Conservative Party (UK)

The Conservative and Unionist Party, commonly the Conservative Party and colloquially the Tories, is one of the two main political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Labour Party. It sits on the centre-right to right-wing of the left–right political spectrum. Following its defeat by Labour at the 2024 general election it is currently the second-largest party by the number of votes cast and number of seats in the House of Commons; as such it has the formal parliamentary role of His Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition. It encompasses various ideological factions including one-nation conservatives, Thatcherites and traditionalist conservatives. There have been 20 Conservative prime ministers.

The Conservative Party was founded in 1834 from the Tory Party and was one of two dominant political parties in the 19th century, along with the Liberal Party. Under Benjamin Disraeli it played a preeminent role in politics at the height of the British Empire. In 1912 the Liberal Unionist Party merged with the party to form the Conservative and Unionist Party. Its rivalry with the Labour Party has shaped modern British politics for the last century. David Cameron sought to modernise the party after his election as leader in 2005, and the party governed from 2010 to 2024 under five prime ministers, latterly Rishi Sunak.

The party has generally adopted liberal economic policies favouring free markets since the 1980s, although historically it advocated protectionism. The party is British unionist, opposing a united Ireland as well as English, Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh independence, and has been critical of devolution. Historically the party supported the continuance and maintenance of the British Empire. The party has taken various approaches towards the European Union (EU), with Eurosceptic and, to a decreasing extent, pro-European factions within it. Historically the party took a socially conservative approach. In defence policy it supports an independent nuclear weapons programme and commitment to NATO membership.

For much of modern British political history the United Kingdom exhibited a wide urban–rural political divide; the party's voting and financial support base has historically consisted primarily of homeowners, business-owners, farmers, real-estate-developers and middle-class voters, especially in rural and suburban areas of England. Since the EU membership referendum in 2016 the Conservatives have targeted working-class voters from traditional Labour strongholds. The party's domination of British politics throughout the 20th century made it one of the most electorally successful political parties in history.

Some writers trace the party's origins to the Tory Party, which it soon replaced. Other historians point to a faction, rooted in the 18th-century Whig Party, that coalesced around William Pitt the Younger in the 1780s. They were known as "Independent Whigs", "Friends of Mr Pitt" or "Pittites", and never used terms such as "Tory" or "Conservative". From about 1812 the name "Tory" was commonly used for a new party that, according to the historian Robert Blake, "are the ancestors of Conservatism". Blake adds that Pitt's successors after 1812 "were not in any sense standard-bearers of 'true Toryism'".

Tory was an insult that entered English politics during the Exclusion Bill crisis of 1678–1681, which derived from the Middle Irish word tóraidhe (modern Irish: tóraí) meaning outlaw or robber, which in turn derived from the Irish word tóir, meaning pursuit, since outlaws were "pursued men".

The term "Conservative" was suggested as a title for the party in an article by J. Wilson Croker published in the Quarterly Review in 1830. The name immediately caught on and was formally adopted under the aegis of Robert Peel around 1834. Peel is acknowledged as the founder of the Conservative Party, which he created with the announcement of the Tamworth Manifesto. The term "Conservative Party" rather than Tory was the dominant usage by 1845.

The widening of the electoral franchise in the 19th century forced the Conservative Party to popularise its approach under Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby, and Benjamin Disraeli, who carried through their own expansion of the franchise with the Reform Act 1867. The party was initially opposed to further expansion of the electorate but eventually allowed passage of William Ewart Gladstone's Representation of the People Act 1884. In 1886 the party formed an alliance with Spencer Cavendish's and Joseph Chamberlain's new Liberal Unionist Party and, under the statesmen Robert Gascoyne-Cecil and Arthur Balfour, held power for all but three of the following twenty years before suffering a heavy defeat in 1906, when it split over the issue of free trade.