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.

In matters of marriage and divorce, the State of Israel relies on its Chief Rabbinate to determine who is Jewish ; the Chief Rabbinate, following Orthodox practice, does not recognize the validity of conversions performed by Conservative rabbis and will require a Jew who was converted by a Conservative rabbi to undergo a second, Orthodox conversion to be regarded as a Jew for marriage and other purposes.

The story was adapted by Andrew Davies from a novel written by Michael Dobbs, a former Chief of Staff at Conservative Party headquarters.

The antihero of House of Cards is a fictional Conservative Chief Whip, Francis Urquhart played by Ian Richardson.

It is currently most famous for its 1997 declaration ( citing Israeli Chief Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog and Orthodox Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik ) that the Conservative and Reform movements are " not Judaism at all.

Before Sir Philip Goodhart, the former Conservative Chief Whip Patrick Buchan-Hepburn represented Beckenham in Parliament.

On January 9, 2004, a group claiming to be loyal to the Progressive Conservative Party and opposed to the merger, which they characterized as an Alliance takeover, filed application with the Chief Electoral Officer to register a party called the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.

Sir Frank Smith, a retired former Chief Engineer at Imperial Chemical Industries was asked by the Conservative Minister of Transport, Ernest Marples, to become a member of an advisory group ; Smith declined but recommended Beeching in his place, a suggestion which Marples accepted.

In 1982, conservative activists Howard Phillips, founder of The Conservative Caucus, and Clymer Wright of Houston joined in an unsuccessful effort to convince Reagan to dismiss Baker as Chief of Staff.

Afterwards Conservative leader David Cameron mocked Armstrong during an exchange with Tony Blair, saying “ She must be the first Chief Whip in history to put the Prime Minister in the frame for losing a key vote — which is an interesting career move, to say the least .” This was the second time David Cameron had attacked her during Prime Ministers Questions ; on his debut as Leader of the Opposition on 7 December 2005 she was singled out by Cameron when he said " That's the problem with these exchanges-the chief whip on the Labour side shouting like a child.

In September 2012 UK Conservative Party Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell was reported using the word in an expletive-heavy tirade directed at police officers in Downing Street.

A member of the Conservative Party, he served in the Cabinet of Prime Minister John Major as Chief Secretary to the Treasury ( 1990 – 92 ) and Secretary of State for National Heritage ( April – September 1992 ), before resigning following a series of scandals in 1992.

He was the Conservative Party Chief of Staff from 1986 to 1987.

He had been deputy Chief Whip under John Major between 1993 and 1996 and was Minister of State for Industry at the Department of Trade and Industry from 1996 until the Conservative defeat at the 1997 election.

However in January 2008, Burt was promoted to Assistant Chief Whip and Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party with responsibility for Internal Development.

He then served in the Department of the Environment and the Department of Trade and Industry before being appointed Conservative Chief Whip in the House of Lords in 1994, succeeding Lord Ullswater.

Its Honorary President is Baroness Thatcher, and its Chairman is Barry Legg, who is a businessman and was Chief Executive of the Conservative Party and a former Member of Parliament.

After the 2005 general election, he retained the seat of Cotswold and returned to Westminster as assistant Chief Conservative Whip.

Tony Clement, a former Ontario Progressive Conservative health minister, and Belinda Stronach, the former Chief Executive Officer of Magna International, were the other candidates on the ballot.

After the Conservative Party's defeat at the 1997 general election, he remained in the whips ' office in opposition, becoming the Deputy Chief Whip in 1998.

Ward was elected to Parliament in 1997, succeeding the former Conservative Party Deputy Chief Whip Tristan Garel-Jones who retired, and defeating Conservative candidate Robert Gordon by 5, 792 votes, thereby becoming MP for Watford.

After the fall of the Conservative government to Labour in 1997, she served as Shadow Health Secretary between 1998 and 1999 and later as Shadow Home Secretary between 1999 and 2001 under William Hague.

* Corrupt architect John Poulson and links to Conservative Home Secretary Reginald Maudling, Labour council leader T. Dan Smith and others ( 1972-4 ): Maudling resigned, Smith sentenced to imprisonment.

More recently, William D. Rubinstein, Professor of Modern History at Aberystwyth University, Wales, wrote that Conservative politician and pro-Zionist Leo Amery, as Assistant Secretary to the British war cabinet in 1917, was the main author of the Balfour Declaration.

Devlin punched Reginald Maudling, the Secretary of State for the Home Department in the Conservative government, when he made a statement to Parliament on the events of Bloody Sunday stating that the British Army had fired only in self-defence.

From the mid-century there were increasing calls for Home Rule for Scotland and when the Conservative Lord Salisbury became prime minister in 1885 he responded to pressure by reviving the post of Secretary of State for Scotland, which had been in abeyance since 1746.

Major was Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997 and held the posts of Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Cabinet of Margaret Thatcher.

Following his resignation as Prime Minister, Major briefly became Leader of the Opposition, and Shadow Foreign Secretary ( as Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who was Foreign Secretary prior to the election, had lost his seat ), and remained in this post until the election of William Hague as leader of the Conservative Party in June 1997.

These visits enabled him to meet and take the measure of his adversaries Napoleon III, and the British Prime Minister Palmerston and Foreign Secretary Earl Russell, and also of the British Conservative politician Disraeli, later to be Prime Minister in the 1870s – who later claimed to have said of Bismarck's visit " Be careful of that man – he means every word he says ".

In 2009, then-Foreign Secretary David Miliband accused the Conservative Party of having links to far-right parties.

In his first speech to the Conservative Party conference as Shadow Secretary of State for Defence on 14 October 1965, Powell outlined a fresh defence policy, jettisoning what he saw as outdated global military commitments left over from Britain's imperial past and stressing that Britain was a European power and therefore an alliance with Western European states from possible attack from the East was central to Britain's safety.

They were politically faithful to their father throughout his life ; but after 1945, each drifted away from the Liberal Party, Gwilym finishing his career as a Conservative Home Secretary while Megan became a Labour MP in 1957, perhaps symbolising the fate of much of the old Liberal Party.

In 1937-38 he was also chairman of the national Federation of University Conservative Associations, and in the same year ( his third at university ) he was Secretary then Librarian of the Oxford Union.

Conversion continued on a large scale during the subsequent Conservative Heath administration, although the Secretary of State, Margaret Thatcher, ended the compulsion of local governments to convert.

Labour's return to power in 1964 and the creation of the post of Secretary of State for Wales appeared to represent a continuation of the incremental evolution of a distinctive Welsh polity, following the Conservative government's appointment of a Minister of Welsh Affairs in the mid-1950s and the establishment of Cardiff as Wales's capital in 1955.

A member of the Conservative Party, he served in the Cabinet from 1981 to 1987 as Secretary of State for Employment

( 1981 – 83 ), Secretary of State for Trade and Industry ( 1983 – 85 ), Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster ( 1985 – 87 ) and Chairman of the Conservative Party ( 1985 – 87 ).

During the Grunwick dispute — where workers struck over pay, working conditions and the owner George Ward's refusal to recognise their trade union — there was a split in the Conservative Shadow Cabinet between the conciliatory approach of Jim Prior, the Shadow Employment Secretary, and Keith Joseph.

William Stephen Ian Whitelaw, 1st Viscount Whitelaw, KT, CH, MC, PC, DL ( 28 June 1918 – 1 July 1999 ), often known as Willie Whitelaw, was a British Conservative Party politician who served in a wide number of Cabinet positions, most notably as Home Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister.

At first the Coalition was seen as a political masterstroke, as the Conservative leader Bonar Law was given a relatively minor job ( Secretary for the Colonies ), whilst former Conservative leader A. J. Balfour was given the Admiralty, replacing Churchill.

He believed that there was " work to be done " as Colonial Secretary, to expand the British Empire and reorder imperial trade and resources, and foster closer relations between Britain and the settler colonies, with the objective of reforming the empire as a federation of Anglo-Saxon nations, and he could be assured of support from Conservative backbenchers.

Chamberlain was aware that the Bill's proposals would estrange Nonconformists, Radicals and many Liberal Unionists from the government, but could not oppose it as he owed his position as Colonial Secretary to Conservative support.

In 1998 he was appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour, a UK national honour bestowed for outstanding achievement in the arts, literature, music, science, politics, industry or religion ( fellow recipients included in 2011 Douglas Hurd, former British Foreign Secretary, Norman Tebbit, former Secretary of State of Employment under Margaret Thatcher, and former Conservative Prime Minister Sir John Major ).