On 30 November 2017, the party underwent their second leadership election as its leader, Daniel Feetham, resigned in July.

The first GSD administration was made up of Peter Caruana [as Chief Minister], Peter Montegriffo [as Deputy Chief Minister], Ernest Britto, Hubert Corby, Keith Azopardi, Joe Holliday, Bernard Linares and Jaime Netto.

[3][4][5] The party supports the current constitutional status of Gibraltar as an autonomous British overseas territory and is opposed to any proposal of joint British–Spanish sovereignty.

[6] The GSD has traditionally been less hostile in its attitude to Spain than its main rival, the Gibraltar Socialist Labour Party.

[12] In the 2007 election to the newly named (and reorganised) Gibraltar Parliament, the party won 49.33% of the popular vote and 10 seats.

They gained 2 more seats, rising 6 to 8, thus returning to become Gibraltar's sole Opposition Party since 2015 (1 seat from the sole TG MP, Marlene Hassan Nahon, who announced a couple months before that she wasn't seeking re-election and was retiring from politics; and the other from The Alliance's new MP, Vijay Daryanani ((LPG)) ).

Both of them were polled low and were not elected into Parliament as a result Youseff's past social media posts from 2018 gained controversy due to them being seen as "antisemitic" for his references of his support for Palestine for the ongoing decades-long internal and religious conflicts between them and Israel.

He apologised for offending the local Jewish community on GBC News during the election campaign but denied the accusations of him attending an anti-semitic Palestinian march.

Daniella Tilbury also received controversy due to her past allegations of bullying her staff and students during her chair and executive roles at the University of Gibraltar, resulting for her to resign from her posts.