Conservative Party (UK)

The Conservative Party, officially the Conservative and Unionist Party and colloquially known as the Tories, is one of the two main political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Labour Party. It is the current governing party, having won the 2019 general election, and has been the primary governing party in the United Kingdom since 2010. The party sits on the right-wing to centre-right of the political spectrum. It encompasses various ideological factions including one-nation conservatives, Thatcherites, and traditionalist conservatives. The party holds the annual Conservative Party Conference, at which senior Conservative figures promote party policy.

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. Since the 1920s, the Labour Party emerged to be the Conservatives' main rival and the Conservative–Labour political rivalry has shaped modern British politics for the last century.

The party has generally adopted liberal economic policies favouring free markets, including deregulation, privatisation, and marketisation, since the 1980s, although historically it advocated for protectionism. The party is British unionist, opposing a united Ireland as well as 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 an increasingly lesser extent, pro-European factions within it. Historically, the party once took a socially conservative approach. Its social policy has since become more liberal. 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 Conservative 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. However, since the EU referendum in 2016, the Conservatives have also targeted working class voters from traditional Labour strongholds. The Conservatives' domination of British politics throughout the 20th century, having governed for 65 nonconsecutive years, and its re-emergence in the 2010s has made it one of the most successful political parties in the Western world.