In the British general election the following year, Michael Howard promised to work towards having the prohibition removed if the Conservative Party gained a majority of seats in the House of Commons, but the election was won by Blair's Labour Party.

She was a social conservative and a member of the Conservative Christian Fellowship.

This was well received by rank-and-file Conservative delegates.

At the October 2006 Conservative Conference, she was Chief Dragon in a political version of the television programme Dragons ' Den, in which A-list candidates were invited to put forward a policy proposal, which was then torn apart by her team of Rachel Elnaugh, Oliver Letwin and Michael Brown.

Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, KG, PC, FRS, ( 21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881 ) was a British Prime Minister, parliamentarian, Conservative statesman and literary figure.

Although he was a major figure in the protectionist wing of the Conservative Party after 1844, Disraeli's relations with the other leading figures in the party, particularly Lord Derby, the overall leader, were often strained.

He was twice successful as the Glasgow University Conservative Association's candidate for Rector of the University, holding the post for two full terms between 1871 and 1877.

Although a Conservative, Disraeli was sympathetic to some of the demands of the Chartists and argued for an alliance between the landed aristocracy and the working class against the increasing power of the merchants and new industrialists in the middle class, helping to found the Young England group in 1842 to promote the view that the landed interests should use their power to protect the poor from exploitation by middle-class businessmen.

" If the remainder of the Conservative Party could muster the electoral support necessary to form a government, then Disraeli was now guaranteed high office.

Bentinck, then still Conservative leader in the Commons, joined Disraeli in speaking and voting for the bill, although his own speech was a standard one of toleration.

This purchase allowed him to stand for the county, which was " essential " if one was to lead the Conservative Party at the time.

This was primarily a political strategy designed to give the Conservative party control of the reform process and the subsequent long-term benefits in the Commons, similar to those derived by the Whigs after their 1832 Reform Act.

It was thought that if the Conservatives were able to secure this piece of legislation, then the newly enfranchised electorate may return their gratitude to the Tories in the form of a Conservative vote at the next general election.

This act was unpopular with the right wing of the Conservative Party, most notably Lord Cranborne ( later the Marquess of Salisbury ), who resigned from the government and spoke against the bill, accusing Disraeli of " a political betrayal which has no parallel in our Parliamentary annals.

Blake further argued that Disraeli's imperialism " decisively orientated the Conservative party for many years to come, and the tradition which he started was probably a bigger electoral asset in winning working-class support during the last quarter of the century than anything else ".

In 1841 the Liberals lost office to the Conservative Party under Sir Robert Peel, but their period in opposition was short, because the Conservatives split over the repeal of the Corn Laws, a free trade issue, and a faction known as the Peelites ( but not Peel himself, who died soon after ), defected to the Liberal side.

After a brief Conservative interlude ( during which the Second Reform Act was passed by agreement between the parties ), Gladstone won a huge victory at the 1868 election and formed the first Liberal government.

Lloyd George and the Conservative leader Andrew Bonar Law wrote a joint letter of support to candidates to indicate they were considered the official Coalition candidates – this " coupon " as it became known was issued against many sitting Liberal MPs, often to devastating effect, though not against Asquith himself.

Lloyd George still claimed to be leading a Liberal government, but he was increasingly under the influence of the rejuvenated Conservative party.

In 1922 the Conservative backbenchers rebelled against the continuation of the coalition, citing in particular the Chanak Crisis over Turkey and Lloyd George's corrupt sale of honours amongst other grievances, and Lloyd George was forced to resign.

Lloyd George offered a degree of support to the Labour government in the hope of winning concessions, including a degree of electoral reform to introduce the alternative vote, but this support was to prove bitterly divisive as the Liberals increasingly divided between those seeking to gain what Liberal goals they could achieve, those who preferred a Conservative government to a Labour one and vice-versa.

Taverne's Lincoln by-election campaign was also helped to a lesser degree by problems with the Conservative candidate, Monday Club chairman Jonathan Guinness.

They argued that a new type of political force was needed to challenge the Conservative Party.

In the 2004 European Parliament election the EFA was reduced to four MEPs two of the SNP ( Ian Hudghton and Alyn Smith ), one of PC ( Jill Evans ) and one of the Republican Left of Catalonia ( ERC ; Bernat Joan i Mari, replaced at the mid-term by MEP Mikel Irujo of Basque EA ) plus two affiliate members ( Tatjana Ždanoka of For Human Rights in United Latvia ( PCTVL ) and László Tőkés, independent MEP and former member of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania ( UMDR ).

He reiterated this in October, saying he was " astounded " by comments of the ECR group's chairman, the Polish MEP Michal Kaminski, who had said that he believed that the murder of hundreds of Jews in Jedwabne should be considered a lesser crime than those committed by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

During this second term as an MEP, she was again a member of the Committee on Civic Liberties and Internal Affairs, the Sub-Committee on Human Rights and the EC-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee, of which she was elected deputy chairperson.

In 2001, SNCF was sued by the father of MEP Alain Lipietz because of the railroad ’ s role in transporting members of his family to the Drancy internment camp during World War II.

During his time in the European Parliament, he was involved in a fracas initiated by fellow MEP Ian Paisley.

A protest at the bridge on 1 September 2007 was supported by the local Cancer Patients Involvement Group, the Road Haulage Association, Yorkshire and Humberside MEP Diana Wallis and local business and council representatives.

" His brother Gay Mitchell was elected a Fine Gael MEP in 2004 and stood down from the Dail under dual mandate rules in 2007.

Banotti, who was an MEP at the time, was the only practising politician among the five presidential candidates.

The message was not clear enough from the MEP side and the negotiations went sluggish.

The party received an endorsement in The Independent from writer A. N. Wilson, as well as support from Paul Howell, who was a speech writer for Margaret Thatcher and Edward Heath and a Conservative MEP, and Anthony Meyer, the " stalking horse " candidate against Margaret Thatcher in 1990.

The CDA fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference in October 2002 was addressed by Roger Knapman, leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party ; Ashley Mote, prominent UKIP MEP and author of " Overcrowded Britain-Our Immigration Crisis Exposed " ( 2004 ); John Gouriet, a founder with Norris McWhirter of the Freedom Association alongside Derek Turner, editor of Right Now!

In 2004 Paisley was replaced as the DUP MEP by Jim Allister, who resigned from the party in 2007 while retaining his seat.

She first became an MEP in 1975, at a time when the European Parliament was still composed of representative delegations from national parliaments.

It was during her time as an MEP that she acquired the nickname Madame Ecosse ( French for Mrs Scotland ) because of her strong advocacy of Scottish interests in Strasbourg and Brussels.

In 1994 O ' Malley ran for the European Parliament but was defeated by Pat Cox, a sitting MEP who left the Progressive Democrats to run as an independent when O ' Malley was selected as the candidate to replace him.

He narrowly lost the seat at the 1984 election but was returned to serve as an MEP in 1989 election where he sat with the regionalist Rainbow Group He also canvassed for IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election, in which Sands was elected to Westminster.

He was appointed on 1 July 1981 as a Member of the European Parliament ( MEP ) for Dublin, replacing Michael O ' Leary, who had resigned the seat after succeeding Cluskey as Labour leader.

He did not contest the 1989 general election, and on 15 June 1989 he was elected as a Labour Member of the European Parliament ( MEP ) for Dublin.

In 1994 he was elected a Member of the European Parliament ( MEP ) for the Munster constituency.

In 2003 a request was presented by Frankfurt prosecutors to the European Parliament, requesting they waive the immunity of MEP Cohn-Bendit, in the context of a criminal investigation against the terrorist, Hans-Joachim Klein, but the request was rejected by the assembly.