Conservative leadership: How will the Tories reunite after a bloody battle?

The Tory referendum victors are assassinating each other as they fight for party control

Gove’s announcement shook up the Tory leadership race (Getty )

In the past week, the Conservatives have managed to trump the most dramatic act in their recent history – their act of regicide against Margaret Thatcher. The Tory victors in the EU referendum have not only killed another prime minister; they are now assassinating each other as they fight for control of the party.

Despite David Cameron’s resignation, there were real hopes among Tory MPs that the bitter internal divisions seen in the referendum campaign could be avoided during the leadership election to choose his successor. After all, the Europe issue, which has been a fault line through the party since Thatcher’s fall in 1990, had finally been resolved. The word on many Tory lips this week was: “We are all Brexiteers now.”

Of course, there is still tension between Remainers and Leavers. There are still separate groups: some rivals are not speaking to each other or they avoid eye contact. But prospects of healing the referendum wounds were greater under a narrow win for Leave than the same result for Remain, as bitter Outers would have prolonged the civil war until they got another referendum.

However, the rosier scenario of uniting behind a Leave vote ended at 9.02am on Thursday when Michael Gove’s team sent out an email saying that he would run for the leadership because his fellow Vote Leave leader Boris Johnson was not up to the job. The front-runner’s campaign launch became an announcement that he was pulling out of the race, amid cries of betrayal and treachery aimed at Gove.

The maxim that “loyalty is the Tory party’s secret weapon” now looks like a throwback to the era when its leader “emerged”, like a puff of smoke from the Vatican, after secret talks among the party’s grandees.

The unexpected assassination of Boris Johnson will leave deep wounds. There will be sniping during the leadership contest between his erstwhile supporters, who have split different ways, and the Gove camp. A legacy of bitterness will last beyond the declaration of the new leader on 9 September.

For the Conservative Party to come back together after that, the new leader will need a “reconciliation reshuffle” to bring defeated candidates and their supporters into the Cabinet. That will be easier said than done. Theresa May, the front-runner after Johnson fell at the first fence, and Gove have a long history of Cabinet battles and very different views on issues such as how to tackle Islamic extremism.

So it is not certain that May and Gove would offer each other a Cabinet post if they won or that they would accept one from their rival if they lost. Then there is Boris Johnson. Would he serve to reunite the Tory tribe or keep his head down in the hope of reviving his leadership hopes after the 2020 general election? So the personality differences will not disappear overnight when the new PM takes over.

However, all is not lost for the Tories. Despite all the infighting, there is a surprising amount of common ground across the party on policy. On Europe, there will be tensions when the new government has to confront the biggest question: the trade-off between access to the single market and control over EU migration. But on domestic policy, a consensus is already forming around extending Cameron’s One Nation project. The referendum exposed two Britains, and the anger of those at the bottom who have been left behind by globalisation. So the Tories are all talking about action not words on social mobility and a new popular capitalism – including cracking down on abuses of market power, not least in financial services.

The other ray of hope for the Tories is that Labour is in disarray too. Indeed, Labour’s schism is so great that it could split formally between Jeremy Corbyn’s socialist, trade union-backed party and a breakaway social democratic one that includes most Labour MPs.

Whatever their current turmoil, the Tories will not split, and we should not underestimate their ability to mask the tensions inside the party in order to hang on to power.