Conservative Party (UK)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Conservative and Unionist Party has governed Britain for longer stretches of the 20th century than any other political force, yet the word "Conservative" was not even applied to it until 1830. J. Wilson Croker suggested the name in an article published in the Quarterly Review that year, and within a few years it had officially replaced the older label. Before that, the party's ancestors called themselves Pittites, Independent Whigs, or simply Friends of Mr Pitt. And before them? The word Tory entered English politics as a slur during the Exclusion Bill crisis of 1678-1681, derived from a Middle Irish word meaning outlaw or robber. A party born from insults and factions, the Conservatives grew into a machine that produced 20 prime ministers and came to define what it means to hold power in the United Kingdom. How did that transformation happen? And what explains the party's dizzying journey from the heights of the British Empire through the economic upheavals of the Thatcher era all the way to its worst general election result in modern history in 2024?

• 2. Founding and Victorian Rivalries

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  Robert Peel is acknowledged as the true founder of the Conservative Party, and his vehicle for launching it was the Tamworth Manifesto, a document that announced both the party's name and its governing philosophy. By 1845 "Conservative Party" had fully displaced "Tory" in common usage. Under Benjamin Disraeli, the party reached its first great heights, playing a preeminent role in politics during the height of the British Empire. The Victorian-era party faced an immediate structural challenge: the widening of the electoral franchise. The Reform Act 1867, which Disraeli's party carried through Parliament, extended voting rights even as many in the party opposed doing so. The party later allowed passage of the Representation of the People Act 1884, championed by the Liberal William Ewart Gladstone, in another reluctant concession to democratic pressure. The relationship with Ireland proved equally complicated. In 1886 the Conservatives formed an alliance with the new Liberal Unionist Party, and together, under Robert Gascoyne-Cecil and Arthur Balfour, they dominated government for all but three of the next twenty years. That partnership would eventually become a formal merger: in 1912 the Liberal Unionist Party merged fully into what became the Conservative and Unionist Party. Young Winston Churchill crossed into the party's path from the other direction, denouncing protectionism and eventually crossing the floor to join the Liberals before rejoining the Conservatives in 1925.

• 3. War, Coalition, and the Labour Threat

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  Conservative leaders were strongly in favour of aiding France and stopping Germany even before the First World War began, while most Liberals initially resisted. When the Shell Crisis damaged Liberal credibility, an all-party coalition government formed in May 1915. By late 1916 the Liberal David Lloyd George had become prime minister, but the Conservatives dominated the coalition government and secured a landslide in the 1918 election. The Liberal Party never recovered its pre-war standing. Historian Nigel Keohane finds that the war, despite bitterly dividing the Conservatives before 1914, actually pulled the party together. It gave them a new emphasis on patriotism and forced them to work out coherent positions on Irish Home Rule, socialism, and electoral reform. The Labour Party's growing strength after 1920 sharpened Conservative anti-socialist positioning. By 1922 Bonar Law and Stanley Baldwin had broken apart the coalition, and the Conservatives began a period of dominating government between bouts of Labour minority rule. The concept of the "property-owning democracy" entered Conservative thinking in 1923, coined by Noel Skelton; it would resurface decades later as a cornerstone of Thatcherism.

• 4. Post-War Consensus and Its Contradictions

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  Churchill's party lost the 1945 general election in a landslide to Labour, but in opposition the Conservatives chose adaptation over confrontation. In 1947 the party published the Industrial Charter, formally accepting the post-war mixed economy and labour rights. Frederick Marquis, 1st Earl of Woolton, rebuilt local party organisations with an emphasis on membership and money. The strategy paid off with a narrow victory at the 1951 general election, achieved despite losing the popular vote. The Conservatives accepted most of Labour's welfare state, ending rationing in 1954 and reaching what became known as the "post-war consensus" satirised as Butskellism. During thirteen years of Conservative government, pensions rose by 49% in real terms, sickness and unemployment benefits by 76% in real terms, and supplementary benefits by 46% in real terms; family allowances, however, fell by 15% in real terms. The party re-won elections in 1955 and 1959 with larger majorities. Then came a constitutional rupture: controversy over the opaque, Magic Circle-style selections of Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas-Home as leaders prompted the creation of a formal election process. The first leadership election under the new rules took place in 1965 and was won by Edward Heath.

• 5. Thatcher and the Break with Consensus

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  Margaret Thatcher defeated Heath at the 1975 leadership election, and her victory at the 1979 general election inaugurated a political project that permanently altered British life. Inflation had stood at 9% or under in the year before the 1979 election, then surged above 20% in Thatcher's first two years in office as her government pursued a monetarist battle against inflation; by early 1983 it had fallen back to 5.8%. The social cost was severe: unemployment doubled between 1979 and 1982. Her ideological foundation drew on thinkers including Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, and her programme included the privatisation of publicly owned industries and a reduction in trade union power. One of her most consequential initiatives was the Right to Buy policy, which allowed council house tenants to purchase their homes at favourable rates. The idea had roots in the 1940s but had been too radical for earlier Conservatives; by the 1970s, Thatcher calculated that working-class homeowners would be likely to vote Conservative. Victory in the Falklands War in June 1982, together with a recovering economy, propelled the Conservatives to a landslide majority in 1983 despite a split opposition vote, then to a third successive win in June 1987. Her downfall came from within. The Community Charge, known by opponents as the poll tax, introduced in 1989, inflamed public opinion. Michael Heseltine launched a leadership challenge, and Thatcher resigned on the 28th of November 1990.

• 6. From Major to Blair's Shadow

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  John Major won the party leadership on the 27th of November 1990, and his premiership opened with an immediate polling boost. The 1992 general election, held on the 9th of April, produced a fourth successive Conservative victory, contrary to almost every opinion poll prediction; the party became the first in British history to attract 14 million votes in a general election. Black Wednesday struck on the 16th of September 1992, when the government suspended Britain's membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism after the pound fell below its minimum permitted level. The episode destroyed the Conservatives' reputation for economic competence. Approximately one million householders subsequently faced home repossession during a recession that pushed unemployment close to 3 million people. The European question also tore at the party internally: Eurosceptic figures like John Redwood challenged Major from the right, while the pro-European wing led by Chancellor Kenneth Clarke pushed in the opposite direction. A leadership challenge by Redwood in 1995 failed, but Redwood still received 89 votes, visibly weakening Major's authority. Scandals accumulating under the label of sleaze compounded the damage. The 1997 general election delivered the Conservatives' worst defeat since 1906, and the 1997 result left the party with no Scottish and no Welsh seats at all.

• 7. Brexit, Partygate, and the 2024 Collapse

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  David Cameron won the 2005 leadership election and led the party back into government in May 2010 in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, the first postwar coalition government. His coalition and later majority governments pursued austerity in response to the 2008 financial crisis. The Scottish Independence referendum of September 2014 produced a 55% No to 45% Yes result. Cameron then called a referendum on EU membership for June 2016, campaigned to remain, lost, and resigned on the 24th of June 2016. Theresa May's subsequent attempt to deliver Brexit consumed her entire premiership; her draft withdrawal agreement was rejected by Parliament three times before she resigned on the 24th of May 2019. Boris Johnson replaced her, pledging to leave the EU by the 31st of October "with no ifs, buts or maybes". The 2019 general election gave the Conservatives their largest majority since 1987, winning in formerly Labour strongholds. Johnson formally took the UK out of the European Union on the 31st of January 2020. Partygate, in which staff and senior government figures were photographed holding gatherings during lockdown, generated massive public backlash; the Metropolitan Police eventually fined Johnson in April 2022. After nearly 60 government resignations, Johnson announced his own exit on the 7th of July 2022. Liz Truss succeeded him; her mini-budget on the 23rd of September caused the pound to fall to a record low of 1.03 against the US dollar, and gilt yields rose to 4.3%. She resigned on the 20th of October after 44 days, the shortest premiership in British history. Rishi Sunak, the first British Asian prime minister, followed her. The 2024 general election produced the lowest seat total in Conservative history, falling well below the previous record low of 156 seats set at the 1906 general election. Kemi Badenoch became party leader on the 2nd of November 2024, taking charge of a party whose membership had fallen to 123,000 by July 2025.