Last true "Unionist" tory leader

[Mojocvh]

Having some difficulty who the last one actually was, nope can't think of one.

Any takers??

[Mojocvh]

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[ClaphamGT3]

John Major was, to a significant extent a Unionist. Before that, it was probably Alec Douglas-Home

[Steffan]

I would agree. Alec Douglas Home. Last of the old style high county Tories too.

[s2art]

I am struggling to think of any Tory leader who wasnt essentially a unionist.

[don4l]

Why on Earth would anyone ask such a question?

Protestants, Catholics, loyalists and nationalists are all happy that we now have peace.

If everybody keeps quite, then we will have a true peace within a generation.

What motivates you to ask this question?


Don
--

[12gauge]

Well they arent in It to get votes.

If it was just England voting we'd have just Tory govt's since god knows when.

They all seem pretty unionist to me.

[davepoth]

don4l said:

Why on Earth would anyone ask such a question?

Protestants, Catholics, loyalists and nationalists are all happy that we now have peace.

If everybody keeps quite, then we will have a true peace within a generation.

What motivates you to ask this question?

Don
--

That's just one meaning of the word, and a fairly pejorative one at that. Unionism in the purest form is being in favour of the Union, i.e. against the UK splitting up.

[ninja-lewis]

davepoth said:

That's just one meaning of the word, and a fairly pejorative one at that. Unionism in the purest form is being in favour of the Union, i.e. against the UK splitting up.

The reference to Unionist in the full name of "Conservative and Unionist Party" refers specifically to the Union with Ireland (which was separate from the 1707 Union between England and Scotland) following the merger with the Liberal Unionist Party in 1912 (an off-shoot of the Liberal Party that opposed Irish Home Rule).

Likewise the Scottish Tories were formed by the merger of the Conservative Party and the Scottish Unionist Party in 1965 - with the latter (with a very protestant membership) also referring to the union with Ireland.

It's only relatively recently that unionist has come to have a serious meaning in Scotland. Even the Thatcher government made a point of treating Scotland as a serious part of the UK - of course back then Scotland still returned a decent number of Tory MPs. It's only in the past couple of years has the idea of Scottish independence benefiting the English Tories even begun to be whispered on the fringes of the party. Probably because even most die-hard English Tory had to accept that Labour won majorities of English seats in 1997, 2001 and 2005 (but note the popular vote in 2005) so whether Scotland was independent or not wouldn't have changed the outcome (except in a small number of votes where sufficient English Labour rebels threatened the Government's majority).

[davepoth]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unionist_Party_%28Sco...

Wikipedia paints a sightly more nuanced picture - the Liberal Unionists joined with the Conervatives on the specific issue of Irish Home Rule, but were more generally UK Unionist before that.

[thinfourth2]

12gauge said:

Well they arent in It to get votes.

If it was just England voting we'd have just Tory govt's since god knows when.

Since May 2010 to be exact