‘Whig and Tory Scratch and Bite’, by Aaron Hill
Whig and Tory scratch and bite,
Just as hungry dogs we see:
Toss a bone ‘twixt two, they fight,
Throw a couple, they agree.
Tribal party politics are three-hundred years old in Britain. So is the fashion for satire which aspires to rise above it all. The British people have been dealing with political parties since the 1670s. It was then that a faction led by the Earl of Shaftesbury tried to have Parliament pass a law to prevent Charles II’s brother James from succeeding to the throne. Charles had no legitimate children so James was next in line. He was also a Catholic and Shaftesbury’s supporters argued that, because of this, he would be likely to create an authoritarian form of monarchy like those in France and Spain. Their opponents named them Whigs after a Scottish group of radical Protestant insurgents who had marched on Edinburgh in 1648.
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