title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Since accession to the EEC, which developed into the EU, British membership has been a source of heated debate within the Conservative Party.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Heath had come to power in June 1970 and the last possible date for the next general election was not until mid-1975. However a general election was held in February 1974 in a bid to win public support during a national emergency caused by the miners' strike. However, Heath's attempt to win a second term in power at this "snap" election failed, as a deadlock result left no party with an overall majority. The Conservatives had more votes than Labour, but Labour had four more seats. Heath resigned within days, after failing to gain Liberal Party support to form a coalition government, paving the way for Harold Wilson and Labour to return to power as a minority government. Heath's hopes of returning to power later in the year were ended when Labour won the October 1974 election with an overall majority of three seats.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Loss of power weakened Heath's control over the party and Margaret Thatcher deposed him in the 1975 leadership election. The UK in the 1970s had seen sustained high inflation rates, which were above 20% at the time of the leadership election, subsequently falling to below 10%; unemployment had risen, and over the winter of 1978–79 there was a series of strikes known as the "Winter of Discontent". Thatcher led her party to victory at the 1979 general election with a manifesto which concentrated on the party's philosophy rather than presenting a "shopping list" of policies.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: 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, high taxes, and a generous welfare state. She did not challenge the National Health Service, and supported the Cold War policies of the consensus, but otherwise tried to dismantle and delegitimise it. To replace the old post-war consensus, she built a right-wing political ideology that became known as Thatcherism, based on social and economic ideas from British and American intellectuals such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Thatcher believed that too much socially democratic-oriented government policy was leading to a long-term decline in the British economy. As a result, her government pursued a programme of economic liberalism, adopting a free-market approach to public services based on the sale of publicly owned industries and utilities, as well as a reduction in trade union power. She held the belief that the existing trend of unions was bringing economic progress to a standstill by enforcing "wildcat" strikes, keeping wages artificially high and forcing unprofitable industries to stay open.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: One of Thatcher's largest and most successful policies assisted council house tenants in public housing to purchase their homes at favourable rates. The "Right to Buy" had emerged in the late-1940s but was too great a challenge to the Post-War Consensus to win Conservative endorsement. Thatcher from her earliest days in politics favoured the idea because it would lead to a "property-owning democracy", an important idea that had emerged in the 1920s. Some local Conservative-run councils enacted profitable local sales schemes during the late-1960s. By the 1970s, many working-class people had ample incomes to afford to buy homes, and eagerly adopted Thatcher's invitation to purchase their homes at a sizable discount. The new owners were more likely to vote Conservative, as Thatcher had hoped.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Thatcher led the Conservatives to two further electoral victories with landslide majorities in 1983 and 1987. She was greatly admired by her supporters for her leadership in the Falklands War of 1982—which coincided with a dramatic boost in her popularity—and for policies such as giving the right to council house tenants to buy their council house at a discount on market value. She was also deeply unpopular in certain sections of society due to high unemployment, which reached its highest level since the 1930s, peaking at over 3,000,000 people following her economic reforms, and her response to the miners' strike. Unemployment had doubled between 1979 and 1982, largely due to Thatcher's monetarist battle against inflation. At the time of the 1979 general election, inflation had been at 9% or under for the previous year, having decreased under Callaghan, then increased to over 20% in the first two years of the Thatcher ministry, but it had fallen again to 5.8% by the start of 1983 (it continued to be under 7% until 1990). The British economy benefitted in the first Thatcher ministry by tax income from North Sea oil coming on stream.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The period of unpopularity of the Conservatives in the early 1980s coincided with a crisis in the Labour Party, which then formed the main opposition. The Social Democratic Party (SDP) was established in 1981 and consisted of more than twenty breakaway Labour MPs, who quickly formed the SDP-Liberal Alliance with the Liberal Party. By the turn of 1982, the SDP-Liberal Alliance was ahead of the Conservatives in the opinion polls, but victory in the Falklands War in June that year, 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.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Thatcher now faced, arguably, her most serious rival yet after the 1983 general election, when Michael Foot resigned as Leader of the Labour Party and was succeeded by Neil Kinnock. With a new leader at the helm, Labour were clearly determined to defeat the Conservatives at the next election, and for virtually the entirety of Thatcher's second ministry, it was looking a very serious possibility, as the lead in the opinion polls constantly saw a change in leadership from the Conservatives to Labour, with the Alliance occasionally scraping into first place.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: By the time of the general election in June 1987, the economy was stronger, with lower inflation and falling unemployment and Thatcher secured her third successive electoral victory with a second, albeit reduced, landslide majority.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The introduction of the Community Charge (known by its opponents as the "poll tax") in 1989 is often cited as contributing to her political downfall. The summer of 1989 saw her fall behind Neil Kinnock's Labour in the opinion polls for the first time since 1986, and her party's fall in popularity continued into 1990. By the second half of that year, opinion polls were showing that Labour had a lead of up to 16 points over the Conservatives, and they faced a tough 18 months ahead of them if they were to prevent Kinnock's ambition to become Prime Minister from becoming a reality. At the same time, the economy was sliding into another recession.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Internal party tensions led to a leadership challenge by the Conservative MP Michael Heseltine; and, after months of speculation about her future as Prime Minister, she resigned on 28 November 1990, making way for a new Conservative leader more likely to win the next general election in the interests of party unity.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: John Major won the party leadership election on 27 November 1990, and his appointment led to an almost immediate boost in Conservative Party fortunes. A MORI poll six days before Mrs Thatcher's resignation had shown the Conservatives to be 11 points behind Labour, but within two months the Conservatives had returned to the top of the opinion polls with a narrow lead.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: A general election had to be held within the next eighteen months and the UK economy was sliding into recession, but 1991 was a year of electoral uncertainty as the Conservatives and Labour regularly swapped places at the top of the opinion polls, and Major resisted Neil Kinnock's numerous calls for an immediate election.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The election was finally held on 9 April 1992 and the Conservatives won a fourth successive electoral victory, even though the economy was still in recession and most of the polls had predicted either a narrow Labour victory or a hung parliament. Major's vigorous campaigning, notably his claim that the UK would have higher prices and higher taxes under a Labour government, was seen to have been crucial to his election win (in which he became the first—and as of 2015, only—Prime Minister to attract 14,000,000 votes in a general election), as was a high-profile campaign by the newspaper "The Sun" against Labour leader Neil Kinnock, who resigned in the aftermath of the election to be succeeded by John Smith. The Conservative Party also touched upon the issue of immigration, claiming that under Labour, immigration would rise hugely.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The UK economy was deep in recession by this stage and remained so until the end of the year. The pound sterling was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism on 16 September 1992, a day thereafter referred to as "Black Wednesday".


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Soon after, approximately one million householders faced repossession of their homes during a recession that saw a sharp rise in unemployment, taking it close to 3,000,000 people. The party subsequently lost much of its reputation for good financial stewardship although the end of the recession was declared in April 1993 bringing economic recovery and a fall in unemployment.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: From 1994 to 1997, Major privatised British Rail, splitting it up into franchises to be run by the private sector. Its success is hotly debated, with a large increase in passenger numbers and investment in the network balanced by worries about the level of subsidy. Train fares cost more than under British Rail.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The party was plagued by internal division and infighting, mainly over the UK's role in the European Union. The party's Eurosceptic wing, represented by MPs such as John Redwood, opposed further EU integration, whilst the party's pro-European wing, represented by those such as Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke, was broadly supportive. The issue of the creation of a single European currency also inflamed tensions, and these would continue to dog the party until the early-2000s (decade)".


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Major also had to survive a leadership challenge in 1995 by Redwood, then the Secretary of State for Wales. Major survived, but Redwood received 89 votes from MPs, as well as the backing of the "Sun" newspaper, which described the choice as being between "Redwood or Deadwood". This further undermined Major's influence in the Conservative Party.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The Conservative government was also increasingly accused in the media of "sleaze". Their support reached its lowest ebb in late 1994, after the sudden death of Labour Party leader John Smith and the election of Tony Blair as his successor, when Labour had up to 60% of the vote in opinion polls and had a lead of some 30 points ahead of the Conservatives. The Labour lead was gradually narrowed over the next two years, as the Conservatives gained some credit for the strong economic recovery and fall in unemployment. But as the 1997 general election loomed, despite their high-profile New Labour, New Danger campaign, it was still looking certain that Labour would win.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: An effective opposition campaign by the Labour Party culminated in a landslide defeat for the Conservatives in 1997 that was Labour's largest ever parliamentary victory and the worst defeat for the Conservatives since the 1906 general election 91 years earlier. The 1997 general election left the Conservative Party as an England-only party, with all Scottish and Welsh seats having been lost, and not a single new seat having been gained anywhere.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: John Major resigned as party leader after the Conservatives were heavily defeated in a landslide and was succeeded by William Hague. Though Hague was a strong orator, a Gallup poll for "The Daily Telegraph" found that two-thirds of voters regarded him as "a bit of a wally", for headlines such as his claim that he drank 14 pints of beer in a single day in his youth. He was also criticised for attending the Notting Hill Carnival and for wearing a baseball cap in public in what were seen as poor attempts to appeal to younger voters. Shortly before the 2001 general election, Hague was much maligned for a speech in which he predicted that a re-elected Labour government would turn the UK into a "foreign land". The BBC also reported that the Conservative peer John Lord Taylor criticised Hague for not removing the whip from John Townend, a Conservative MP, after the latter made a speech in which he said the British were becoming "a mongrel race", although Hague did reject Townend's views.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The 2001 general election resulted in a net gain of just one seat for the Conservative Party, just months after the fuel protests of September 2000 had seen the Conservatives briefly take a narrow lead over Labour in the opinion polls.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: In 2001, Iain Duncan Smith was elected leader of the Conservative Party. Although Duncan Smith was a strong Eurosceptic, the issue did not define his leadership. 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.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: However, before he could lead the party into a general election, Duncan Smith lost the vote on a motion of no confidence by MPs who felt that the party would not be returned to government under his leadership. This was despite the Conservative support equalling that of Labour in the months leading up to his departure from the leadership.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Under Howard's leadership in the 2005 general election, the Conservative Party increased their total vote share by around 0.7% (up to 32.4%) and—more significantly—their number of parliamentary seats by 33 (up to 198 seats). This gain accompanied a large decline in the Labour vote, and the election reduced Labour's majority from 167 to 68 and its share of the vote to 35.2%. The campaign, based on the slogan "Are you thinking what we're thinking?", was designed by Australian pollster Lynton Crosby. The day following the election, on 6 May, Howard announced that he did not feel it was right to continue as leader after defeat in the general election, also saying that he would be too old to lead the party into another campaign and would therefore step down after allowing time for the party to amend its leadership election rules.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: David Cameron won the 2005 leadership election. Cameron defeated 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 and realign the Conservatives, saying they needed to change the way they looked, felt, thought and behaved, advocating a more centre-right stance as opposed to their recent staunchly right-wing platform. Cameron's views were slightly to the left of the party membership and he sought to make the Conservative brand more attractive to young, socially liberal voters, he has also expressed his admiration for Margaret Thatcher, describing himself as a "big fan of Thatcher's", though he questions whether that makes him a "Thatcherite". For most of 2006 and the first half of 2007, polls showed leads over Labour for the Conservatives.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Polls became more volatile in summer 2007 with the accession of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, although polls gave the Conservatives a lead after October of that year and, by May 2008, with the UK's economy sliding into its first recession since 1992. The Conservatives gained control of the London mayoralty for the first time in May 2008 after Boris Johnson defeated the Labour incumbent, Ken Livingstone.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The Conservative lead in the opinion polls had been almost unbroken for nearly three years when Britain finally went to the polls on 6 May 2010, though since the turn of 2010 most polls had shown the Conservative lead as less than 10 points wide. The election resulted in a hung parliament with the Conservatives having the most seats (306) but being twenty seats short of an overall majority. Following the resignation of Gordon Brown, Cameron was named the country's new Prime Minister, and the Conservatives entered government in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats—the first postwar coalition government.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: In May 2014, the Conservatives were defeated in the European parliamentary elections, coming in third place behind the UK Independence Party and Labour. UKIP ended with 24 MEPs, Labour 20, and the Conservatives 19. The result was described by UKIP leader Nigel Farage as "disastrous" for Cameron, and the leaders of the other main parties.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: In September 2014, the Unionist side, championed by Labour as well as by the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats, won in the Scottish Independence referendum by 55% No to 45% Yes on the question "Should Scotland be an independent country". This can be seen as a victory for British Unionism, a core part of traditional Conservative ideology, and also for Cameron as the incumbent Prime Minister.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: At the 2015 general election, the Conservatives won a majority of seats in the House of Commons and formed a majority government under Cameron. The party increased its national vote share, becoming the first incumbent party to do so since 1900. The result was unexpected and exceeded even the party leadership's expectations, as most polls had predicted a hung parliament. This was also the first general election since 1992 in which the Conservatives had won an overall majority, although the vote share of 36.9% was lower than the previous four Conservative majority governments under Thatcher and Major. In March 2017, the party was fined £70,000, the largest fine of this sort in British political history, after an Electoral Commission investigation found "significant failures" by the party to report its 2015 general election campaign spending.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: On the morning of Friday 24 June 2016, Cameron announced his intention to resign as Prime Minister, after he failed to convince the British public to stay in the European Union, and subsequently the Conservative Party leadership election was announced with Theresa May, Michael Gove, Stephen Crabb, Liam Fox and Andrea Leadsom confirmed as the official contenders to be his successor with Boris Johnson ruling himself out of the process. After Crabb withdrew, Fox and then Gove were eliminated in successive ballots by Conservative MPs, leaving Leadsom and May as the final candidates to be put before the wider Conservative Party membership. Leadsom subsequently withdrew from the contest on 11 July.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: On 11 July 2016, Theresa May became the leader of the Conservative Party with immediate effect following the withdrawal from the leadership election of her sole remaining opponent, Andrea Leadsom. Appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 13 July 2016, May promised social reform and a more centrist political outlook for the Conservative Party and its government. In a speech after her appointment, May emphasised the term Unionist in the name of the party, reminding all of "the precious, precious bond between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland". May considers herself a one nation conservative.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: May's early cabinet appointments were interpreted both as "centrist and conciliatory", an effort to reunite the party in the wake of the UK's vote to leave the European Union, and as "a shift to the right" according to "The Guardian".


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: May appointed former Mayor of London Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary, former Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Amber Rudd as Home Secretary, and former Shadow Home Secretary David Davis to the newly created office of Brexit Secretary. Liam Fox and Philip Hammond, who had both previously served as Secretary of State for Defence (Fox from 2010 to 2011 and Hammond from 2011 to 2014), were appointed to the newly created office of International Trade Secretary and as Chancellor of the Exchequer respectively.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Replacing Michael Gove, Liz Truss was made Justice Secretary, the "first female Lord Chancellor in the thousand-year history of the role".


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Andrea Leadsom, who was energy minister and May's primary competitor for party leader, was made the new environment secretary. However, former Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers resigned from Cabinet after May offered her a different, non-Cabinet post that was, she said, "not one which I felt I could take on". Nearly half of the first May ministry were women.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: In her first speech, May made a promise to combat the "burning injustice" in British society and create a union "between all of our citizens" and promising to be an advocate for the "ordinary working-class family" and not just for "privileged few" in the UK.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: In April 2017, the Cabinet agreed to hold a general election on 8 June. During the resulting campaign, Theresa May asked the electorate to "strengthen my hand" in Brexit negotiations, promised "strong and stable leadership in the national interest" and warned of a "coalition of chaos" under Jeremy Corbyn.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Contrary to opinion polling at the time, the election resulted in a hung parliament, with the Conservative Party having 317 seats in the House of Commons, but without an overall majority. The Democratic Unionist Party suggested it would be able to provide a confidence and supply arrangement depending on negotiations. On 9 June 2017, May announced her intention to form a new minority government with support from the DUP, which was finalised on 26 June.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: On 8 January 2018, May announced her first major cabinet reshuffle, keeping in place most ministers, but promoting others.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: In May 2018, the Conservative Party was accused of failing to take action on Islamophobia that was allegedly happening in the party.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: In February 2019, three Conservative MPs – Heidi Allen, Sarah Wollaston, and Anna Soubry – defected from the party to join the Independent Group, a pro-EU political association of MPs founded by seven former members of the Labour Party. The MPs said the reasons for their departure were their opposition to the party's handling of Brexit, what they saw as the takeover of the Conservative party by 'right wing, ... hard-line anti-EU' MPs, and lack of concern from the Conservative party for the 'most vulnerable in society'.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: May announced her resignation from the leadership of the Conservative Party on 24 May 2019, intending to leave the role on 7 June. However, she remained Prime Minister until a successor was elected by the party.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Theresa May resigned as Prime Minister on 24 July 2019 after her successor, Boris Johnson, was elected on 23 July 2019. She remained as the Member of Parliament for the Parliamentary Constituency of Maidenhead and won re-election for a further term as a backbencher in the December general election.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: In July 2019, former Foreign Secretary and Mayor of London Boris Johnson defeated Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, with 66% of the vote in the final ballot of Conservative Party members, to become Leader of the Conservative Party. He became Prime Minister the next day.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Johnson lost his working majority in the House of Commons on 3 September 2019 when former Justice minister Phillip Lee crossed the floor during Johnson's speech to join the Liberal Democrats, later explaining that he believed the Conservative party had been "infected with the twin diseases of populism and English nationalism". The same day, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond announced that he would "defend his party" against "incomers and entryists", perceived by some as referring to Johnson's adviser Dominic Cummings. Later that same day, 21 Conservative MPs had the Conservative whip withdrawn after voting with the Opposition to grant the House of Commons control over its order paper, leading to Johnson becoming the first Prime Minister to lose his first Commons vote.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Subsequent votes in the Commons effected the passing of the Benn Act, which Prime Minister Johnson controversially dubbed the 'Surrender Act'. The Act required the Prime Minister to request a formal extension to Article 50 if a new withdrawal agreement had not been approved by Parliament by 19 October 2019. After having agreed a revised withdrawal agreement (WA) with the European Union on 17 October, the Government put a motion before the House of Commons in a rare Saturday sitting on 19 October. This motion requested approval for the revised WA, such that the Benn Act would have been satisfied and no extension to Article 50 would be legally required. An amendment to the motion was passed, withholding formal approval of the WA until all the necessary legislation had been passed by Parliament. The following week, the full Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) was introduced. It passed a second reading, but the programme motion for the bill put forward by the Government was voted down. This meant that there was no guarantee that the legislation would be passed in time to allow the United Kingdom to legally withdraw from the European Union (EU) on 31 October. Johnson had made withdrawal from the EU by this date "with no ifs, buts or maybes" a key pledge during his campaign for the leadership of the Conservative Party.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Johnson then immediately halted the WAB, and then called for a general election to be held. He made clear his view that Parliament was "...refusing to deliver Brexit. It's impossible to deliver legislation. It's time, frankly, the opposition summoned up the nerve to submit themselves to the judgment of our collective boss, which is the UK." After failing to gain the necessary support of two-thirds of all MPs to call an election under the provisions of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, the Government indicated its intention to pass a short bill requiring only a simple majority of votes to hold such an election. The early parliamentary general election act was passed on 29 October 2019 and specified that a general election was to be held on 12 December 2019. This election resulted in Johnson's Conservatives winning of a majority of 80 seats in the House of Commons, a significant improvement on their 2017 result, and indeed the Party's largest majority since 1987, under Thatcher. The party won several constituencies, especially in Northern England but also in the Midlands and North Wales (often dubbed Labour's Red Wall), that the party had either never won before or had not produced a Tory majority in several decades. These results prompted observations from a number of political analysts in both the United Kingdom and abroad that the Conservatives under Johnson had widened their appeal to working class voters, particularly among those who had voted for Brexit. Having previously been split on the issue of British membership of the European Union since the premiership of John Major, the Conservatives adopted a clear pro-Brexit line under Johnson.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: In late December 2019, a number of far-right activists claimed to have joined the Conservatives, prompting criticism by David Lammy over entryism.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: On 20 December 2019, MPs passed an agreement for withdrawing from the EU, the United Kingdom formally left at 11pm on 31 January 2020. This began a transitional period, in which agreements between the UK and the EU would remain the same until 31 December 2020.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Johnson presided over the UK's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Johnson initially held off on enacting lockdown measures, instead choosing to provide soft advice and protect vulnerable groups. With a rising death toll and hospital admission rate, Johnson later decided to enact a national lockdown on 23 March 2020. Johnson himself caught coronavirus during this period, and was moved to an intensive care unit on 7 April. Dominic Raab, who had been appointed First Secretary of State, deputised for Johnson whilst he was sick. Johnson later recovered from his illness, and returned to work on 27 April. Throughout May to July, COVID-19 restrictions began to ease in England.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Johnson received criticism in May 2020 for his handling of the Dominic Cummings scandal, in which Johnson's chief advisor Dominic Cummings was accused of breaking lockdown rules by travelling from London to County Durham whilst experiencing symptoms of COVID-19. Johnson defended Cummings' actions and refused to fire him.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: With a significant increase in incidences of coronavirus during Winter 2020, Johnson enacted a system of tiered restrictions, in which areas across England would have varying levels of restrictions based on the number of cases in the area. The plan was criticised by some as ineffective, with some suggesting stricter lockdowns were being imposed on areas in northern England, increasing the north–south divide. Johnson again presided over a second strict lockdown, initially focusing on London and the south east on 20 December before increasing to the entire country two weeks later, due to the emergence of the Delta variant. The lockdown coincided with the approval and roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccine, with some praise for the speed of the roll-out. All legal restrictions were lifted in July 2021.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: From late 2021 onwards, Johnson received huge public backlash for the Partygate scandal, in which various senior members of government, aides, and Cabinet Office staff were pictured holding parties and other gatherings during lockdown. The Metropolitan Police investigated these claims and eventually fined Johnson for breaking lockdown rules in April 2022. Calls from leading opposition figures, including Labour Party leader Keir Starmer and the First Ministers of Scotland and Wales, for Johnson to resign as a consequence of Partygate were rejected. In July 2022, Johnson admitted to appointing Chris Pincher as deputy chief whip while being aware of allegations of sexual assault against him, and apologised. This, along with Partygate and increasing criticisms on Johnson's handling of the cost-of-living crisis, resulted in many members of the party losing confidence in Johnson as leader, and mass resignations from the Cabinet; this led to Johnson announcing his resignation as Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister on 7 July.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Boris Johnson's successor as leader of the party was confirmed as Liz Truss on 5 September, following a leadership election. She defeated Rishi Sunak, with 57.4% of the final ballot of party members. She became Prime Minister the following day.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The death of Queen Elizabeth II occurred just two days into Truss' premiership, making Truss the last Prime Minister to have been appointed by the Queen. Throughout the mourning period that followed, Truss met Charles III and accompanied him on visits to various remembrance services across the country.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: In a strategy labelled Trussonomics, Truss introduced policies in response to the cost of living crisis, including tax cuts, price caps on energy bills, and government help to pay them. However, her tax cuts were met with severe criticism as they benefitted higher earners much more, due to removing the top 45% rate of tax and offering tax cuts through the medium of cancelling a rise in national insurance. Markets reacted poorly to the actions of Truss and her Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng. After the announcement of the 'mini-budget' on 26 September, the pound fell to a record low of 1.03 against the dollar, and UK government gilt yields rose to 4.3%, prompting the Bank of England to trigger an emergency bond-buying programme. Condemnation was received from the public, the Labour Party, and from within the Conservative Party itself, and Truss scrapped some aspects of the budget, including axing the top rate of tax. In response to the criticism, Truss fired Kwarteng and appointed Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor. She also appeared in a number of interviews, including one with the BBC in which she apologised for the 'mistakes' she made in the first weeks of her premiership. After continuous backlash against her in Tory backbenches, Truss announced her pending resignation as Prime Minister on 20 October 2022, after just 44 days in office. This is the shortest term in British political history, breaking George Canning's previous record of 119 days after he died whilst in office.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Truss was observed as having not received a so-called 'honeymoon period' at the beginning of her term, wherein a leader experiences a polling boost upon taking office. Whereas former Labour prime minister Sir Tony Blair had an approval rating of up to around 90% during the early months of his premiership, polling suggested that Truss had an approval rating lower than any ever received by Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn, including being mostly disapproved of by 2019 Conservative voters. Truss also oversaw the worst polling the Conservative Party has ever received - shortly after Truss' resignation the Labour Party's seven-day polling average stands at 54% up from 41% on 23 September, with the Conservatives' average falling from 33% to 21%. One poll, held between 26 and 30 September, suggested a loss of 219 Conservative seats, resulting in a Labour landslide.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Another leadership election began after Truss' resignation, with an increased nomination threshold of 100 and promises to conclude before 28 October, with Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt declaring their candidacies. Boris Johnson was widely expected to attempt a comeback, but, while claiming he had the sufficient amount of support to enter the race, ruled himself out on 23 October. On 24 October, Mordaunt pulled out of the leadership race, and Sunak was declared Leader.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: In late 2022 repeated opinion polls showed Labour well ahead of the Conservatives. Chris Hopkins of "Savanta ComRes" expected a continuing large lead for Labour, John Curtice maintained polling had not improved for the Conservatives after the autumn budget. Other unnamed experts maintained a large lead for Labour seemed to be a “new normal”. In December 2022, the Conservatives lost the by-election in the City of Chester and Labour increased their majority. Two weeks later, the Conservatives had a similar result in the Stretford and Urmston by-election with Labour increasing its share of the vote.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The Conservative Party believes that a free market and individual achievement are the primary factors behind economic prosperity.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: A leading economic theory advocated by Conservatives is supply-side economics. This theory holds that reduced income tax rates increase growth and enterprise (although a reduction in the budget deficit has sometimes taken priority over cutting taxes). The party has recently focused on the social market economy in Britain, promoting a free market for competition with social balance to create fairness. This has included curbs on the banking sector, enterprise zones to revive regions in Britain and grand infrastructure projects such as high-speed rail.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: One concrete economic policy of recent years has been opposition to the European single currency, the euro. 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. However, several members of Major's cabinet, such as Kenneth Clarke, were personally supportive of EMU participation. Following Major's resignation after the 1997 election defeat, all subsequent Conservative leaders have positioned the party firmly against the adoption of the euro.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Following Labour's victory in the 1997 general election, the Conservative Party opposed Labour's decision to grant the Bank of England independent control of interest rates—on the grounds that it would be a prelude to the abolition of the pound sterling and acceptance of the European single currency, and also expressed concern over the removal of monetary policy from democratic control. However, Bank independence was popular amongst the financial community as it helped to keep inflation low. The Conservatives accepted Labour's policy in early 2000.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Since returning to power, the 50% top rate of income tax was reduced to 45% by the Cameron-Clegg coalition. 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. This program became increasing unpopular and as a result, during the 2019 election campaign, now incumbent Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson signalled an end to austerity with promises to restore 20,000 police officers from those previously cut and increase public investment in the NHS, amongst other anti-austerity promises.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Socially conservative policies such as tax incentives for married couples and the belief that benefits for those out of work should be reduced may have played a role in the party's electoral decline in the 1990s and early 2000s, and so the party has attempted to seek a new direction. The introduction of equal marriage rights for LGBT+ individuals in 2010 can be said to have represented a shift away from social conservatism, though the extent to which this policy truly represented a more 'liberal' Conservative party has been challenged.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Since 1997, debate has occurred within the party between 'modernisers' such as Alan Duncan, who believe that the Conservatives should modify their public stances on social issues, and 'traditionalists' such as Liam Fox and Owen Paterson, who believe that the party should remain faithful to its traditional conservative platform. William Hague and Michael Howard campaigned on traditionalist grounds in the 2001 and 2005 general elections respectively, and 2001 also saw the election of traditionalist Iain Duncan Smith as party leader. In the current parliament, modernising forces are 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. Ruth Davidson is also seen as a reforming figure. Many of the original 'traditionalists' remain influential, though Duncan Smith's influence in terms of Commons contributions has waned. Many 'traditionalist' backbenchers such as Christopher Chope and Peter Bone command significant media attention for their use of filibustering and frequent interjections, and so remain influential forces in the Commons, though they cannot be taken to represent all 'traditionalist' Conservatives.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The party has strongly criticised Labour's "state multiculturalism". 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. David Cameron responded to Grieve's comments by agreeing that policies of "state multiculturalism" that treat social groups as distinct, for example policies that "treat British Muslims as Muslims, rather than as British citizens", are wrong. However, he expressed support for the premise of multiculturalism on the whole, arguing that it was "absolutely right" to encourage society to integrate more "to build a strong British identity for the future".


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Official statistics showed that EU and non-EU mass immigration, together with asylum seeker applications, all increased substantially during Cameron's term in office. 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 in a number of other states. Some political and media discourses at the time suggested that this increase in immigration and reception of refugees and asylum seekers caused significant strain on other areas of social policy through overburdening the NHS and the welfare state – these discourses were influential, but have not been empirically or decisively proven to be true. In 2019, Conservative Home Secretary Priti Patel announced that the government would enact stricter immigration reforms by cracking down on illegal immigration and scrapping freedom of movement with the European Union following the completion of Brexit. These reforms also included introducing more stringent measures for migrating to the UK such as requiring that immigrants speak English, have skilled job offers, and meet minimum salary requirements, as well as persuading businesses to hire British workers over outsourcing to low-skilled immigrants.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: For much of the 20th century, the Conservative Party took a broadly Atlanticist stance in relations with the United States, favouring close ties with the United States and similarly aligned nations such as Canada, Australia and Japan. The Conservatives have generally favoured a diverse range of international alliances, ranging from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to the Commonwealth of Nations.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Close US-British relations have been an element of Conservative foreign policy since World War II. Winston Churchill during his 1951–1955 post-war premiership built up a strong relationship with the Eisenhower Administration in the United States. Harold Macmillan demonstrated a similarly close relationship with the Democratic administration of John F. Kennedy. Though the US–British relationship in foreign affairs has often been termed a 'Special Relationship', a term coined by Winston Churchill, this has often been observed most clearly where leaders in each country are of a similar political stripe. Out of power and perceived as largely irrelevant by American politicians, Conservative leaders Hague, Duncan-Smith, and Howard each struggled to forge personal relationships with presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. However, the Republican 2008 presidential candidate, John McCain, spoke at the 2006 Conservative Party Conference.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The Conservatives have proposed a Pan-African Free Trade Area, which it says could help entrepreneurial dynamism of African people. The Conservatives pledged to increase aid spending to 0.7% of national income by 2013. They met this pledge in 2014, when spending on aid reached 0.72% of GDP and the commitment was enshrined in UK law in 2015.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: David Cameron had sought to distance himself from former US President Bush and his neoconservative foreign policy, calling for a "rebalancing" of US-UK ties and met Barack Obama during his 2008 European tour. Despite traditional links between the UK Conservatives and US Republicans, and between centre-left Labour and the Democrats, London Mayor Boris Johnson, a Conservative, endorsed Barack Obama in the 2008 election. However, after becoming Prime Minister, Boris Johnson developed a close relationship with Republican President Donald Trump, with both British and American media commentators drawing physical and ideological comparisons between the two leaders. This has also been described as a reestablishing of the "Special Relationship" with the United States following Britain's withdraw from the European Union, as well as returning to the links between the Conservatives and Republican Party.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: 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. The degree to which Conservative Governments have supported interventionist or non-interventionist presidents in the US has often varied with the personal relations between the US president and the British prime minister.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Although stances have changed with successive leadership, the modern Conservative Party generally supports cooperation and maintaining friendly relations with the State of Israel. Historic Conservative statesmen such as Arthur Balfour and Winston Churchill supported the idea of national home for the Jewish people. Under Margaret Thatcher Conservative support for Israel was seen to crystallize. Support for Israel has increased under the leaderships of Theresa May and Boris Johnson, with prominent Conservative figures within the May and Johnson ministries such as Priti Patel, Robert Jenrick, Michael Gove and Sajid Javid strongly endorsing Israel. In 2016, Theresa May publicly rebutted statements made by US Secretary of State John Kerry over the composition of the Israeli government, which some commentators saw as a closer alignment to the stance of the incoming Trump administration. In 2018, the party pledged to proscribe all wings of the Lebanese-based militant group Hezbollah and this was adopted as a UK-wide policy in 2019. In 2019, the Conservative government under Boris Johnson announced plans to stop the influence of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement on local politics which included prohibiting local councils in the United Kingdom from boycotting Israeli products.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: After the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the Conservative Party supported the coalition military action in Afghanistan. The Conservative Party believed that success in Afghanistan would be defined in terms of the Afghans achieving the capability to maintain their own internal and external security. They have repeatedly criticised the former Labour Government for failing to equip British Forces adequately in the earlier days on the campaign—especially highlighting the shortage of helicopters for British Forces resulting from Gordon Brown's £1.4bn cut to the helicopter budget in 2004.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The Conservative Party believes that in the 21st century defence and security are interlinked. It has pledged to break away from holding a traditional Strategic Defence Review and have committed to carrying out a more comprehensive Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) immediately upon coming into office. This review will include both defence and homeland security related matters. The Labour Government last conducted a review in 1998. To prevent a long gap in the future it also pledged to hold regular defence reviews every 4–5 years, and if necessary will put this requirement into legislation. Party officials claim that the SDSR will be a major improvement, and will ensure that Britain maintains generic and flexible capability to adapt to any changing threats. It will be a cross-departmental review that will begin with foreign policy priorities and will bring together all the levers of domestic national security policy with overseas interests and defence priorities.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: As well as an SDSR, the Conservative Party pledged in 2010 to undertake a fundamental and far-reaching review of the procurement process and how defence equipment is provided in Britain. It pledged to reform the procurement process, compile a Green Paper on Sovereignty Capability, and publish another Defence Industrial Strategy following on from the Defence Industrial Strategy in 2005. The Conservative Party has said that there will be four aims for British defence procurement: to provide the best possible equipment at the best possible price; to streamline the procurement process to ensure the speedy delivery of equipment to the front line; to support our industry jobs at home by increasing defence exports; to provide defence procurement that underpins strategic relationships abroad and; to provide predictability to the defence industry.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The Conservative Party also pledged to increase Britain's share of the global defence market as Government policy.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The Conservative Party upholds the view that NATO remains and should remain the most important security alliance for the United Kingdom.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: It has advocated for the creation of a fairer funding mechanism for NATO's expeditionary operations and called for all NATO countries to meet their required defence spending 2% of GDP. As well as this, some Conservatives believe that there is scope for expanding NATO's Article V to include new 21st Century threats such as cybersecurity.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The Conservative Party aims to build enhanced bilateral defence relations with key European partners and believes that it is in Britain's national interest to cooperate fully with all its European neighbours. It has pledged to ensure that any EU military capability must supplement and not supplant British national defence and NATO, and that it is not in the British interest to hand over security to any supranational body.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The Conservatives see it as a priority to encourage all members of the European Union to do more in terms of a commitment to European security at home and abroad.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Regarding the defence role of the European Union, the Conservatives pledged to re-examine some of Britain's EU Defence commitments to determine their practicality and utility; specifically, to reassess UK participation provisions like Permanent Structured Cooperation, the European Defence Agency and EU Battlegroups to determine if there is any value in Britain's participation.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The Conservatives support the UK's possession of nuclear weapons through the Trident nuclear missile programme.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: In 1945, the Conservatives declared support for universal healthcare. Since entering office in 2010, they have introduced the Health and Social Care Act, constituting the biggest reformation that the NHS has ever undertaken. However, there has been much criticism and protest about the 2010 government's actions on the NHS, focusing on budget cuts and privatisation of services. After a 2013 union protest said by police to have been one of the largest protests seen in Manchester, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) said that austerity was having a devastating effect, with 21,000 NHS jobs lost over the previous three months alone, and that "The NHS is one of Britain's finest achievements and we will not allow ministers to destroy, through cuts and privatisation, what has taken generations to build." The Department of Health responded that there was "absolutely no government policy to privatise NHS services".


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The Conservative Party supports current drug prohibition policies. However, views on drugs do vary amongst some MPs in the party. Some Conservative politicians such as former MP Alan Duncan and Crispin Blunt take the libertarian approach that individual freedom and economic freedom of industry and trade should be respected. Other Conservative politicians, despite being economically liberal, are in favour of full prohibition of the ownership and trade of many drugs. Legalisation of cannabis for medical uses is favoured by some Conservative politicians. The party has rejected both decriminalising drugs for personal use and safe consumption rooms.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: In education, the Conservatives have pledged to review the National Curriculum, and introduce the English Baccalaureate. The restoration of discipline was also highlighted, as they want it to be easier for pupils to be searched for contraband items, the granting of anonymity to teachers accused by pupils, and the banning of expelled pupils being returned to schools via appeal panels.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: In Higher education, the Conservatives have increased tuition fees to £9,250 per year, however have ensured that this will not be paid by anyone until they are earning over £25,000. The Scottish Conservatives also support the re-introduction of tuition fees in Scotland. In 2016 the Conservative government extended student loan access in England to postgraduate students to help improve access to education.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Within the EU, the UK is one of the largest recipients of research funding in the European Union, receiving £7 billion between 2007 and 2015, which is invested in universities and research-intensive businesses. Following the vote to leave the EU, Prime Minister Theresa May guaranteed that the Conservative government would protect funding for existing research and development projects in the UK.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: In autumn 2017 the Conservatives decided to introduce the T Level qualification aimed at improving the teaching and administration of technical education.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: As prime minister, David Cameron wanted to 'support family life in Britain' and put families at the centre of domestic social policymaking. He stated in 2014 that there was 'no better place to start' in the Conservative mission of 'building society from the bottom up' than the family, which was responsible for individual welfare and well-being long before the welfare state came into play. He also argued that 'family and politics are inextricably linked'. Both Cameron and Theresa May have aimed at helping families achieve a work-home balance and have previously proposed to offer all parents 12 months parental leave, to be shared by parents as they choose. This policy is now in place, offering 50 weeks total parental leave, of which 37 weeks are paid leave, which can be shared between both parents.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Other policies have included doubling the free hours of childcare for working parents of three and four-year-olds from 15 hours to 30 hours a week during term-time, although parents can reduce the number of hours per week to 22 and spread across 52 weeks of the year. However, numerous childcare providers have argued that this policy is unworkable, as it means that they do not receive enough compensation from the government to make up for the lost childcare fees, and so their businesses are no longer financially viable. The government also introduced a policy to fund 15 hours a week of free education and childcare for 2-year-olds in England if parents are receiving certain state benefits or the child has a SEN statement or diagnosis, worth £2,500 a year per child.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: One of the Conservatives' key policy goals in 2010 was to reduce the number of people in the UK claiming state benefits, and increase the number of people in the workforce. Between 2010 and 2014, all claimants of Incapacity Benefit were moved onto a new benefit scheme, Employment and Support Allowance, which was then subsumed into the Universal Credit system alongside other welfare benefits in 2018. The Universal Credit system has come under immense scrutiny since its introduction. Shortly after her appointment to the Department for Work and Pensions, Secretary of State Amber Rudd acknowledged there were 'real problems' with the Universal Credit system, especially the wait times for initial payments and the housing payments aspect of the combined benefits. 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.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Until 1999, Conservatives opposed the creation of a national minimum wage, as they believed it would cost jobs, and businesses would be reluctant to start business in the UK from fear of high labour costs. However the party have since pledged support and in the July 2015 budget, Chancellor George Osborne announced a National Living Wage of £9/hour, to be introduced by 2020, for those aged 25 and over. The National Minimum Wage in 2012 was £6.19 for over-21-year olds, so the proposed rises in National Living Wage by 2020 will represent a significantly higher pay for many. However, the National Living Wage varies significantly by age, and there is evidence that up to 200,000 eligible individuals are not actually receiving the pay that they should be under the National Living Wage scheme. The party support, and have implemented, the restoration of the link between pensions and earnings, and seek to raise retirement age from 65 to 67 by 2028.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: David Cameron brought several 'green' issues to the forefront of his 2010 campaign. These included proposals designed to impose a tax on workplace car parking spaces, a halt to airport growth, a tax on cars with exceptionally poor petrol mileage, and restrictions on car advertising. Many of these policies were implemented in the Coalition—including the 'Green Deal'.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: In November 2019, UK Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader Boris Johnson did not accept an invitation to a Channel 4 News climate debate on how to tackle the climate crisis that was attended by other political party leaders. Also in 2019, Greenpeace conducted a scorecard on the main parties' environmental commitments placing the party second from bottom (one point above the Brexit Party) and scoring it 7 out of 20. In 2021, Northern Conservative Party MPs declared their support for opening a new coal mine in Cumbria. A poll in 2021 found that one in 15 Conservative MPs (7%) believe climate change is a myth. A poll of over 1,100 Conservative Party members in 2020 found that less than half believe that human activity is responsible for climate change and 9.7% did not believe that climate change was happening at all.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: 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.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The party has also campaigned for the creation of a UK Bill of Rights to replace the Human Rights Act 1998, but this was vetoed by their coalition partners the Liberal Democrats. Some Conservatives, particularly within the socially conservative Cornerstone Group, support the re-introduction of the death penalty.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The Conservatives' 2017 manifesto pledged to create a national infrastructure police force, subsuming the existing British Transport Police; Civil Nuclear Constabulary; and Ministry of Defence Police "to improve the protection of critical infrastructure such as nuclear sites, railways and the strategic road network". However, this has not yet occurred.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: No subject has proved more divisive in the Conservative Party in recent history than the role of the United Kingdom within the European Union. Though the principal architect of the UK's entry into the European Communities (which became the European Union) was Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath, and both Winston Churchill and Harold Macmillan favoured some form of European union, the bulk of contemporary Conservative opinion is opposed to closer economic and particularly political union with the EU. This is a noticeable shift in British politics, as in the 1960s and 1970s the Conservatives were more pro-Europe than the Labour Party: for example, in the 1971 House of Commons vote on whether the UK should join the European Economic Community, only 39 of the then 330 Conservative MPs were opposed to membership.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The Conservative Party has members with varying opinions of the EU, with pro-European Conservatives joining the affiliate Conservative Group for Europe, while some Eurosceptics left the party to join the United Kingdom Independence Party. Whilst the vast majority of Conservatives in recent decades have been Eurosceptics, views among this group regarding the UK's relationship with the EU have been polarised between moderate, soft Eurosceptics who support continued British membership but oppose further harmonisation of regulations affecting business and accept participation in a multi-speed Europe, and a more radical, economically libertarian faction who oppose policy initiatives from Brussels, support the rolling back of integration measures from the Maastricht Treaty onwards, and have become increasingly supportive of a complete withdrawal.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: In 2009 the Conservative Party actively campaigned against the Lisbon Treaty, which it believes would give away too much sovereignty to Brussels. Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague stated that, should the treaty be in force by the time of an incoming Conservative government, he would "not let matters rest there". However, on 14 June 2009 the shadow Business Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, said in an interview to the BBC that the Conservative Party would not reopen negotiations on the Lisbon Treaty if the Irish backed it in a new referendum.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Traditionally the Conservative Party has supported the uncodified constitution of the United Kingdom and its traditional Westminster system of politics. The party opposed many of Tony Blair's reforms, such as the removal of the hereditary peers, 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.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: There was also a split on whether to introduce a British Bill of Rights that would replace the Human Rights Act 1998; David Cameron expressed support, but party grandee Ken Clarke described it as "xenophobic and legal nonsense".


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: In 2019, the Conservatives' manifesto committed to a broad constitutional review in a line which read "after Brexit we also need to look at the broader aspects of our constitution: the relationship between the government, parliament and the courts". Following the party's significant election victory, it remains unclear what this may mean.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The Conservative Party comprises the voluntary party, parliamentary party (sometimes called the political party) and the professional party.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Members of the public join the party by becoming part of a local constituency Conservative Association. The country is also divided into regions, with each region containing a number of areas, both having a similar structure to constituency associations. The National Conservative Convention sets the voluntary party's direction. It is composed of all association chairs, officers from areas and regions, and 42 representatives and the Conservative Women's Organisation. The Convention meets twice a year. Its Annual General Meeting is usually held at Spring Forum, with another meeting usually held at the Conservative Party Conference. In the organisation of the Conservative Party, constituency associations dominate selection of local candidates, and some associations have organised open parliamentary primaries.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The 1922 Committee consists of backbench MPs, meeting weekly while parliament is sitting. Frontbench MPs have an open invitation to attend. The 1922 Committee plays a crucial role in the selection of party leaders. All Conservative MPs are members of the 1922 Committee by default. There are 20 executive members of the committee, agreed by consensus among backbench MPs.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) is effectively head of the Professional Party and leads financing, organisation of elections and drafting of policy.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The Conservative Party Board is the party's ultimate decision-making body, responsible for all operational matters (including fundraising, membership and candidates) and is made up of representatives from each (voluntary, political and professional) section of the Party. The Party Board meets about once a month and works closely with CCHQ, elected representatives and the voluntary membership mainly through a number of management sub-committees (such as membership, candidates and conferences).


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Membership peaked in the mid-1950s at approximately 3 million, before declining steadily through the second half of the 20th century. Despite an initial boost shortly after David Cameron's election as leader in December 2005, membership resumed its decline in 2006 to a lower level than when he was elected. In 2010, the Conservative Party had about 177,000 members according to activist Tim Montgomerie, and in 2013 membership was estimated by the party itself at 134,000. The membership fee for the Conservative Party is £25, or £5 if the member is under the age of 23. From April 2013 until the 2015 general election people could join Team2015 without being Party members, and take part in political campaigning for the party. At the 2018 Conservative Spring Forum, Party chairman Brandon Lewis announced that the party's membership stood at 124,000.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: In 2013 the Conservative Party lost an estimated 35–40% of its membership due to the Same Sex Marriage Bill.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Associations select their constituency's candidates. Some associations have organised open parliamentary primaries. A constituency Association must choose a candidate using the rules approved by, and (in England, Wales and Northern Ireland) from a list established by, the Committee on Candidates of the Board of the Conservative Party. Prospective candidates apply to the Conservative Central Office to be included on the approved list of candidates, some candidates will be given the option of applying for any seat they choose, while others may be restricted to certain constituencies. A Conservative MP can only be deselected at a special general meeting of the local Conservative association, which can only be organised if backed by a petition of more than fifty members.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: From 1998 to 2015, the Conservative Party maintained a youth wing for members under 30 called Conservative Future, with branches at both universities and at parliamentary constituency level. By 2006, the group had become the largest political organisation on British university campuses. The organisation was closed in 2015 after allegations that bullying by Mark Clarke had caused the suicide of Elliot Johnson, a 21-year-old party activist.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The major annual party events are the Spring Forum and the Conservative Party Conference, which takes place in Autumn in alternately Manchester or Birmingham. This is when the National Conservative Convention holds meetings.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: In the first decade of the 21st century, half the party's funding came from a cluster of just fifty "donor groups", and a third of it from only fifteen. In the year after the 2010 general election, half the Tories' funding came from the financial sector.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: For 2013, the Conservative Party had an income of £25.4 million, of which £749,000 came from membership subscriptions.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: In 2015, according to accounts filed with the Electoral Commission, the party had an income of about £41.8 million and expenditures of about £41 million.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Construction businesses, including the Wates Group and JCB, have also been significant donors to the party, contributing £430,000 and £8.1m respectively between 2007 and 2017.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The Advisory Board of the party represents donors who have given significant sums to the party, typically in excess of £250,000.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The Conservative Party is a member of a number of international organisations, most notably the International Democrat Union which unites right-wing parties including the United States Republican Party, the Liberal Party of Australia, the Indian Bharatiya Janata Party, the Conservative Party of Canada and the South Korean United Future Party.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: At a European level, the Conservatives are members of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party (ECR Party), which unites conservative parties in opposition to a federal European Union, through which the Conservatives have ties to the Ulster Unionist Party and the governing parties of Israel and Turkey, Likud and the Justice and Development Party respectively. In the European Parliament, the Conservative Party's MEPs sat in the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR Group), which is affiliated to the ACRE. Party leader David Cameron pushed the foundation of the ECR, which was launched in 2009, along with the Czech Civic Democratic Party and the Polish Law and Justice, before which the Conservative Party's MEPs sat in the European Democrats, which had become a subgroup of the European People's Party in the 1990s. Since the 2014 European election, the ECR Group has been the third-largest group, with the largest members being the Conservatives (nineteen MEPs), Law and Justice (eighteen MEPs), the Liberal Conservative Reformers (five MEPs), and the Danish People's Party and New Flemish Alliance (four MEPs each). In June 2009, The Conservatives required a further four partners apart from the Polish and Czech supports to qualify for official fraction status in the parliament; the rules state that a European parliamentary caucus requires at least 25 MEPs from at least seven of the 27 EU member states. In forming the caucus, the party broke with two decades of co-operation by the UK's Conservative Party with the mainstream European Christian Democrats and conservatives in the European parliament, the European People's Party (EPP). It did so on the grounds that it is dominated by European federalists and supporters of the Lisbon treaty, which the Conservatives were generally highly critical of.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: When Sir Christopher Lawson was appointed as a marketing director at Conservative Central Office in 1981, he was surprised to find that, apart from a few diverse symbols, there was no logo to represent the party. He developed a design based on the Olympic flame in the colours of the Union Jack, which was intended to represent leadership, striving to win, dedication, and a sense of community. Despite opposition from some traditionalists in the party, the emblem was adopted for the 1983 general election. In 1989, the party's director of communications, Brendan Bruce, decided to conduct some market research into the public reaction to the logo. The results were that recognition of the symbol was low and that people found it old fashioned and uninspiring. It was decided to redesign the existing logo, rather than adopt an entirely new one which might be interpreted as signalling a change of the party's ethos. Using a design company headed by Michael Peters, an image of a hand carrying a torch was developed, which referenced the Statue of Liberty.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: 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". However, there was criticism from within the party; former chairman Norman Tebbit remarked on national radio that the new green logo resembled "a bunch of broccoli". It had been intended to unveil the emblem at the party conference, but a leak to the press resulted in it being launched a week earlier. A change from green to the traditional Conservative blue colour appeared in 2007, followed by a version with the Union Jack superimposed in 2010. An alternative version featuring the colours of the Rainbow flag was unveiled for an LGBT event at the 2009 conference in Manchester.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The Conservative Party has a variety of internal factions or ideologies, including one-nation conservatism, social conservatism, Thatcherism, traditional conservatism, neoconservatism, Euroscepticism, and Christian democracy.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: This socially conservative right-wing grouping is currently associated with the Cornerstone Group (or Faith, Flag and Family), and is the oldest tradition within the Conservative Party, closely associated with High Toryism. The name stems from its support for three social institutions: the Church of England, the unitary British state and the family. 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.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Most oppose high levels of immigration and support the lowering of the current 24‑week abortion limit. Some members in the past have expressed support for capital punishment. Prominent MPs from this wing of the party include Andrew Rosindell, Nadine Dorries, Edward Leigh and Jacob Rees-Mogg—the latter two being prominent Roman Catholics, notable in a faction marked out by its support for the established Church of England.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: One-nation conservatism was the party's dominant ideology in the 20th century until the rise of Thatcherism in the 1970s. It has included in its ranks Conservative Prime Ministers such as Stanley Baldwin, Harold Macmillan and Edward Heath. One-nation Conservatives in the contemporary party include former First Secretary of State Damian Green, the current chair of the One Nation Conservatives caucus.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The name itself comes from a famous phrase of Disraeli. Ideologically, One-nation conservatism identifies itself with a broad paternalistic conservative stance. One-nation Conservatives are often associated with the Tory Reform Group and the Bow Group. Adherents believe in social cohesion and support social institutions that maintain harmony between different interest groups, classes, and—more recently—different races or religions. These institutions have typically included the welfare state, the BBC, and local government.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: 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. The Red Tory theory of Phillip Blond is a strand of the One-nation school of thought; prominent Red Tories include former Cabinet Ministers Iain Duncan Smith and Eric Pickles and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Jesse Norman. There is a difference of opinion among supporters regarding the European Union. Some support it perhaps stemming from an extension of the cohesion principle to the international level, though others are strongly against the EU (such as Peter Tapsell).


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The "free-market wing" of economic liberals achieved dominance after the election of Margaret Thatcher as party leader in 1975. 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. Supporters of the "free-market wing" have been labelled as "Thatcherites". The group has disparate views of social policy: Thatcher herself was socially conservative and a practising Anglican but the free-market wing in the Conservative Party harbour a range of social opinions from the civil libertarian views of Michael Portillo, Daniel Hannan, and David Davis to the traditional conservatism of former party leaders William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith. The Thatcherite wing is also associated with the concept of a "classless society".


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Whilst a number of party members are pro-European, some free-marketeers are Eurosceptic, perceiving most EU regulations as interference in the free market and/or a threat to British sovereignty. EU centralisation also conflicts with the localist ideals that have grown in prominence within the party in recent years. Rare Thatcherite Europhiles included Leon Brittan. Many take inspiration from Thatcher's Bruges speech in 1988, in which she declared that "we have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain only to see them reimposed at a European level". A number of free-market Conservatives have signed the Better Off Out pledge to leave the EU. Thatcherites and economic liberals in the party tend to support Atlanticism, something exhibited between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Thatcher herself claimed philosophical inspiration from the works of Burke and Friedrich Hayek for her defence of liberal economics. Groups associated with this tradition include the No Turning Back Group and Conservative Way Forward, whilst Enoch Powell and Keith Joseph are usually cited as early influences in the movement. Some free-market supporters and Christian Democrats within the party tend to advocate the Social Market Economy, which supports free markets alongside social and environmental responsibility, as well a welfare state. Joseph was the first to introduce the model idea into British politics, writing the publication: "Why Britain needs a Social Market Economy".


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Sometimes two groupings have united to oppose the third. Both Thatcherite and Traditionalist Conservatives rebelled over Europe (and in particular Maastricht) during John Major's premiership; and Traditionalist and One Nation MPs united to inflict Margaret Thatcher's only major defeat in Parliament, over Sunday trading.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: Not all Conservative MPs can be easily placed within one of the above groupings. 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. These included Kenneth Clarke as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Michael Heseltine as Deputy Prime Minister.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: National campaigning within the Conservative Party is fundamentally managed by the CCHQ campaigning team, which is part of its central office


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: However, it also delegates local responsibility to Conservative associations in the area, usually to a team of Conservative activists and volunteers in that area, but campaigns are still deployed from and thus managed by CCHQ


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: The "Voter Communications Department" is line-managed by the Conservative Director of Communications who upholds overall responsibility, though she has many staff supporting her, and the whole of CCHQ at election time, her department being one of the most predominant at this time, including project managers, executive assistants, politicians, and volunteers. The Conservative Party also has regional call centres and VoteSource do-it-from-home accounts.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: This chart shows the electoral performance of the Conservative Party in each general election since 1835.


title: Conservative Party (UK)

text: "Prior to 1973, the Ulster Unionist Party acted as the de facto Northern Ireland branch of the Conservative Party. The UUP's results may be seen here."


title: Kamal Haasan

text: Kamal Haasan (born 7 November 1954) is an Indian actor, filmmaker, screenwriter, playback singer, television presenter and politician who works mainly in Tamil cinema and has also appeared in some Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Kannada and Bengali films. He has been recognised as an influence for actors and filmmakers in the Tamil film industry. He is also known for introducing many new technologies and cosmetics to the Indian film industry. He has won numerous accolades, including four National Film Awards and 20 Filmfare Awards. He was awarded the Kalaimamani Award in 1984, the Padma Shri in 1990, the Padma Bhushan in 2014 and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres ("Chevalier") in 2016.


title: Kamal Haasan

text: Haasan started his career as a child artist in the 1960 Tamil-language film "Kalathur Kannamma", for which he won the President's Gold Medal. His breakthrough as a lead actor came in the 1975 drama "Apoorva Raagangal", directed by K. Balachander, in which he played a rebellious youth who falls in love with an older woman. He won his first National Film Award for his portrayal of a guileless school teacher who cares for a woman who suffers from retrograde amnesia in "Moondram Pirai" (1982). He was noted for his performances in K. Viswanath's "Swathi Muthyam" (1986), Mani Ratnam's "Nayakan" (1987), and S. Shankar's "Indian" (1996). Since then he has appeared in films including "Hey Ram" (2000), "Virumaandi" (2004), "Dasavathaaram" (2008) in which he played ten roles, "Vishwaroopam" (2013) and "Vikram" (2022). His production company, Raaj Kamal Films International, has produced several of his films.


title: Kamal Haasan

text: For his philanthropic efforts, Haasan received the first Abraham Kovoor National Award in 2004. He was project ambassador for the Hridayaragam 2010 event, which raised funds for an orphanage for HIV/AIDS-affected children. In September 2010, Haasan launched a children's cancer relief fund and gave roses to children with cancer at Sri Ramachandra University in Porur, Chennai. Haasan was nominated by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the Swachh Bharat Mission. On 21 February 2018, Haasan formally launched his political party, Makkal Needhi Maiam (lit. People's Justice Centre). He has also received the Golden Visa from United Arab Emirates.


title: Kamal Haasan

text: Haasan was born on 7 November 1954, in a Tamil Iyengar Brahmin family, to D. Srinivasan, who was a lawyer and freedom fighter, and Rajalakshmi, who was a housewife. Haasan was initially named as Parthasarathy. His father later changed his name to Kamal Haasan. His brothers, Charuhasan (born 1930) and Chandrahasan (born 1936), have also acted. Haasan's sister, Nalini (born 1946), is a classical dancer. He received his primary education in Paramakudi before moving to Madras (now Chennai) as his brothers pursued their higher education. Haasan continued his education in Santhome, Madras, and was attracted towards film and fine arts as encouraged by his father.


title: Kamal Haasan

text: When a physician friend of his mother, visited A. V. Meiyappan (AVM) to treat his wife, she brought Haasan with her. Apparently impressed by his demeanor AVM's son, M. Saravanan, recommended him for their production "Kalathur Kannamma". Haasan won the Rashtrapati Award (President's gold medal) for his performance in "Kalathur Kannamma" at age six and starred in five more films as a child. He debuted in the Malayalam film industry with "Kannum Karalum" (1962). Upon his father's encouragement, he joined a repertory company (T. K. S. Nataka Sabha) headed by T. K. Shanmugam. In the meanwhile, he continued his education at the Hindu Higher Secondary School in Triplicane. His time with the theatre company shaped Haasan's craft and kindled his interest in makeup.


title: Kamal Haasan

text: After a seven-year hiatus from films, Haasan returned to the industry as a dance assistant, apprenticing under choreographer Thankappan. During this time, Haasan made brief appearances in some films including a few uncredited roles. His first appearance came in the 1970 film "Maanavan", in which he appeared in a dance sequence. He went on to assist Thankappan in films such as "Annai Velankani" (1971) and "Kasi Yathirai" (1973). In the former he had a supporting role and worked as an assistant director. His first full-fledged role came in K. Balachander's Tamil film "Arangetram" (1973). Balachander cast him as the antagonist in his "Sollathaan Ninaikkiren" (1973). Haasan went on to do supporting roles in films such as "Gumasthavin Magal" (1974), "Aval Oru Thodar Kathai" (1974) and "Naan Avanillai". The same year, he played his first lead role in the Malayalam film, "Kanyakumari", for which he won his first Filmfare Award. In Tamil cinema, he had his breakthrough as a lead actor in Balachander's "Apoorva Raagangal". He played a rebellious young man who falls in love with an older woman. For this character portrayal, Haasan learned to play the mridangam. The role won him his second Filmfare Award.


title: Kamal Haasan

text: In 1976, Haasan appeared Balachander's "Manmadha Leelai"; this was followed by "Oru Oodhappu Kan Simittugiradhu" (directed by S. P. Muthuraman), which won him his third Filmfare Award. Haasan later appeared in the Balachander drama "Moondru Mudichu". "Avargal" (1977) concerned the women's movement and, for this role, he learned ventriloquism. It was remade in Telugu as "Idi Katha Kaadu" (1979), with Haasan reprising his role. "16 Vayathinile", in which he played a village bumpkin, which won him a fourth consecutive Best Actor award. In 1977 Haasan starred in his first Kannada film, "Kokila", the directorial debut of friend and mentor Balu Mahendra. That year he also appeared in a Bengali film, "Kabita", a remake of the Tamil film "Aval Oru Thodar Kathai". In 1978 Haasan made his Telugu film debut with a lead role in the cross-cultural romantic "Maro Charitra", directed by Balachander. His fifth consecutive Filmfare Award resulted from "Sigappu Rojakkal", a thriller in which he played a psychopathic sexual killer. He appeared in the Malayalam film Eeta, for which he won his sixth Filmfare Award. He first played opposite to the Sridevi in the 1977 Malayalam movie Satyavan Savithri directed by P.G. Viswambharan, this combination was later on well-accepted and celebrated. In the 1979 Telugu film "Sommokadidi Sokokadidi", Haasan played two parts. This was also his first collaboration with director Singeetam Srinivasa Rao. He appeared in the musical "Ninaithale Inikkum", a snake-horror film "Neeya" and "Kalyanaraman". At the end of the 1970s he had six regional Best Actor Filmfare Awards, including four consecutive Best Tamil Actor Awards.


title: Kamal Haasan

text: Haasan's films during the 1980s included 1980 Tamil-language "Varumayin Niram Sivappu", the film was simultaneously shot in Telugu as "Aakali Rajyam", in which he played an unemployed youth and earned him a first Filmfare Award in Telugu. In 1980 he appeared in the drama film "Ullasa Paravaigal", "Guru" and "Maria My Darling". Haasan made his debut in Hindi cinema with "Ek Duuje Ke Liye" (1981), the remake of his own acted Telugu-language film "Maro Charitra" directed by K. Balachander (which earned him his first Filmfare Hindi-language nomination). He made his 100th film appearance in 1981 in "Raja Paarvai", debuting as a producer. Despite the film's relatively poor box-office performance, his portrayal of a blind session violinist earned him a Filmfare Award. After a year of starring in commercial films, Haasan won the first of three National Awards for Best Actor for his portrayal of a schoolteacher caring for an amnesia patient in Balu Mahendra's "Moondram Pirai", later reprising his role in the Hindi version, "Sadma". During this period he focused on Bollywood remakes of his Tamil films, including "Yeh To Kamaal Ho Gaya" and "Zara Si Zindagi". In 1983 he appeared in "Sagara Sangamam", directed by K. Viswanath. His portrayal of an alcoholic classical dancer won him his first Nandi Award for Best Actor and his second Filmfare Best Telugu Actor Award.


title: Kamal Haasan

text: After 1984's multistarrer "Raaj Tilak", Haasan appeared in "Saagar" (released 1985), winning the Filmfare Best Actor Award and nominated for the Best Supporting Actor award. The film was India's representative for the Best Foreign Language Oscar in 1985. He left Bollywood temporarily after "Geraftaar" and "Dekha Pyar Tumhara" to feature in Japanil Kalyanaraman (a sequel to his 1979 Kalyanaraman).


title: Kamal Haasan

text: In 1986, Haasan produced the technically brilliant "Vikram" and collaborated with Kodandarami Reddy for "Oka Radha Iddaru Krishnulu" and then K. Viswanath in "Swathi Muthyam", playing an autistic person who tries to change society and won him his second Nandi Award for Best Actor. it was India's entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards in 1986. These Tollywood films found him a large audience in Andhra Pradesh, and many of his later Tamil films were dubbed into Telugu.


title: Kamal Haasan

text: Following "Punnagai Mannan" (in which he played two roles, including a satire of Charlie Chaplin as Chaplin Chellappa) and "Kadhal Parisu", Haasan appeared in Mani Ratnam's 1987 film "Nayakan". He received his second Indian National Award for his performance; "Nayakan" was submitted by India as its entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1987 Academy Awards, and is on the Time's All-Time 100 Movies list. Haasan appeared in his only silent film to date: "Pushpaka Vimana" (1987) a black comedy film, in which he played an unemployed youth and earned him a first Filmfare Award in Kannada. In 1988 he appeared "Unnal Mudiyum Thambi", Malayalam film "Daisy" and "Sathyaa" which were his own productions. Haasan's all four films of 1989 were major success, "Apoorva Sagodharargal", where he played a dwarf, then "Chanakyan", an original Malayalam film, later "Vettri Vizhaa" (where he played an amnesiac) and finally Haasan played two parts in "Indrudu Chandrudu", winning the Filmfare Best Actor and won him his third Nandi Award for Best Actor for his performance. By the end of the 1980s Haasan was successful in the Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu and Hindi film industries, with Filmfare Awards in each industry and two national awards.


title: Kamal Haasan

text: In 1990, "Michael Madana Kama Rajan" saw Haasan build on "Apoorva Sagodharargal" by playing quadruplets. It began as a collaboration with writer Crazy Mohan for future comedy films. Haasan won successive Best Actor awards for his portrayal of deranged, obsessive protagonists in "Gunaa" and "Thevar Magan" (which was remade in Hindi as 1997's "Virasat"). He was credited with the story for the latter. Haasan won his third National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Tamil as a producer for "Thevar Magan". The film was India's submission for the Academy Awards that year. A series of films followed: "Singaravelan", "Maharasan", "Kalaignan", "Mahanadhi", "Nammavar", and "Sathi Leelavathi" Produced by Haasan, it featured himself alongside Kannada actor Ramesh Aravind and comedian Kovai Sarala. Haasan resumed his collaboration with K. Viswanath in the Telugu film, "Subha Sankalpam", and starred in the police story "Kuruthipunal" (Tamil) simultaneously shot in Telugu as "Drohi" with Arjun Sarja and won Filmfare Best Actor. Haasan's success in the latter was followed by his third National Film Award for Best Actor for "Indian". Haasan also won Tamil Nadu State Film Award for Best Actor and Filmfare Best Actor for "Indian". The film was India's submission for the Academy Awards.


title: Kamal Haasan

text: 'The Week', in its 13 September 1992 edition, reported that Chiranjeevi charged Rs. 12.5 million per a film and which is the highest ever remuneration for any Indian hero then. In 1994, Haasan became the first actor to charge 15 million per film. The highest paid Indian actor from 1970 to 1987 was Rajesh Khanna.


title: Kamal Haasan

text: After "Indian", Haasan played a woman in the comedy "Avvai Shanmughi", which was inspired by "Mrs. Doubtfire". He chose Shantanu Sheorey to direct the Hindi remake of "Avvai Shanmughi", "Chachi 420", but after dissatisfaction with five days of shooting Haasan took over as director. In 1997 Haasan began directing an unfinished biopic of Mohammed Yusuf Khan, "Marudhanayagam"; a forty five minutes of film and a trailer was shot. "Marudhanayagam" was expected to be the biggest, most expensive film in Indian cinematic history and his magnum opus; a number of well-known actors and technicians had been signed, and it was launched at a public ceremony by Queen Elizabeth during her 1997 visit to India. Although the film failed to materialise due to budget constraints, Haasan expressed an interest in reviving the project. In 1998, he appeared in Singeetam Srinivasa Rao's romantic comedy, "Kaathala Kaathala" opposite Prabhu Deva. The film was a commercial success and was dubbed in Hindi as "Mirch Masala", which was never released.


title: Kamal Haasan

text: After a two-year hiatus from Indian cinema, Haasan decided against reviving "Marudhanayagam". He directed his second film, "Hey Ram", a period drama, told in flashback, with a fact-based plot centering on the partition of India and the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Haasan produced and choreographed the film, writing its screenplay and lyrics; it was India's submission for the Academy Awards that year. "Hey Ram" was a box-office failure in India but was successful worldwide. Also in 2000, Haasan appeared in the comedy "Thenali" as a Sri Lankan Tamilian with PTSD who is under a psychiatrist's care. "Thenali", starring Malayalam actor Jayaram, was a box-office success. Haasan's next film was 2001's "Aalavandhan", in which he played two roles: For one he had his head shaved and gained ten kilograms. To play the other Army major in "Aalavandhan", he went to the NDA for a crash course. The Hindi version was distributed by Shringar Films. Despite pre-release publicity, the film was a commercial failure.


title: Kamal Haasan

text: After a number of successful comedies including "Pammal K. Sambandam" and "Panchatanthiram" and guest appearances, Haasan directed "Virumaandi", a film about capital punishment which won the Best Asian Film Award at the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival. He also appeared in "Anbe Sivam" with Madhavan. Priyadarshan, its original director, left and Sundar C. completed the film. "Anbe Sivam" tells the story of Nallasivam, portrayed by Haasan as a communist. His performance was praised by critics, with "The Hindu" saying that he "has once again done Tamil cinema proud".


title: Kamal Haasan

text: In 2004 Haasan appeared in "Vasool Raja MBBS", a remake of Bollywood's "Munna Bhai M.B.B.S.", with Sneha which was a box-office success. The following year, he wrote and starred in the comedy "Mumbai Xpress". Released during Tamil New Year, it was a disappointment at the box office despite positive reviews. He appeared Kannada comedy film "Rama Shama Bhama" with Ramesh Aravind. In 2006 Haasan's long-delayed project, the stylish police story "Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu", was a success. Directed by Gautham Vasudev Menon, the film is about a police officer sent to the US to investigate a series of medical murders. In 2008's "Dasavathaaram", he played ten roles; the film was released in a number of languages (including Tamil, Telugu and Hindi) throughout India and overseas. "Dasavathaaram", written by Haasan and director K. S. Ravikumar, is one of the first modern science-fiction films made in India. Starring Haasan and Asin Thottumkal, it was the highest-grossing Tamil film () and his performance was critically praised. In Canada, "Dasavathaaram" was the first Tamil film distributed by Walt Disney Pictures.


title: Kamal Haasan

text: After "Dasavathaaram", Haasan directed a film tentatively titled "Marmayogi", which stalled after a year of pre-production. He then produced and starred in "Unnaipol Oruvan", a remake of the Bollywood film "A Wednesday", where he reprised the role originally played by Naseeruddin Shah with Malayalam actor Mohanlal playing Anupam Kher's role. It was released in Telugu as "Eeenadu", with Venkatesh reprising the role played by Kher. Both versions were critically acclaimed and commercially successful.


title: Kamal Haasan

text: Haasan collaborated for the fifth time with Ravikumar in "Manmadan Ambu", for which he also wrote the screenplay. The story concerns a man who hires a detective to find out if his fiancée is cheating on him. The film was released in December 2010 to mixed reviews, with "Behindwoods" calling it "an entertainer, but in parts" and "Sify" saying it "lacks the punch to captivate the audiences".