David Cameron's reshuffle return suits a cabal of vested interests

Anyone who watched the excellent film, the Death of Stalin, will know that a constant thread was political "factionalism". While Stalin was alive, his gang eshewed outward division.

For them, factionalism was a dangerous game. After all, Stalin was one of the biggest mass murderers of the twentieth century so not to be messed with. But as soon as he was dead, factionalism became de rigeur.

Thankfully, in this day and age, it is not actual lives but political careers at stake. Our current administration is descending into infighting and jockeying for position. Teams are being created and the game is becoming more important than reality. Factionalism has taken hold.

Perhaps all political parties come to this, as politics is a venal business. But it even happens in many walks of life, including business.

At least businesses tend to hang together, helped by a common goal of profit and keeping their eye on the ball. They can run out of steam not knowing how to pursue profit successfully as the world changes around them, or can be distracted where egos prevail. One can always spot a business heading for trouble when the top team become more interested in gongs or ESG than shareholder return.

Similarly, political parties should hang together in pursuit of the overriding goal of winning the next election, or they will certainly hang apart. Sometimes they lose the plot: principles, policies, egos and a lust for power all drive emnity.

It is not only the Conservative Party, but a common in our body politic.

As a young senior executive of the Cooperative Group tasked with corporate matters, I naturally had much to do with the Labour Party. At one party conference, we gathered to hear the as yet to be elected PM "bright eyes Blair”. I was positioned, standing inches behind Messrs Brown and "Two Jags" Prescott.

Blair duly bounced into the room, like a fluffy March hare and began to speak. So did the two factionalists in front of me, whispering sweet vitriol to each other about their new leader and then swiftly left with their entourages, having shown their faces.

It is not long ago that Mr Corbyn was flexing his muscle in the same Labour Party which almost saw a split.

So, is talk of a split in the Conservatives pie in the sky? Definitely not, not least because it has happened before and related to much the same issues.

In the early 1800s the Conservative “Whigs and Tories” went their separate ways and Peel, the then PM, never recovered. The issues? Free trade, abolition of the privileges of the monopolist land owning classes and populism in the form of the extension of the mandate. Populism was known in those days, of course, as democracy!

If a split can happen at a time when Parliament was dominated by an asset-owning class in the Lords and a franchise which amounted only to mature property owners, it can certainly happen now.

At a time when economic growth is flatlining, the infighting we are currently witnessing is a massive distraction from delivering for the people of Britain at a crucial time in an increasingly dangerous world.

If any political party, including the Conservatives, cannot deliver , then what are they for? A split may become the better option - as they have to decide whether to pull together or pull apart.

Ironically, given the most recent events, the PM appears to be the greatest proponent of factions, apparently favouring a particular cabal of vested interests. We even see that David Cameron is coming back.

The real tragedy of these salutary stories is that factionalism is a game of the elites, while regular folk carry on their lives creating businesses, working hard, producing wealth and having it stolen via tax.

There will be a reckoning for the establishment who care only for their own vested interests. Fortunately, in Britain, this is generally a peaceful reckoning.

Entrepreneurs, businesses and people up and down the land are crying out for a government that recognises that everything depends on wealth creation, on production, and that requires an enterprise environment and for government not to greedily steal our money and waste it.

So, I say to those in any party: are you for virtue or vice? Are you and your faction pursuing the greater good of growth and prosperity or are you for the narrow vested interests of your gang, of the few?

If it is the latter, you are in the wrong and you should fix it before it is too late.

John Longworth is an entrepreneur who is chairman of the Independent Business Network