UK_PARTIES

Political parties in the UK

Party’s name + its colour

The Conservative and Unionist Party (the Tories – blue)

The Labour Party (red)

The Liberal Democrats (orange/yellow)

Former name and History

The Tories

1. The Conservative Party is the heir, and in some measure the continuation, of the old Tory Party, members of which began forming “conservative associations” after Britain’s Reform Bill of 1832 extended electoral rights to the middle class.

2. The name Conservative was first used as a description of the party by John Wilson Croker writing in the Quarterly Review in 1830.

3. The first Conservative government was formed by Sir Robert Peel, whose program, set out in the Tamworth Manifesto (1834), stressed the timely reform of abuses, the necessity of law and order, an orderly system of taxation, and the importance of both landed interests and trade and industry.

5. The party was reorganized by Benjamin Disraeli, prime minister for a few months in 1868 and from 1874 to 1880.

6. The Conservative Party was further strengthened in 1886 when it allied with the Liberal Unionists, a faction of the Liberal Party that opposed the policy of Home Rule in Ireland put forward by the Liberal leader William Ewart Gladstone. Thus reinforced, the Conservatives held office for all but 3 of the next 20 years, first under the leadership of Lord Salisbury and then under Arthur Balfour. In the election of 1918, most of the candidates elected to support the coalition were Conservatives.

7. In 1922 Conservative backbenchers forced the party’s withdrawal from the coalition and thereby precipitated the resignation of party leader Austen Chamberlain. The rebellion owed much to the revulsion felt by many backbenchers toward the Liberal leader and prime minister, David Lloyd George, and to their unease over some of the more interventionist reforms introduced by Liberal ministers.

8. A surprise election called in December 1923 by Conservative prime minister Stanley Baldwin proved to be a miscalculation that briefly reunited the ailing Liberal Party and opened the way to a minority Labour Party government, though the Conservatives remained the largest single party and were able to regain power the following year.

9. Apart from another brief Labour administration in 1929–31, the Conservatives dominated national office until 1945. Baldwin emerged as a popular figure and the architect of what he called the “new Conservatism,” an attempt to appeal to the middle class through a modest movement away from the laissez-faire economic policies that the party had advocated since 1918.

10. Baldwin’s successor as party leader and prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, was forced from office in May 1940 by his own backbenchers because of his poor leadership in the early months of World War II.

Chamberlain was replaced by another Conservative, Winston Churchill, who formed a coalition government with the Labour Party. Although Churchill led the country to victory in the war, he failed to lead his own party to success in the first postwar election in 1945.

11. While in opposition, the party reformed its policies and organization. It created a new youth movement (the Young Conservatives) and an education wing (the Conservative Political Centre), revived the party’s research department, and undertook a drive to increase party membership.

12. The party returned to power in 1951 and maintained office until 1964. Under the leadership of Churchill, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, and Alec Douglas-Home. Moreover, the party did not seek to reverse the welfare measures nor most of the public ownership of industry that had been introduced by Labour in 1945–51.

13. In the early 1960s, however, an economic downturn and a series of scandals—one of which involved an adulterous affair between the secretary of war and an alleged Soviet spy—undermined the party’s support.

14. From 1964 to 1979 the Conservatives held power alternately with the Labour Party. Under the prime ministership of Edward Heath (1970–74), the party pursued policies designed to deregulate finance and industry. Economic problems led to confrontations with the trade unions, especially the National Union of Miners, and to internal party dissension. Heath called an election in 1974 and the party lost, allowing Labour to form a minority government.

15. After losing a second national election to Labour in 1974, Heath was succeeded as party leader by Margaret Thatcher, who during her four years as leader of the opposition (1975–79) frequently stated her determination to pursue deregulation and supply-side economic reforms.

16. As prime minister after the Conservatives’ victory over Labour in 1979, Thatcher attempted to “roll back the state” in the economic sphere, weaken the power of the trade unions, and reduce welfare programs.

Her eventual resignation as party leader (and therefore as prime minister) in 1990 reflected the combined impact of a number of factors, including public protests over a proposal to finance local government through a flat-rate “poll tax,” a series of bitter conflicts with some of her senior ministers, her strident and authoritarian style, and a growing sense among backbenchers that she might prove unable to withstand the electoral challenge of a newly united and considerably reformed Labour Party.

15. Thatcher’s successor, John Major, had held senior ministerial office for only a brief period prior to his selection as prime minister. His less charismatic political style did not prevent him from winning the general election of 1992, but he had to contend with a prolonged economic recession, internal party conflict over the question of European integration, and dismally low opinion-poll ratings. The party’s economic policies were questioned after Britain was forced to leave the European exchange-rate mechanism and devalue the pound in 1992.

Further hampered by a series of personal scandals involving prominent officials of Major’s government and facing a rejuvenated Labour Party under Tony Blair, the Conservatives suffered a crushing defeat in the general election of 1997, losing more than half their seats in the House of Commons.

Soon after the 1997 elections, Major resigned as party leader. With some potential leaders suddenly ineligible because they had lost their parliamentary seats, William Hague, former secretary of state for Wales, was elected party leader.

Like Disraeli more than a century earlier, the 36-year-old Hague—the youngest Conservative leader in 200 years—set out to reform the party’s organization.

Despite those efforts, Hague’s tenure was marked by continued discord, and in 2001 the party suffered a second consecutive landslide defeat to the Labour Party.

In 2005, under former home secretary Michael Howard, the Conservatives won some 30 additional seats in the House of Commons but remained well shy of a parliamentary majority.

Howard promptly resigned as party leader, and David Cameron presided over the gradual ascent of the Conservatives over the next five years. Having captured 307 seats in the general election of 2010, the Conservatives became the largest party in the House of Commons, but their failure to win an outright majority led to a hung Parliament.

Brown announced his resignation and Cameron was confirmed as prime minister of Britain’s first coalition government since World War II. In midterm local elections in 2012, however, neither the Conservatives nor their coalition partners fared well, with the Conservatives losing more than 400 seats in England, Scotland, and Wales.

That trend continued in the May 2014 elections for the European Parliament, in which the Conservatives lost seven seats to finish not only just behind Labour but in third place; the United Kingdom Independence Party finished in first place.

In July 2016 he was replaced by his home secretary, Theresa May, who became the second woman in British history to serve as prime minister.

Boris Johnson triumphed in the campaign to replace her as leader and became prime minister in July 2019.

by Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who was chosen in a vote by party members over the other final candidate, former chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak. After her proposed economic plan panicked the financial markets, Truss was forced to resign as party leader in October after only some six weeks in office. She was replaced by Sunak.

1. The Labour Party was born at the turn of the 20th century out of the frustration of working-class people at their inability to field parliamentary candidates through the Liberal Party, which at that time was the dominant social-reform party in Britain.

2. In 1900 the Trades Union Congress (the national federation of British trade unions) cooperated with the Independent Labour Party (founded in 1893) to establish a Labour Representation Committee, which took the name Labour Party in 1906.

The early Labour Party lacked a nationwide mass membership or organization; up to 1914 it made progress chiefly through an informal agreement with the Liberals not to run candidates against each other wherever possible.

3. After World War I the party made great strides, owing to a number of factors: first, the Liberal Party tore itself apart in a series of factional disputes; second, the 1918 Representation of the People Act extended the electoral franchise to all males aged 21 or older and to women aged 30 or older; and third, in 1918 Labour reconstituted itself as a formally socialist party with a democratic constitution and a national structure.

4. By 1922 Labour had supplanted the Liberal Party as the official opposition to the ruling Conservative Party.

5. In 1924, with Liberal support, James Ramsay MacDonald formed the first Labour government, though his minority administration was brought down less than one year later over questions of its sympathy for the new Soviet state and over alleged communist influence within the party.

6. Labour emerged from the 1929 election as the largest party in Parliament, though again it lacked an overall majority and had to form a coalition government with the Liberals.

8. In 1931 the party suffered one of the severest crises in its history when, faced with demands to cut public expenditure as a condition for receiving loans from foreign banks, MacDonald defied the objections of most Labour officials and formed a coalition government with Conservatives and Liberals.

9. The party remained out of power until 1940, when Labour ministers joined a wartime coalition government under Winston Churchill.

10. Labour achieved a spectacular recovery in the general election of 1945, when it won 393 seats and a comfortable 146-seat overall majority in the House of Commons.

11. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Clement Attlee, postwar economic recovery proved slow, however, and in the 1950 election Labour’s majority was reduced to five. In 1951 it lost power to the Conservatives.

12. Labour did not regain power until 1964 under Harold Wilson, who was prime minister until 1970.

13. The party held power again from 1974 to 1979, first under Wilson and then under James Callaghan. Labour’s narrow five-seat majority in the election of October 1974 diminished through the term, forcing the party to enter a “Lib-Lab” pact with the Liberal Party.

14. Ultimately, the moderate social-democratic approach exemplified by the Wilson-Callaghan years foundered on the twin rocks of Britain’s chronic economic problems and Labour’s worsening relations with its trade union allies.

15. Following the “Winter of Discontent” of 1978–79, when Britain suffered a series of major strikes by trade unions, the party was ousted from office by the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher. Subsequently, Labour underwent a period of considerable internal turmoil.

16. In the 1983 general election Callaghan’s successor, Michael Foot, presented a radical manifesto—dubbed the “longest suicide note in history” by Gerald Kaufman, a Labour member of Parliament and critic of the party’s reforms, and the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Community. The result was Labour’s worst national electoral defeat in more than 50 years.

17. Foot was replaced later that year by Neil Kinnock, a politician with leftist credentials who set about reestablishing Labour as a credible national electoral force.

Nevertheless, the process was continued by Kinnock’s successors as party leader, John Smith (1992–94) and Tony Blair (1994–2007). In a series of programmatic and organizational changes, rewrote the clause of its constitution that committed it to the public ownership of industry, and gave serious consideration to a new range of constitutional reforms, including devolution, voting reform, and reform of the House of Lords.

18. A landslide victory in the general election of 1997, returning Labour to power after 18 years of Conservative Party rule and securing Tony Blair’s appointment as prime minister.

19. Through its policy of All Women Short Lists (AWSLs), the Labour Party dramatically increased the number of women in Parliament;

20. In 2001 the party won a second consecutive landslide victory, capturing a 167-seat majority—the largest-ever second-term majority for any party in the House of Commons. Despite the party’s electoral success, Blair’s leadership style was often criticized by his Labour opponents as dictatorial.

Nevertheless, in 2005 Labour won its third consecutive general election (albeit with a significantly reduced majority) for the first time in the party’s history.

In 2007 Blair resigned the prime ministership in favour of his longtime chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. In the subsequent general election of 2010, Labour won 258 seats in the House of Commons and lost its majority. Brown stepped down as leader of the party and on May 11 tendered his resignation as prime minister.

In the run-up to the general election in May 2015, polling data suggested that Labour and the Conservatives were in a virtual dead heat, but the actual result was a Conservative rout. Labour posted its worst showing since 1987, with several members of Miliband’s shadow cabinet losing their seats outright. Miliband resigned as party leader the following day. In September 2015 Jeremy Corbyn, a left-leaning longtime backbencher, was the surprising victor of the leadership contest in which he captured nearly 60 percent of the more than 400,000 votes cast by rank-and-file supporters.

The May 2016 elections for local governments in England and the national assemblies for Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales were a mixed blessing for a Labour Party that had been stung in the lead-up to the voting by accusations that some of its members had made anti-Semitic remarks (at least two members, including former London mayor Ken Livingstone, were suspended from the party in connection with the accusations). Although the party generally held serve in overall terms in council elections in England (losing control of only a clutch of local governments), its fortunes in Scotland continued to ebb as its representation in the Scottish Parliament fell from 37 seats to 24, fewer seats even than the Conservatives. It remained the largest presence in the Welsh National Assembly but, in losing seats, was forced to form a minority government. By far the best news for the party was the triumph of Labour candidate Sadiq Khan in the London mayoral race. Khan became the first Muslim to be mayor of a Western capital.

In the run-up to the “Brexit” referendum on Britain’s continued membership in the European Union, Conservative leaders courted Labour support with the hope that the two parties could jointly make the case for continued association with the EU. Corbyn rebuffed these overtures, and on June 23, 2016, when 52 percent of British voters chose to leave the EU, the result triggered a leadership crisis within Labour. Sitting Labour MPs claimed that Corbyn had not done enough to support the “Stronger In” campaign, and shadow cabinet ministers resigned in droves. Meanwhile, Momentum, a grassroots organization of Corbyn supporters, rallied around the embattled party leader. On June 28 a motion of no confidence in Corbyn’s leadership was passed overwhelmingly by Labour MPs, but Corbyn stated that he had no intention to resign. Corbyn ultimately triumphed in the leadership battle that followed, soundly defeating former shadow secretary for work and pensions Owen Smith in the final vote in late September. About 62 percent of the vote, by party members, affiliated trade unionists, and party supporters who paid £25 to participate, went to Corbyn, compared with about 38 percent for Smith. Having survived that challenge, Corbyn led the party into the snap general election called by Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May for June 2017. Proving himself to be an inspiring campaigner, he steered the Labour Party to a dramatic gain of 30 seats, bringing its total representation in Westminster to 262 seats. Corbyn, however, was perceived by some observers to have led the party too far to the left ideologically, which may have played a role in Labour’s historically poor showing in the 2019 snap election. It won only 203 seats, a drop of 59 seats, its worst national election performance since 1935. In April 2020 Keir Starmer replaced Corbyn as party leader.

The Liberals became a recognizable political party in the mid-19th century. Dedicated to the extension of civil rights and social welfare, they were the principal opposition to the Conservative Party until the rise of Labour in the early 20th century. The Social Democratic Party (SDP) was formed in 1981 by former Labourites who were dissatisfied with that party’s domination by leftists and trade union officials. Almost from the very founding of the SDP, the Liberals and Social Democrats were allied with each other, presenting themselves as the alternative to a polarizing choice between radical Labourites and Conservatives. The Alliance, as it was sometimes called, polled 25 percent of the popular vote in the 1983 general election, raising speculation that it might break the “two-party mold” of British politics. But the party was hampered by internal tension and the anomalous effects of Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system, and it won only 23 of 633 seats in the House of Commons. The Alliance gained 23 percent of the vote in 1987 but still suffered from the electoral system and widespread criticism that it lacked a coherent identity and program and an effective leadership. On March 3, 1988, the two parties formally merged as the Social and Liberal Democratic Party, and in 1989 the party adopted the present name.

Paddy Ashdown, a former Liberal and a member of Parliament for Yeovil (Somerset), was elected the first leader of the new party in July 1988. Ashdown’s avowed strategy was initially one of “equidistance” between Labour and the Conservatives. He sought to ensure that the new party fully supported free-market economics and was not encumbered by predilections for controversial policies, such as wage and price controls, to reduce unemployment. At the same time, he laid out a program that had a radical and reformist edge.

The initial portents for such an approach were far from promising. The Liberal Democrats won only 6 percent of the popular vote in elections to the European Parliament in June 1989 and trailed badly in national opinion polls. In the early 1990s, however, a series of encouraging by-election results and Ashdown’s growing popularity boosted the party’s fortunes, though the Liberal Democrats won only 18 percent of the vote (20 seats) in the 1992 general election. Between 1992 and 1997, the Liberal Democrats scored stunning by-election victories and increased their support in local elections; at the depth of the Conservative Party’s unpopularity, the Liberal Democrats became the second largest party (after Labour) in local government. The Liberal Democrats’ major breakthrough at the national level came in the 1997 general election, in which they benefited from a sophisticated targeting of campaign resources on a limited number of constituencies. Although they won only 17 percent of the national vote, they more than doubled their parliamentary representation to 46 seats.

After Ashdown resigned as party leader in 1999, Charles Kennedy, the party’s spokesperson on European affairs (1992–97) and on agricultural and rural policies (1997–99), was elected to replace him. Under Kennedy’s leadership, the Liberal Democrats made significant gains in the House of Commons in both the 2001 and 2005 general elections. In 2006, however, Kennedy resigned after admitting he was an alcoholic, and Sir Menzies Campbell was elected party leader. Although Campbell led the Liberal Democrats to a strong showing in the May 2006 local elections, the party’s popularity subsequently declined. Amid growing concerns that Campbell was too old to lead, he stepped down in 2007 and was succeeded by Nick Clegg.

During the 2010 election campaign, the Liberal Democrats surged in the public opinion polls, particularly because of Clegg’s performance in the country’s first televised party-leader debates. In the event, however, the Liberal Democrats finished a disappointing third, winning 57 seats, 5 fewer than in 2005. With no party achieving a majority in the House of Commons, Clegg and the Liberal Democrats subsequently formed a coalition with David Cameron and his Conservative Party (Britain’s first coalition since World War II), with Clegg securing the post of deputy prime minister.

One of the conditions secured by Clegg when the coalition was finalized was the promise of a referendum on the adoption of the alternative vote system. That poll, held along with local elections in May 2011, proved disastrous for the Liberal Democrats. Not only was the alternative vote referendum soundly defeated, but the party lost hundreds of local council seats, and its representation in the Scottish Parliament dropped from 16 seats to just 5. That precipitous electoral decline continued in the May 2014 election for the European Parliament, in which the Liberal Democrats’ representation fell from 11 seats to 1. The slide culminated in May 2015 with the Liberal Democrats’ worst-ever showing in a general election. The junior partner in the previous governing coalition won just eight seats, and Clegg—one of the few senior Liberal Democrats to retain his seat—resigned as party leader.

In July 2015 the Liberal Democrats elected Tim Farron to be their new leader. Led by Farron, the Liberal Democrats gained 4 seats (to reach a total of 12 seats) in the June 2017 snap general election called by Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May. Farron then stepped down as party leader and was replaced by Vince Cable in July. In 2019 Jo Swinson took Cable’s place, becoming the first woman to lead the Liberal Democrats. She guided them into the 2019 parliamentary snap election as the party most adamantly opposed to the British exit from the European Union (“Brexit”) with disappointing results. Not only did the Liberal Democrats’ representation in the House of Commons fall from 12 seats to 11 seats, but also Swinson herself did not win reelection, forcing her to step down as party leader.

Party’s symbols (traditional mascots) and their history

The Tory or British Conservative Party's most recent symbol is the oak tree. It's meant to represent the strength and longevity of the oak tree which symbolises the main principles of conservatism as well as the values of the UK such as cautious change, the preserving of good traditions such as the Union, parliamentary democracy, the monarchy, the rule of law, liberty and and the strength of the nation (especially in defence and Law & Order). In some ways this is a more 'softer' logo than previous ones it had as it symbolizes nature and the peace and tranquility of the countryside in the same way that the Green Party's logo and Labour Party's rose represent a softer natural theme. The Labour Party too had to change its party logo in the mid-1980s in order to distance itself from its more radical past and so did the 2010 Tory Party which wanted to show that it was no longer the 'nasty party' and was moving towards 'compassionate conservatism.

the old logo of the conservative party was a flaming torch with the colors of the union jack (red, white and blue) which represented freedom especially that of the free market from state control of the postwar consensus (socioeconomic policies of old Labour and paternalistic one-nation Tories). It was considered by many as too controversial, bellicose and over-patriotic so the 'softer' oak tree was used.

By far and away the most commonly associated symbol with the Labour Party is the good ol’ Red Flag which literally was used to represent the ‘blood of angry workers’. Although its use was popularised by events in France and its use there by insurrectionary movements especially in the rebellions of 1848 but also by the Jacobins it has documented usage several times before that on these shores.  British sailors mutinied near the mouth of the River Thames in 1797 and hoisted a red flag on several ships. Two red flags were flown by marchers during the Merthyr riots of 1831 in South Wales which were soaked in calf’s blood.

This can be shown in the logo choice of the Liberal Democrats, with the gold “Flying Bird of Liberty (Libby)”. As mentioned above, we found that gold was chosen to signify the importance of wealth and money. Thus, we concluded that the gold bird ‘Libby’ shows how as a party we have moved away from the old Liberal Party’s emphasis on free trade and markers, to one of more equality and freedom in terms of how wealth and income is distributed. Furthermore, in keeping the gold colour the Lib Dems maintain important associations with classical Liberals, such as Gladstone.

Date of Foundation

1834; 189 years ago (original form)

1912; 111 years ago (current form)

27 February 1900; 123 years ago

3 March 1988;

35 years ago

Political Position

(right, left or anywhere in between)

Centre-right to right-wing

Centre-left

Centre to centre-left

Ideology

(their platform and values)

Conservatism (British)

Economic liberalism

British unionism

(promoting private property and enterprise, the maintenance of a strong military, and the preservation of traditional cultural values)

Social democracy

Democratic socialism

(social justice, and decentralisation. Democratic Socialism. Democratic socialism is the belief that it is the responsibility of the state to manage the economy in a way that benefits citizens, such as through intervention or Welfare polices) 

Liberalism (British)

Social liberalism

Pro-Europeanism

(liberty, equality, democracy, community, human rights, internationalism, and environmentalism)

Current leader and Famous representatives

Rishi Sunak

Lords Leader

The Lord True

Chief Whips: Simon Hart (Commons)

The Baroness Williams of Trafford (Lords)

Chairman

Greg Hands

Chief Executive

Stephen Massey

Leader

Keir Starmer

Deputy Leader

Angela Rayner

General Secretary

David Evans

Chair

Anneliese Dodds

Lords Leader

The Baroness Smith of Basildon

Leader

Sir Ed Davey

Deputy Lead

Daisy Cooper

President

Mark Pack

Lords Leader

Lord Newby

Chief Executive Mike Dixon

Number of seats in the legislative body of government