[58] Nigel Keohane finds that the Conservatives were bitterly divided before 1914 but the war pulled the party together, allowing it to emphasise patriotism as it found new leadership and worked out its positions on the Irish question, socialism, electoral reform, and the issue of intervention in the economy.

[64] While serving in Opposition during the late 1940s, the Conservative Party exploited and incited growing public anger at food rationing, scarcity, controls, austerity, and government bureaucracy.

Conservative Prime Ministers Churchill, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas-Home promoted relatively liberal trade regulations and less state involvement throughout the 1950s and early 1960s.

The Suez Crisis of 1956 was a humiliating defeat for Prime Minister Eden, but his successor, Macmillan, minimised the damage and focused attention on domestic issues and prosperity.

[75] Edward Heath's 1970–74 government was known for taking the UK into the EEC, although the right-wing of the party objected to his failure to control the trade unions at a time when a declining British industry saw many strikes, as well as the 1973–75 recession.

[78] As Prime Minister, Thatcher focused on rejecting the mild liberalism of the post-war consensus that tolerated or encouraged nationalisation, strong labour unions, heavy regulation, and high taxes.

Victory in the Falklands War in June 1982, along with the recovering British economy, saw the Conservatives returning quickly to the top of the opinion polls and winning the 1983 general election with a landslide majority, due to a split opposition vote.

[98] Although Duncan Smith was a strong Eurosceptic,[101] during his tenure, Europe ceased to be an issue of division in the party as it united behind calls for a referendum on the proposed European Union Constitution.

[157] In a strategy labelled Trussonomics she introduced policies in response to the cost of living crisis,[158] including price caps on energy bills and government help to pay them.

[159] Truss's mini-budget on 23 September faced severe criticism and markets reacted poorly;[160] the pound fell to a record low of 1.03 against the dollar, and UK government gilt yields rose to 4.3 per cent, prompting the Bank of England to trigger an emergency bond-buying programme.

[170][171] It pledged to lower taxes, increase education and NHS spending, deliver 92,000 more nurses and 28,000 more doctors, introduce a new model of National Service, and to treble Britain's offshore wind capacity and support solar energy.

With the growing Euroscepticism within his party, John Major negotiated a British opt-out in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, which enabled the UK to stay within the European Union without adopting the single currency.

[178] Alongside a reduction in tax and commitments to keep taxation low, the Conservative Party has significantly reduced government spending, through the austerity programme which commenced in 2010, subsequent to the 2007–2008 financial crisis.

In 2019 and during the election campaign that year, Boris Johnson signalled an end to austerity with increased public expenditure, in areas including healthcare, education, transport, welfare, and the police.

In the previous parliament, modernising forces were represented by MPs such as Neil O'Brien, who has argued that the party needs to renew its policies and image, and is said to be inspired by Macron's centrist politics.

[194] Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said in 2008 that state multiculturalism policies had created a "terrible" legacy of "cultural despair" and dislocation, which has encouraged support for "extremists" on both sides of the debate.

[196][197][198] However, this was not solely as a result of intentional government policy – during this period, there were significant refugee flows into the UK and an increased level of asylum applications due to conflict and persecution globally.

[201] In the four years following this announcement, net migration increased annually, in large part due to the number of health care workers, and their dependents, that were invited into the country because of recruitment problems caused by Brexit and the pandemic.

[212] Beyond relations with the United States, the Commonwealth and the EU, the Conservative Party has generally supported a pro free-trade foreign policy within the mainstream of international affairs.

[247] Rudd pledged specifically to review and address the uneven impact of Universal Credit implementation on economically disadvantaged women, which had been the subject of numerous reports by the Radio 4 You and Yours programme and others.

[256] In 2010 the Conservatives campaigned to cut the perceived bureaucracy of the modern police force and pledged greater legal protection to people convicted of defending themselves against intruders.

The party opposed many of Tony Blair's reforms, such as the removal of the hereditary peers,[269] the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into British law, and the 2009 creation of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, a function formerly carried out by the House of Lords.

[304] However, an investigation conducted by The New York Times shortly after the invasion of Ukraine determined that a £399,810 donation made by British-Israeli businessman Ehud Sheleg in 2018 was in fact given directly to him by his father-in-law, Russian oligarch Sergei Kopytov.

[299] An investigation by the Good Law Project found that in spite of Johnson's claims that donations from those with links to the Russian government was to stop,[301] since the start of the war, the Conservatives have accepted at least £243,000 from Russia and Kremlin-associated donors.

[308] When Sir Christopher Lawson was appointed as a marketing director at Conservative Central Office in 1981, he developed a logo design based on the Olympic flame in the colours of the Union Jack,[309] which was intended to represent leadership, striving to win, dedication, and a sense of community.

[311] In 2006, there was a rebranding exercise to emphasise the Conservatives' commitment to environmentalism; a project costing £40,000 resulted in a sketched silhouette of an oak tree, a national symbol, which was said to represent "strength, endurance, renewal and growth".

Their goal was to reduce the role of the government in the economy and to this end, they supported cuts in direct taxation, the privatisation of nationalised industries and a reduction in the size and scope of the welfare state.

To this end, it emphasises the country's Anglican heritage, oppose any transfer of power away from the United Kingdom—either downwards to the nations and regions or upwards to the European Union—and seek to place greater emphasis on traditional family structures to repair what it sees as a broken society in the UK.

It is a strong advocate of marriage and believes the Conservative Party should back the institution with tax breaks and have opposed the alleged assaults on both traditional family structures and fatherhood.

For example, John Major was the ostensibly "Thatcherite" candidate during the 1990 leadership election, but he consistently promoted One-Nation Conservatives to the higher reaches of his cabinet during his time as Prime Minister.