The Conservative and Labour parties are both coalitions, and both have spent the last decade arguing with themselves - but not in the same way. The Conservatives produced five Prime Ministers in eight years; Labour purged its hard left and then watched the cracks reopen. This walk-through maps each party's factions, tells each division story on its own terms, compares the two, and ends with a worked 30-mark essay. Three short quizzes break the tour up.
Both major parties are broad coalitions held together by First Past the Post rather than by agreement. The spec covers the Conservative Party, the Labour Party and the development of a multi-party system - and the divisions question is one of the most regularly tested Q2 stems on Political Parties. The 2024 examiner report flags the most common error directly: candidates lump the two parties together as if their divisions are the same kind of thing. They are not. Conservative divisions are ideological and strategic - Brexit, immigration, the size of the state - and they produce policy gridlock and leadership turnover. Labour divisions are factional and personality-based - hard left against soft left against the Blairite right - and they produce visible argument but rarely gridlock once a leader is in control. Take each party on its own terms, then compare. That comparison is where the marks are.
Scroll - each phase lights in the timeline beside you.
Tory factionalism is old - the party split over the Corn Laws in 1846, over Suez in 1956, over monetarism in 1981 (the 'wets' against the 'dries') and over Maastricht in 1993. But the Brexit split was the deepest of these, and the period since 2016 produced the headline statistic: five Prime Ministers in eight years. The previous five-PM stretch, Wilson to Major, took 22 years. The main factions to know: the One Nation tradition (paternalist, pragmatic), the Thatcherite mainstream (free markets, strong state on morals), the European Research Group (the institutional home of Tory Euroscepticism, formed 1993), and the populist-right groupings (the Common Sense Group, the New Conservatives, the Northern Research Group of 2019 Red Wall MPs).
Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak - and now Badenoch in opposition. Each leadership tells a different division story, and three of the five PMs were removed by their own party, not by the voters.
Cameron's modernisation programme sat awkwardly with the Tory right, and the Coalition compromises sharpened the resentment. Eurosceptic pressure produced the 2013 Bloomberg speech and then the 2016 referendum itself - at which six Cabinet ministers, including Gove and Duncan Smith, campaigned against their own Prime Minister, with Boris Johnson as the public face of Leave. The party split publicly and Cameron resigned the morning after the result.
May lost her majority in the 2017 snap election and then lost control of her party. The ERG forced the resignations of David Davis and Boris Johnson from Cabinet over the Chequers plan in July 2018, and her withdrawal agreement was defeated three times in early 2019 - by 230 votes (the largest government defeat in modern history), then 149, then 58. She resigned in May 2019 having lost the confidence of every faction except the One Nation rump.
Johnson won an 80-seat majority on 'Get Brexit Done' - but to get there he expelled 21 MPs in September 2019, including Ken Clarke, Nicholas Soames, Philip Hammond and David Gauke. Partygate then destroyed his authority: 59 MPs voted no confidence in June 2022, and in July Javid and Sunak resigned within minutes of each other, over 50 ministers followed within 48 hours, and Johnson resigned.
Truss beat Sunak in the membership vote 81,326 to 60,399 - the members choosing the loser of the parliamentary rounds, a structural division between MPs and members. The mini-budget of 23 September 2022 triggered an immediate financial crisis; Kwarteng was sacked on 14 October and Truss resigned on 20 October. 49 days - the shortest premiership in British history, and the clearest case of an internal economic-liberal faction governing against the judgement of its own parliamentary party.
Under Sunak, Reform UK grew from 3% to 14% in polling, and the 2024 election reduced the Conservatives to 121 seats - 251 lost, twelve Cabinet ministers out, the worst result in the party's history. Under Badenoch the division turned into a defection wave: five sitting MPs have gone to Reform since 2024, including Jenrick (the leadership runner-up), Kruger, Rosindell and Braverman. The structural question Badenoch inherited: how far right can the party go to win Reform voters back without losing One Nation voters to the Lib Dems? The 2026 local elections squeezed the party from both sides at once.
Scroll - each phase lights in the timeline beside you.
Labour's factionalism is older and more institutionalised than the Conservatives' - the party structure (parliamentary party, union link, members, annual conference) builds internal politics into the rules. The deepest postwar split was the 1981 defection of the Gang of Four to form the SDP, alongside the Bennite ascendancy and the 1983 'longest suicide note in history' manifesto. The factions to know today: the Corbynite hard left (Socialist Campaign Group, Momentum), the soft left (the largest tendency in Parliament), the Blairite right, and Blue Labour (economically left, socially conservative).
The Labour pattern: visible leadership-level division under Corbyn, then disciplined parliamentary management under Starmer with the hard left pushed out - and then, from 2025, the discipline fraying again as Starmer's popularity fell.
Corbyn won the leadership in 2015 with 59.5% and again in 2016 with 61.8% - after 172 of his own MPs voted no confidence in him (advisory, 172 to 40). He controlled the membership but never the parliamentary party. The antisemitism crisis put Labour under formal EHRC investigation; in February 2019 seven MPs defected to form the Independent Group, citing antisemitism and Brexit positioning; and the December 2019 election cost Labour 59 seats as the Red Wall collapsed.
The EHRC report of 29 October 2020 found Labour had committed unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination. Corbyn's response - that the problem had been 'dramatically overstated for political reasons' - led to his suspension the same day, and the whip was never restored. Starmer then centralised: loyalist control of the NEC, selection panels filtering out Corbyn-aligned candidates, and in July 2024 - in office - seven MPs lost the whip for rebelling on the two-child benefit cap.
Labour won 411 seats on a 33.8% vote share - the lowest winning share for a Labour government since 1922. The breadth-without-depth problem showed at once: five Independent MPs were elected on a Gaza protest vote, including Corbyn holding Islington North, and the Sue Gray resignation as Chief of Staff in October 2024 signalled briefing wars inside the new government.
As Starmer's ratings fell, the discipline frayed. Andy Burnham emerged as the de facto rival - one Ipsos poll had him leading Starmer as preferred PM by 26 points - and in January 2026 the NEC blocked his by-election candidacy by 8 votes to 1, with Starmer voting against. The Karl Turner whip suspension in March 2026, over a jury-trials rebellion by a sixteen-year MP who had broken the whip once in his career, was widely read as a brittle response to dissent. The lesson for essays: a 174-seat majority does not insulate a leader who is unpopular in the country and managing a divided party.
Labour divisions are managed, not resolved. The hard left was pushed out rather than reconciled, and the moment the leadership weakened in the polls, the internal argument returned - this time between Starmer-allied modernisers and MPs who privately want Burnham back at Westminster.
The comparison is the answer. Three axes to compare on.
Depth of division. On almost every measure the Conservative period was deeper: five PMs in eight years against Labour's three leaders in nine; 21 whip removals in one day against seven; a 230-vote government defeat against an advisory no-confidence vote; over 50 ministerial resignations in 48 hours against nothing comparable. Labour's strongest entry on the depth ledger is the 2019 Independent Group defection - seven MPs actually leaving to form a new party, which no Conservative faction did.
Kind of division. Conservative divisions are ideological and strategic - Brexit, immigration, the size of the state, the Reform UK threat - and they produce policy gridlock and leadership turnover. Labour divisions are factional and personality-based - hard left, soft left, right - and they produce visible argument but rarely gridlock once a leader is in place. Same word, different things: that distinction is what the 2024 examiner report wants.
The discipline of FPTP. First Past the Post punishes visible splits, so both parties have strong electoral reasons to close ranks - and both deepest divisions correlate with their worst defeats (Labour 2019, Conservatives 2024). The structural fact is that there are still two major parties: in another electoral system Labour might have split into three and the Conservatives into two or three. FPTP holds them together against the pull of factionalism. Factionalism is not fragmentation - neither party actually broke apart, despite ample provocation in both directions.
How the divisions question is set, and one full worked answer.
Political Parties questions land in Paper 1 Section A as 30-mark essays (AO1/AO2/AO3 split 10/10/10). The divisions territory has produced several stems, and your line of argument should match the stem: 'more divided than united' wants the depth evidence; stems with 'despite' or 'in practice' want the FPTP-discipline line; open comparisons want 'divided in different ways'.
Question stems on this territory.
Approach: The board's own stem. Internal divisions are your evidence on both sides: the parties converge where their leaderships suppress their wings (Starmer's fiscal restraint, Sunak's managed right), and diverge where a wing wins (Truss's mini-budget, Corbyn's 2019 platform). Theme by policy area, not party by party - and judge whether the convergence is conviction or electoral discipline.
Approach: Para 1 - depth: the Conservative ledger (5 PMs, 21 expulsions, 230-vote defeat, 49 days) against the unity counter (a single national leadership survived it all). Para 2 - kind: ideological-strategic against factional-personality; the comparison itself is the analysis. Para 3 - consequence: division-defeat correlation (2019, 2024) against the FPTP-discipline case. Judgement: divided, but in different ways - and held together by the electoral system.
Approach: 'Dominates' is the word to weigh. Factions exist and matter (ERG forcing resignations; Momentum and the Socialist Campaign Group; the Reform defections) - but leaderships have repeatedly beaten them (Starmer's selections, Johnson's expulsions). Land on: factionalism shapes both parties but dominates neither, because FPTP hands the leadership the whip hand at every election.
Judgement. The two major parties are more divided than united. The Conservatives' divisions are deeper, ideological and constitutionally consequential; Labour's are factional, personality-based and managed by leadership control - and both sets of divisions correlate directly with each party's worst modern defeat. The unity that remains is the discipline of First Past the Post: real enough to hold two broad parties together, but a constraint on fragmentation, not evidence of agreement.
Five PMs in eight years. Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak (2016-2024). The previous five-PM stretch took 22 years. The headline division statistic.
European Research Group (ERG). Formed 1993; the institutional home of Tory Euroscepticism. Forced Cabinet resignations over Chequers in 2018 and defeated May's deal three times.
The 21 expulsions (September 2019). Johnson removed the whip from 21 MPs including Ken Clarke, Nicholas Soames, Philip Hammond and David Gauke for opposing his Brexit strategy.
230 votes (January 2019). The margin of May's first withdrawal-agreement defeat - the largest government defeat in modern British history. The later defeats: 149 and 58.
49 days. The Truss premiership (September to October 2022), ended by the mini-budget crisis. Shortest in British history.
The Reform defection wave. Five sitting Conservative MPs to Reform UK since 2024: Anderson, Kruger, Jenrick, Rosindell, Braverman - plus former ministers including Zahawi and Dorries.
Gang of Four (1981). Jenkins, Owen, Williams and Rodgers leave Labour to form the SDP - the deepest Labour split in postwar history and the precedent every modern defection is measured against.
The Independent Group (February 2019). Seven Labour MPs defect, citing antisemitism and Brexit positioning - Berger, Umunna and Gapes among them.
172 to 40 (June 2016). The advisory no-confidence vote of Labour MPs against Corbyn. He refused to resign and won the membership vote with 61.8%.
EHRC report (29 October 2020). Found Labour had committed unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination. Corbyn's 'dramatically overstated' response led to his suspension the same day.
The two-child cap rebellion (July 2024). Seven Labour MPs lose the whip - McDonnell, Long-Bailey and Sultana among them - in the new government's first weeks.
The Burnham block (January 2026). The NEC blocks Andy Burnham's by-election candidacy 8 votes to 1, Starmer voting against - the clearest marker of the leadership threat.
411 seats on 33.8%. Labour's 2024 result: a 174-seat majority on the lowest winning vote share for a Labour government since 1922. Broad but shallow.
121 seats. The Conservatives' 2024 result - 251 seats lost, twelve Cabinet ministers out. The worst result in the party's history.
The discipline of FPTP. First Past the Post punishes visible splits, so both parties close ranks at elections - unity imposed by the system, not produced by agreement.