John Major William Hague

Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard

David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and leader of the Conservative Party.

David Cameron won the subsequent leadership campaign. Cameron beat his closest rival, David Davis, by a margin of more than two to one, taking 134,446 votes to 64,398. He then announced his intention to reform the Conservatives, saying they needed to change the way they looked, felt, thought and behaved. Although Cameron's views are probably left of the party membership and he has sought to make the Conservative brand more attractive to young, socially liberal voters, - he has also expressed his admiration for former PM Margaret Thatcher, describing himself as a "big fan of Thatcher's", though he questions whether that makes him a "Thatcherite".

The Conservative Party today

The Conservative Party, now officially the governing party without a majority, lead a coalition government in the House of Commons between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. The Conservatives have 306 MPs of the available 650, in addition to the 57 Liberal Democrat MPs leading to a governing majority with the confidence of the House of Commons, currently set at 326 seats.

In preparation for the UK General Election, the Conservative Party launched its manifesto at an event hosted at the disused Battersea Power Station site in London on 13 April 2010.

Current policies

Since the election of David Cameron as leader, party policy has increasingly focused on social and quality of life issues such as the environment, government services (most prominently the National Health Service and the Home Office) and schools.

Defence of the Union

The Conservative Party continues to argue for the continuation of the Union and against Scottish independence. Current leader, David Cameron, has insisted that he was willing to "do everything and anything to keep our two countries as one."

Economic policy

The party's reputation for economic stewardship was dealt a blow by Black Wednesday in 1992, in which billions of pounds were spent in an effort to keep the pound within the European Exchange Rate Mechanism system at an overvalued rate. Combined with the recession of the early 1990s 'Black Wednesday' allowed Tony Blair and then-Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown to promise greater economic competence.

One concrete economic policy of recent years has been opposition to the European single currency. Anticipating the growing Euroscepticism within his party.

Conservative leaders, including David Cameron, positioned the party firmly against the abolition of the pound. This policy is broadly popular with the British electorate, although voters typically rank Europe as an issue of low importance compared to education, healthcare, immigration and crime.

The Conservatives have also ruled out dropping plans of allowing the royal family another £7 million on top of their yearly allowance.^{[citation needed]}

Social policy

In recent years, 'modernisers' in the party have claimed that the association between social conservatism and the Conservatives (manifest in policies such as tax incentives for married couples, the removal of the link between pensions and earnings, and criticism of public financial support for those who do not work) have played a role in the electoral decline of the party in the 1990s and early 2000s. The party has strongly criticised Labour's "state multiculturalism".^[37] multiculturalism had created a "terrible" legacy, a cultural vacuum that has been exploited by "extremists".^[38] However conservative critics such as Peter Hitchens assert that Cameron's is an equally multicultural outlook^[39] and accuse the Conservative Party of promoting what they see as "Islamic extremists."^[40]