Heseltine’s Lib Dem switch is just the start – the moderate wing of the Tory party is about to unravel

The zealots have won already. If there is no place in the Conservative Party for Michael Heseltine, there can be none for Ken Clarke, Amber Rudd or Rory Stewart

Matthew Norman
Tuesday 21 May 2019 19:49 BST
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He may, like Boris, have had the ego, vanity and hunger for power – but unlike Johnson, he has always had the principles to go with it
He may, like Boris, have had the ego, vanity and hunger for power – but unlike Johnson, he has always had the principles to go with it

It won’t do them much harm in Liverpool, where they were as popular as a Man City treble-winning souvenir copy of The Sun. But elsewhere, the Conservatives may come to regret expelling Michael Heseltine more than he has reason to regret it himself.

In narrow political terms, removing the whip from an 86-year-old peer may deserve a two-line footnote in future histories of the Tory civil war.

But in symbolic terms, it has the flavour of a turning point. The guy who infuriated Mrs Thatcher by devoting his ministry to regenerating Liverpool in the mid-1980s, when the city was a synonym for brutal urban deprivation, has been excommunicated from what used to know itself as a broad church.

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