Conservative Success: Stanley Baldwin and 'Safety First'

• Conservative success between the wars was in part due to a successful rebranding of the party, which began through Disraeli - he promoted the Conservatives as a 'one-nation tory', party of empire, national defence and patriotism
• Stanley Baldwin was able to build upon this rebranding after he became prime minister in 1923, despite being from wealth, he presented himself as an ordinary man of the people
• Baldwin pioneered the use of the radio to talk directly to people and had a reputation for calling a spade a spade
• Baldwin ran his factories fairly and was keen to promote harmony between workers and employers in the British economy
• Baldwin promoted class-based politics
• Baldwin was a key speaker against Lloyd George at the 1922 Carlton Club where the Conservatives abandoned the coalition
• Baldwin won over Lloyd George's remaining supporters by adopting protectionism to make foreign goods more expensive than domestic ones
• Baldwin was accused of being dull (safety-first slogan), but working-class people respected his financial capability
• Baldwin had an aim to attract the remaining wealthy, middle-class Liberals to the Conservatives as the best defence Labour socialism succeeded brilliantly
• Conservatives also benefitted electorally in the interwar period
• Until the 1948 ROPA, the 'plural vote' allowed Oxford and Cambridge Unis and the City of London to return 14 MPs (almost all Tory) between them, as graduates who resided for part of the time in a university town were able to vote in more than one constituency
• In 1921, the Irish Free State failed independence from the UK, while the Liberals lost the support of around 80 of these MPs, the Tories continued to receive the support of Northern Irish MPs
• The FPTP system, together with the uneven distribution of votes in different constituencies benefitted the Conservatives - in 1918, it took an avg 16000 votes to return each Conservative MP 30000 ish for a Labour MP and 36000 ish for a Liberal MP