In the marxist lexicon, the Tories are a ‘bourgeois party’. That is, they are a party that exists to represent the ruling class in political struggle, but they survive electorally through an unstable coalition between the core ruling class support, the professional middle class, the petit-bourgeoisie and a segment of workers. As Goran Therborn points out, Marx did not anticipate bourgeois parties having much stability or longevity as working classes obtained the vote and dominated parliamentary systems numerically. He anticipated a much more rapid process of social polarisation, and fewer off-setting factors, than has actually been in evidence. Oweing to the survival of petty bourgeois layers, the emergence of a ‘new middle class’ composed of managers, supervisors, etc., and continuing gradations in the working class, the bourgeois parties could as late as the Seventies still obtain the support of between 45% and 50% of the active population in many Western European countries. It’s higher in the US, inasmuch as turnout varies between 50 and 60%, and the electoral system is monopolised by bourgeois parties. And in Japan, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party could depend on about 60% of the vote.

The Tories have been the dominant bourgeois party in the UK for a century, replacing the Liberals who have spent most of the duration as a middle class protest party….