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Ah, it's so cute when the kids don't know history!
Explain first why the American political parties are a donkey and an elephant, before casting nasturtiums at other countries.
Anyway, the term is "Tory" (not "Torrey") and comes out of 17th century British and Irish politics. One derivation is that it comes from an Irish word meaning "outlaw", was first used to refer to dispossessed Irish Catholics who became outlaws and bandits, and then over the course of time was associated with the Royalist/Conservative faction in English politics (because the dispossessed Irish Catholics were of course anti-Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans in the English Civil War and anti-William of Orange and pro-James II during the Glorious Revolution), so the term was used to refer to the Royalists/Cavaliers as well, as a disparagement of them:
The Tories and Whigs eventually became/had descendants that became the Conservative and Liberal political parties. The Liberals were very influential and powerful, but waned and were replaced by the Labour Party (which was working-class representation, trades unions, socialism, some communism, and everything in-between). They declined over time until in the 1980s they joined forces with a new party, the Social Democratic Party founded by moderate ex-Labour party members. Eventually the two merged to become the Social and Liberal Democrats, then the Liberal Democrats, and are now a shadow of what they have been.
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Actually the Democrats before the Civil War used the "grand old party" language as well, but obviously dropped it after the war. The Republicans started using it in the late 1870s, in midwestern states where Republican hegemony was under threat from populist movements. The term conjured up images of the Civil War - the main Union veteran's organization was the "Grand Army of the Republic," and "grand" was also sometimes substituted with "gallant" in the expression, an explicitly martial word - so the "GOP" language was part of the Republicans' tried-and-true tactic of "waving the bloody shirt."
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Why would you expect people to know the history of what are effectively pointless political parties within a dead empire? I also don’t know the specifics of any of your soccer teams, and if their drama kept getting covered in the news, I would similarly be pontificating above why anybody cares.
I get it if you live there, I’m just saying that to me, from the outside, the UK reads like a reality TV show. Unfortunately it seems like the US is on the same trajectory, btw
Dude, if you're not interested in pointless minutia of politics you're in the wrong forum.
That's a good point. I think it was just early and I wanted to rib the brits a little bit. Low quality post I'm going to delete anyway.
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