Gaitskell was undermined during it by public doubts concerning the credibility of proposals to raise pensions and by a highly effective Conservative campaign run by Harold Macmillan under the slogan " Life is better with the Conservatives, don't let Labour ruin it ", which capitalised on the economic prosperity of Britain.

All of the 3 main parties saw their total votes fall, with Labour's total vote dropping by 2. 8 million on 1997, the Conservatives 1. 3 million, and the Liberal Democrats 428, 000.

The poor British performance in the early months of the war forced Asquith to invite the Conservatives into a coalition ( on 17 May 1915 ).

Labour campaigned on the theme of " Let Us Face the Future " and positioned themselves as the party best placed to rebuild Britain after the war, while the Conservatives ' campaign centred around Churchill.

This was known as Butskellism, after the almost identical Keynesian policies of Rab Butler on behalf of the Conservatives, and Hugh Gaitskell for Labour.

Meanwhile the parties in the ED subgroup were growing restless and finally left following the 2009 elections, when the Czech Civic Democratic Party and United Kingdom Conservatives formed their own European Conservatives and Reformists group on 22 June 2009, abolishing the ED subgroup from that date.

Conservatives, he says, are not averse to change – but like Hayek, they are highly averse to change being imposed on the social order by people in authority who think they know how to run things better.

However, in February 1852, Palmerston took revenge on Russell by voting with the Conservatives in a " no confidence " vote against the Russell government.

The newspapers which traditionally supported the Conservatives and had championed Major at the election were now being critical of him on an almost daily basis.

Some ministers wanted St. Laurent to stay on and offer to form a minority government, following the logic that the popular vote had supported them and even though their Parliamentary minority was smaller than the Conservatives, the Liberals ' more recent governmental experience would make them a more effective minority.

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

Stalin, Churchill, and Truman — as well as Attlee, who participated alongside Churchill while awaiting the outcome of the 1945 general election, and then replaced Churchill as Prime Minister after the Labour Party's victory over the Conservatives — gathered to decide how to administer punishment to the defeated Nazi Germany, which had agreed to unconditional surrender nine weeks earlier, on 8 May ( V-E Day ).

Baldwin's political strategy was to polarize the electorate so that voters would choose between the Conservatives on the right and the Labour Party on the left, squeezing out the Liberals in the middle.

Electoral reform was a majority priority for the Liberal Democrats, who favour proportional representation but were able to negotiate only a referendum on AV with the Conservatives.

The coalition partners plan to campaign on opposite sides, with the Liberal Democrats supporting AV and the Conservatives opposing it.

The Liberal Party was one of the two dominant parties ( along with the Conservatives ) from its founding until the 1920s, when it rapidly declined and was supplanted on the left by the Labour Party, which was founded in 1900 and formed its first government in 1924.

One Nation Conservatives often invoke Edmund Burke and his emphasis on civil society (" little platoons ") as the foundations of society, as well as his opposition to radical politics of all types.

Despite prolonged negotiations, King was unable to attract the Progressives into his government, but once Parliament opened, he relied on their support to defeat non-confidence motions from the Conservatives.

Unlike the efforts of the Conservatives, the organisation of the Liberal Party had declined since 1868 and they had also failed to retain Liberal voters on the electoral register.

A week after the vote, on June 7 the Conservatives conceded power rather than ally with the Liberals.

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.

Though he voted with the Conservatives in a vote of confidence that brought down the Labour government on 28 March, Powell did not welcome the victory of Margaret Thatcher in the May 1979 election.

Stevens left the Conservatives and formed the Reconstruction Party of Canada, after Bennett refused to implement Stevens ' plan for drastic economic reform to deal with the economic crisis.

In the 2010 general election, the FT was receptive towards Liberal Democrat positions on civil liberties and political reform and praised the then Labour leader, Gordon Brown, for his response to the global financial crisis but on balance, backed the Conservatives, though questioning their Euroscepticism.

The crisis was resolved when Borden formed a Union government composed of Conservatives and pro-conscription Liberals.

Harper has been criticised for appearing unresponsive and unsympathetic to the uncertainty Canadians were feeling during the period of financial turmoil, but he countered that the Conservatives were the best party to navigate Canada through the financial crisis, and portrayed the Liberal " Green Shift " plan as reckless and detrimental to Canada's economic well-being.

This precipitates a political crisis: John Major resigns as Prime Minister, a snap election is called, and the Conservatives split into two parties: the pro-European Progressive Federalist Party, led by Sir Greville, and the eurosceptic New Patriotic Party, led by Alan.

He had poor relations with the first Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, and was not surprised when MacDonald formed a National Government with the Conservatives during the economic crisis of 1931, for which MacDonald was expelled from the Labour Party.

* Bennett's own government suffered a defection as his Trade minister, Henry Herbert Stevens, left the Conservatives to form the Reconstruction Party of Canada when Bennett refused to enact Stevens ' plans for drastic economic reform and government intervention in the economy to deal with the crisis.

He emerged from the political crisis that destroyed the governments of Sir Richard Squires and William Warren as leader of a new party, the Liberal-Conservative Progressive Party, which had been cobbled together by Warren and the opposition Conservatives after Warren's government fell.

Cowling challenged the traditional liberal assumptions over the reform crisis of the 1860s by claiming that the Liberal Party was not the straightforward progressive party that wanted to hand political power to the working-class and that the Conservatives did not promote reform in reaction to working-class pressure.

Not long after the re-election of the federal Conservatives to a second minority government, and with the global financial crisis increasingly coming to the foreground of current events, Jean Charest precipitated the fall of his own minority government, arguing before the Lieutenant Governor of Quebec that the National Assembly was no longer functional.

The Liberals won, and Mackenzie remained prime minister until the 1878 election when Macdonald's Conservatives returned to power with a majority government.

During World War I, the Liberals governed Britain through a coalition with the Conservatives, which ended in 1922.

Another general election was called in 1951, and the Liberals were left with just six MPs in parliament ; all but one of them were aided by the fact that the Conservatives refrained from fielding candidates in those constituencies.

Conservatives offered Thorpe the Home Office if he would join a coalition government with Heath.

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.

Although the SDP was seen as being largely a breakaway from the right wing of the Labour Party, an internal party survey found that 60 % of its members had not belonged to a political party before, with 25 % being drawn from Labour, 10 % from the Conservatives and 5 % from the Liberals.

The 2010 general election resulted in a hung parliament ( Britain's first for 36 years ), following which the Conservatives ( led by David Cameron ), which had won the largest number of seats, formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats in order to gain a parliamentary majority, ending 13 years of Labour government.

From 1942, the party was known as the Progressive Conservatives, until 2003, when the national party merged with the Canadian Alliance to form the Conservative Party of Canada.

In the House of Commons, 161 MPs ( 88 of them Labour ) voted against the renewal of Trident and the Government motion was carried only with the support of Conservatives.

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.

Conservatives, nationalists and ex-military leaders began to speak critically about the peace and Weimar politicians, socialists, communists, Jews, and sometimes even Catholics were viewed with suspicion due to presumed extra-national loyalties.

The parties of these MEPs also became full members of the EPP ( with the exception of the British Conservatives who did not join the Party ) and this consolidation process of the European centre-right throughout the ' 90s with the acquisition of members from the Italian Forza Italia.

This was considered essential for the Conservatives, as the EPP was generally seen as quite favourable to European integration, a stance at odds with their core ideology.

This was intended to nominally underscore the Conservatives ' status apart from the rest of EPP, and it was hoped that with the coming enlargement of the European Union numerous newly involved right-wing parties, averse to the EPP proper for its perceived eurofederalism, would be willing to instead enter the ED subgroup, growing the overall alignment.

The European Conservatives and Reformists group, typified by centre-right parties such as the British Conservative Party, along with the European United Left – Nordic Green Left which is an alliance of the left-wing parties in the European Parliament, is soft eurosceptic.

Conservatives were alarmed by the continuous increase of the socialists ’ support during 1899-1916, which had climaxed in 1917 with their dominance in the Parliament and Senate, without the offsetting control of the emperor and Russian administration.

In the Khaki Election of 1900, nationalist concern with the Boer War meant that the Conservatives and their Liberal Unionist allies gained a majority of Scottish seats for the first time, although the Liberals regained their ascendancy in the next election.

Politicians with Scottish connections continued to play a prominent part in UK political life, with Prime Ministers including the Conservatives Harold Macmillan ( whose father was Scottish ) from 1955 – 57 and Alec Douglas-Home from 1963-64.