The Tory war over Europe is finally over

Happy Christmas (War Is Over). John Lennon probably didn’t have the decades long Conservative dispute over Europe in mind when he wrote that, but the message seems very apt this year after almost the entire Tory parliamentary party trooped through the lobbies in support of its leader’s plan to take Britain out of the EU.

It was back in 1971 that Lennon released his blockbuster Christmas single. At the time, the Conservatives were largely united behind the idea of joining the European Economic Community. So few could have anticipated that an internecine political war lasting almost half a century was taking hold. In the key Commons division of that year, only 39 Tory MPs voted against joining the EEC; they were more than counterbalanced by 69 Labour MPs who sided with Edward Heath’s administration.

But take hold the Tory war certainly did. Many people remember the poll tax as the pretext for the bringing down of Margaret Thatcher.