After nearly becoming extinct in the 1940s and 50s, the Liberal Party revived its fortunes somewhat under the leadership of Jo Grimond in the 1960s, by positioning itself as a radical centrist non-socialist alternative to the Conservative and Labour Party governments of the time.

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.

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.

The two dominant political parties in Canada have historically been the Liberal Party of Canada and Conservative Party of Canada ( or its predecessors ), and as of the 2011 election the social-democratic New Democratic Party ( NDP ) has risen to prominence.

It was at this time that a degree of Conservative opposition recovered at the expense of the declining Liberal Party.

His greatest achievement, surpassing many of these, was, perhaps, the establishment of a political and economic consensus about the governance of Britain that all parties, whether Labour, Conservative or Liberal subscribed to for three decades, fixing the arena of political discourse until the later 1970s.

Two civil wars resulted from bitter rivalry between the Conservative and Liberal parties.

In July 1957, former Conservative President Laureano Gómez ( 1950 – 1953 ) and former Liberal President Alberto Lleras ( 1945 – 1946, 1958 – 1962 ) issued the " Declaration of Sitges ," in which they proposed a " National Front ," whereby the Liberal and Conservative parties would govern jointly.

In the end, the contradictions between each successive Liberal and Conservative administration made the results decidedly mixed.

A member of the Conservative Party, Pastrana defeated Liberal Party candidate Horacio Serpa in a run-off election marked by high voter turn-out and little political unrest.

The United Kingdom also operates a formal coalition cabinet between the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat parties, but this is unusual because the UK normally has a majority government.

The Conservative Party of Norway ( Norwegian: Høyre, literally " right ") was formed by the old upper class of state officials and wealthy merchants to fight the populist democracy of the Liberal Party, but lost power in 1884 when parliamentarian government was first practised.

It now forms part of the legislative programme of the Conservative – Liberal Democrat Coalition Agreement.

In Scotland's first referendum on devolution, held in March 1979, he campaigned for a " Yes " vote alongside the Conservative Alick Buchanan-Smith and the Liberal Russell Johnston.

The town has active branches of the Conservative Party, Liberal Democrats and United Kingdom Independence Party.

In 1978, Hayek came into conflict with the Liberal Party leader, David Steel, who claimed that liberty was possible only with " social justice and an equitable distribution of wealth and power, which in turn require a degree of active government intervention " and that the Conservative Party were more concerned with the connection between liberty and private enterprise than between liberty and democracy.

Scots played a major part in the leadership of UK political parties producing a Conservative Prime Minister in Arthur Balfour ( 1902 – 05 ) and a Liberal one in Henry Campbell-Bannerman ( 1905 – 08 ).

Conservative Party ( 213 ) Liberal Democrats ( 90 ) HM Most Loyal Opposition Labour Party ( 226 ) Other Opposition Democratic Unionist Party ( 4 ) Ulster Unionist Party ( 3 ) UKIP ( 3 ) Plaid Cymru ( 2 ) Crossbenchers ( 177 ) Lords Spiritual ( 26 ) Non-affiliated ( 21 )

The Labour Party has an overall control of the council with 17 seats, whilst the Conservative Party holds 14 seats and the Liberal Democrat party has 1 seat.

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 Liberal Democrats could point to steady progress under Charles Kennedy, gaining more seats than the main two parties – albeit only six overall – and maintaining the performance of a pleasing 1997 election, where the party doubled its number of seats from 20 to 46.

The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Liberals were reduced to a mere forty seats in Parliament, only seven of which had been won against candidates from both parties and none of these formed a coherent area of Liberal survival.

The 1987 election saw the Alliance's share of the votes drop slightly and it now had 22 MP's, and in the election's aftermath Liberal leader David Steel proposed a merged of the two parties.

Most SDP members voted in favour of the merger, but SDP leader David Owen objected and continued to lead a " rump " SDP, with the merger of the two parties being completed in March 1988 to form the Social and Liberal Democrats, becoming the Liberal Democrats in October 1989.

As was the case with the Liberal Party for most of the 20th century, the Liberal Democrats face constant questioning about which of the other two parties they are closer to, in particular about which they would support in the event of a hung parliament.

The King, senior Anglican bishops, MPs from the Liberal and Labour parties, Oswald Mosley, Jan Smuts, the Trades Union Congress and parts of the press were increasingly critical of the actions of the Black and Tans.

In federal Australian politics, the conservative Liberal, National, Country Liberal and Liberal National parties are united in a coalition, known simply as the Coalition.

In South Australia and Western Australia the two parties compete separately, while in the Northern Territory and Queensland the two parties have merged, forming the Country Liberal Party, in 1978, and the Liberal National Party, in 2008, respectively.

It was also the first full coalition in Britain since 1945, having been formed 70 years virtually to the day after the establishment of Winston Churchill's wartime coalition, although there had been the " Lib-Lab pact ", an agreement stopping short of a full coalition between the Labour and Liberal parties, from March 1977 until July 1978, when a series of by-election defeats had eroded Labour's majority of three seats which had been gained at the October 1974 election.

Through the 1950s and into the 1960s the Liberals survived only because a handful of constituencies in rural Scotland and Wales clung to their Liberal traditions, whilst in two English towns, Bolton and Huddersfield, local Liberals and Conservatives agreed to each contest only one of the town's two seats.

After several days of negotiation, the Liberal Democrats agreed to join the Conservatives as part of a coalition government.

A deal was agreed with the Scottish Liberal Democrats to form a coalition, with Dewar agreeing to their demand for the abolition of up-front tuition fees for university students.

In 1977, Hayek was critical of the Lib-Lab pact, in which the British Liberal Party agreed to keep the British Labour government in office.

His successors as Liberal leader, Themistoklis Sophoulis and Georgios Papandreou, agreed, and the restoration of the monarchy was accepted.

It was not until he was nearly 60 that St-Laurent finally agreed to enter politics when Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King appealed to his sense of duty in late 1941.

Both sides mobilized but the Liberal government felt unprepared for war so it agreed to the humiliating condition of rebuilding Fortín Vanguardia for the Bolivians.

When the general election of 2010 produced a hung parliament, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties agreed to form Her Majesty's current coalition government, the first in seventy years.

In 1957-1958, the political leadership of the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party agreed to establish a bipartisan political system known as the National Front ( Frente Nacional, 1958 – 74 ).

Parliament was dissolved, and in the ensuing general election, the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists agreed to a defensive alliance.

Having agreed to a set of policies, the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists formed a government on 24 June 1895.

The Liberal Democrats also took 12 out of 15 seats on Cirencester Town Council at the 2011 local elections, rather than form a political group all Councillors agreed to work apolitically.

Following the 2010 general election, which returned a hung parliament, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats agreed to form a coalition government.

Members of the group participated in the meeting of MPs in 1859, which agreed to support the Second Palmerston Government and which is often regarded as the formal foundation of the Liberal Party.

Although some in the Conservative party agreed with Wilson ( and Jo Grimond, the Liberal leader ) that the Conservatives would have won the 1964 election if Butler had been Prime Minister, The Times observed, " it should not be overlooked that in October 1963 Home took over a Government whose morale was shattered and whose standing in the opinion polls was abysmal.

He agreed to support Norman Gardner's bid for the Liberal nomination in Willowdale, and did not realize that he was also purchasing a party membership card in the process.

While Cripps was expelled for his views, Rowse worked on getting ' local arrangements ' agreed by Labour and Liberal parties in Devon and Cornwall, making a common cause with the Liberal MP Sir Richard Acland.

In the 1913 election, Rutherford was again nominated as the Liberal candidate in Edmonton South ( Strathcona had been amalgamated into Edmonton in 1912 ), despite pledging opposition to the Sifton government and offering to campaign around the province for the Conservatives if they agreed not to run a candidate against him.

Rae and Peterson signed a " Liberal-NDP Accord " in which the NDP agreed to support a Liberal government in office for two years.

However, the Liberal National Board has announced that the interim leader position could only be held by an individual who agreed not to seek the permanent leadership and not to seek to change the party or merge it with another party during his tenure.

In the Canadian province of Ontario, the Liberal Party formed a minority government from 1985 to 1987 on the basis of a formal accord with the New Democratic Party ( NDP ): the NDP agreed to support the Liberals for two years on all confidence motions and budgetary legislation, in exchange for the passage of certain legislative measures proposed by the NDP.

For some years the capital shifted back and forth between León and Granada, Nicaragua, with Liberal regimes preferring León and Conservative ones Granada, until as a compromise Managua was agreed upon to be the permanent capital in 1858.

When Reid retired from the party leadership in 1908, Cook agreed to merge the Anti-Socialist Party ( the Free Trade Party was renamed prior to the 1906 federal election ) with Alfred Deakin's Protectionists, and became deputy leader of the new Commonwealth Liberal Party.