However, they were later overtaken in the polls by the Conservatives and at the 1983 general election the Conservatives triumphed by a landslide, with Labour once again forming the opposition, while the SDP-Liberal Alliance came close to Labour in terms of votes ( a share of more than 25 %) although it only had 23 MPs compared to Labour's 209.

It came as a shock to many when the Conservatives won a majority, but the perceived triumphalism of a Labour party rally in Sheffield ( together with Kinnock's performance on the podium ) may have helped

In the latter half of the twentieth-century Gladstone's economic policies came to be admired by Thatcherite Conservatives.

The Greens came first in Norwich with 25 %, Oxford with 26 % and Brighton and Hove with 31 %, the latter a clear 6000 votes ahead of the Conservatives in second place, but despite making steady progress all over the country with its share of the vote substantially increasing compared to the 2004 European Parliament election, it failed to gain any extra MEPs.

The criticism came shortly after Kaminski was made chairman of the European Conservatives and Reformists group in the European Parliament, which includes Labour's opponent, the Conservative Party ( UK ).

The old order of the alternating government with the Conservatives came to an end with the rise of the CCF who managed to be official opposition from 1933 to 1937 and were only one seat less than the Conservatives in the 1937 election.

When the General Election came his unpopularity and that of the Conservatives in general, a massive tactical voting campaign occurred in the constituency and the Liberal Democrats won the seat.

Portillo's loss of the Enfield Southgate seat in the 1997 general election to Stephen Twigg came as a shock to many politicians and commentators, and came to symbolise the extent of the Conservatives ' defeat.

The Alliance came under heavy criticism from the defeated Labour Party leader Michael Foot in the aftermath of the 1983 election ; he condemned them for " siphoning " support away from the Labour Party and enabling the Conservatives to win more seats.

He also came second in the Pollok constituency at the 1992 General Election, finishing ahead of both the Conservatives and the Scottish National Party with 6, 287 votes.

Blaikie's closest election came in 1993, when the Liberal Party under Jean Chrétien defeated the Progressive Conservatives under new leader Kim Campbell to win a majority government.

When the Conservatives came into power in 1874, his part for the next six years was to criticize Disraeli's " spirited " foreign policy, and to defend his own more pliant methods.

The Liberal Democrats came from third place behind Labour and the Conservatives, with a 39. 12 % share of the total and 1, 118 majority.

Newton was appointed a government whip when the Conservatives came to power in 1979.

He served as the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office from 2008 until 2010, when the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats came to power.

It was to be its calls for the restoration of the empire and reassertion of the notion of English people as the world's natural leaders that ultimately saw the group become estranged from the Conservatives, as the League was increasingly divorced from the one nation conservatism that came to dominate the party.

The party's best results were when it came second to the Conservatives: in the Finningley ward of Doncaster and in three wards in Rochford.

The Conservatives ' conversion to the concept of a welfare state came too late, and the Tories were routed in the October 1935 election, winning only 40 seats to 173 for Mackenzie King's Liberals.

The Reconstruction Party came to an end when Stevens rejoined the Conservatives in 1938.

The New Democrats gains came at the expense of the governing Progressive Conservatives who fell to 57 per cent.

In West Renfrewshire he came third, the SNP dropping behind the Conservatives who took second place to Labour.

When an election was held at the conclusion of Mackenzie's five-year term, the Conservatives were swept back into office in a landslide victory.

When the Labour government fell in 1979, the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher won a victory which served to push the Liberals back into the margins.

In the 2004 federal election, the Conservatives had one of the worst showings in the region for a right-wing party, going back to Confederation, with the possible exception of the 1993 election.

Since 1991, Lithuanian voters have shifted from right to left and back again, swinging between the Conservatives, led by Vytautas Landsbergis, and the ( formerly Communist ) Democratic Labour Party of Lithuania, led by president Algirdas Brazauskas.

However, the party's MPs, mostly representing seats won from the Scottish Conservatives, were less keen to have the SNP viewed as a centre-left alternative to Labour, for fear of losing their seats back to the Conservatives.

In 2009, the Conservatives won 26 seats in the European Parliament, which increased to 27 in 2011 due to defection by a UK Independence Party MEP, reducing back down to 26 when a Conservative moved to UKIP.

A poll at the time suggested that 74 % of the UK population agreed with the Powell's opinions and his supporters claim that this large public following that Powell attracted may have helped the Conservatives to win the 1970 general election, and perhaps cost them the February 1974 general election, at which Powell turned his back on the Conservatives by endorsing a vote for Labour, who returned as a minority government in early March following a hung parliament.

Trudeau's Liberals swept his party back into power in the February 1980 election with 146 seats, against 103 for the Progressive Conservatives.

When Mulroney took over the reins of the Progressive Conservatives, Trudeau's Liberals attacked them with the slogan " Bring back Joe!

With Gladstone returned to power and unwilling to see Chamberlain back with the Liberal Party, and the Liberal Unionists reduced to 47 seats nationwide, a closer relationship with the Conservatives was necessary.

The Conservatives gained control at the 2002 election and held it until Labour took control back at the 2010 election.

Gladstone preferred to call them ' dissentient Liberals ' as if he believed they would eventually come back like the ' Adullamites ', Liberals who had opposed the extension of the franchise in 1866 but had mostly come back to the main party after the Conservatives had passed their own electoral reform bill in 1867.

In the 19th century, the state government would shift back and forth between San Cristóbal, in the highlands dominated by Conservatives and Tuxtla, which favored the Liberals.

The Conservative government in Honduras gave military backing to a group of Guatemalan Conservatives wishing to take back the government, so Barrios declared war on the Honduran government.

Despite his loss, Law was at this stage such an asset to the Conservatives that an immediate effort was made to get him back into Parliament.

Lloyd George, Birkenhead and Winston Churchill ( still distrusted by many Conservatives ) wished to use armed force against Turkey ( the Chanak Crisis ), but had to back down when offered support only by New Zealand, but not Canada, Australia or South Africa ; an anonymous letter appeared in " The Times " supporting the government but stating that Britain could not " act as the policeman for the world ", and it was an open secret that the author, " A Colonial ", was in fact Bonar Law.

At the same time, Margaret Thatcher as opposition leader was moving the Tory party back to the right and away from the moderate Heathite stance which had caused some Conservatives to join the NF.

At one point in the proceedings, Kinnock and the shadow cabinet paraded to the stage from the back of the venue, passing through an increasingly enthusiastic audience, with the shadow cabinet being introduced by titles such as " The next Home Secretary " and " The next Prime Minister "; Labour had been in opposition for 13 years and had already lost three consecutive general elections to the Conservatives.

In the 1933 election, with the Conservatives in disarray and not running any official candidates, Pattullo led the party back into government.

A notable example of the latter is Winston Churchill, who crossed the floor from the Conservatives to the Liberals in 1904, before later crossing back in 1924.

This political lineage dates back to the 1850s Parti bleu of Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, a centre-right party in Quebec that emphasized provincial autonomy and allied itself with Conservatives in English Canada.