabinet, or six if you included Clarke.

Conclusion
Even though both Conservative and Liberal Democrat backbench MPs have been prepared to vote against the coalition government since May 2010, backbench Conservative MPs, particularly those first elected in 2010, have done so more frequently. It has been suggested here that their behaviour reflected the fact that the Conservatives were reluctant partners rather than willing participants in the coalition government to begin with. The wider parliamentary party was not as eager as David Cameron to establish a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats and a majority of Conservative MPs would have undoubtedly preferred it if he had established a minority Conservative government. Conservatives believed that they had made too many concessions to the Liberal Democrats and it even looked as though Cameron had misled his MPs into accepting his offer of a referendum on the Alternative Vote. Further, the Liberal Democrats occupied valuable ministerial space and this created resentment among those Conservatives who had been excluded as a result. There was thus no great enthusiasm for the establishment of a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats in the parliamentary Conservative party in May 2010. Conservatives merely resigned themselves to an outcome which they had been given little opportunity to influence and which Cameron had made it very difficult for them to reject.

Notes
1 M. Laver and N. Schofield, Multiparty Government: The Politics of Coalition in
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2

3

4

5

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Europe, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990. D. Kavanagh and P. Cowley, The British General Election of 2010, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, Chapter 10; R. Fox, ‘Five days in May: a new political order emerges’, in A. Geddes and J. Tonge, eds, Britain Votes 2010, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 25–40; P. Norton, ‘The politics of coalition’, in N. Allen and J. Bartle, eds, Britain at the Polls 2010, London, Sage, 2011, pp. 242–65. D. Laws, 22 Days in May: The Birth of the Lib Dem–Conservative Coalition, London, Biteback, 2010; R. Wilson, 5 Days to Power: The Journey to Coalition Britain, London, Biteback, 2010; P. Mandelson, The Third Man: Life at the Heart of New Labour, London, HarperPress, 2010, pp. 540–54. T. Quinn, J. Bara and J. Bartle, ‘The UK coalition agreement of 2010: who won?’, Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, vol. 21, no. 2, 2011, pp. 295–312. M. Debus, ‘Portfolio allocation and policy compromises: how and why the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats formed a coalition government’, The Political Quarterly, vol. 82, no. 2, 2011, pp. 293–304. For more on their invaluable work in this area, see the website http://www.revolts.co.uk/ and their contributions to their department’s Ballots and Bullets blog (http://nottspolitics.org/). For a useful early summary of their findings, see P. Cowley and M. Stuart, ‘A coalition with wobbly wings: backbench dissent since

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9

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May 2010’, 8 November 2010, http:// www.revolts.co.uk/wobbly%20Wings.pdf. See also P. Cowley and M. Stuart, ‘The Cambusters: the Conservative European Union referendum rebellion of October 2011’, The Political Quarterly, vol. 83, no. 2, 2012, pp. 402–6. For the December 2011 figures, see N. Morris, ‘Order, order! Why the newest Tories are a major headache for Cameron’, Independent, 30 December 2011. For excellent surveys of the party’s recent history, see T. Bale, The Conservative Party: From Thatcher to Cameron, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2010; P. Dorey, M. Garnett and A. Denham, From Crisis to Coalition: The Conservative Party, 1997–2010, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. T. Heppell and M. Hill, ‘Transcending Thatcherism? Ideology and the Conservative party leadership mandate of David Cameron’, The Political Quarterly, vol. 80, no. 3, 2009, p. 399. S. Evans, ‘Consigning its past to history? David Cameron and the Conservative party’, Parliamentary Affairs, vol. 61, no. 2, 2008, p. 301. See, for example, ‘Victory!’, Spectator, 15 May 2010; R. Winnett, ‘Fear of backlash from the right’, Daily Telegraph, 12 May 2010. Wilson, 5 Days to Power, p. 110. B. Jones, ‘Climbing the greasy pole: promotion in British politics’, The Political Quarterly, vol. 81, no. 4, 2010, p. 620.

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