Not sure why people think the Conservative party is due to fracture over brexit. Barring a few MPs who are pretty resigned to being deselected, there isn't really a split in the Tory party on brexit beyond 'how batshit do we go?'. The party as a whole is behind brexit in some form or other. Labour has a much larger fundamental split in its base vote than the tories do.
Agreed. The Tory "split" is important now because the Tories are a minority government. So when the DUP, ERG or Soubry/Grieve factions cause trouble it's a big deal. Mogg and Soubry would just be ignored if May had a 50-MP majority.
In terms of the actual tory party and voter base, it's not a big deal. They could lose a few ERG MPs and hardline voters to UKIP if we get a Norway Brexit and they could lose Soubry/Grieve if they go with no deal.
The Tories are also vulnerable, but not when the alternative is an old socialist like Corbyn or McDonnell. My only worry is that even as Brexit destroys the economy, people will just think, "Well, it would be even worse with Corbyn".
I'm thinking of how Major wan't destroyed by Black Wednesday. He limped on for 5 years of disaster and it took a charistmatic centrist reformer like Blair to convince people that Labour could be trusted with the economy. Even then, Blair had to promise not to change Clarke's government spending budget - which basically the opposite of Corbyn's policy to "End austerity, nationalise stuff, create a huge national infrastructure fund".
Tory sleaze was probably a bigger issue than the economic disaster and the infighting with Eurosceptic "bastards".
I hope things have changed, but who knows. Maybe Tory sleaze will do more damage than Brexit, though I suspect attitudes have moved away from caring about that sort of thing.
