The Conservative Party, as the largest in the British Parliament after the Labour Party, provides the Official Opposition to the Labour Government of Tony Blair. Labour currently holds a majority of 66 in a House of Commons of 353 Members of Parliament. The Conservatives now stand 198 MPs. Current policies Conservatives are generally supportive of reduced government intervention in most matters. Today, they are also noted for their broadly Eurosceptic stance. Many commentators believe that their failures in UK politics from 1997 were partly as a result of continued internal tension between Europhiles (such as Kenneth Clarke and Michael Heseltine) and Eurosceptics (such as John Redwood and William Hague). However, the Conservative party has in recent years largely come to terms with these issues, or has at least ceased to argue quite as publicly over what remains a contentious internal issue. Since the election of David Cameron as leader, debate has increasingly focused on the environment, the improvement of government services such as the National Health Service (NHS), and schools, and other "quality of life" issues. This has drawn fire from other parties and some sections of the media who perceive this change of focus to be merely cosmetic in nature. Cameron has also spoken of recognising that there is 'more to life than money', and of the need to help the disadvantaged by 'building a stronger society'. Conservatives hold a varying record of opposition and support on parliamentary devolution to the national and English regions of the UK. They opposed devolution to Wales and Scotland in 1999, whilst supporting it for Northern Ireland. They also did not support the unsuccessful attempt at devolution of power to North East England in 2004. However, since the New Labour government introduced devolution, the Conservatives have pledged not to reverse the situation to its pre-1997 status. Recently the Conservatives have begun to take a stance on the West Lothian Question, and support the idea that only English MPs should vote on policies which affect only England. The current devolution status quo allows House of Commons MPs in Scottish constituencies to vote on matters which only affect England, but does not allow Commons English MPs to vote on matters affecting Scotland, since the new Scottish Parliament controls almost all legislation affecting Scotland alone. Economic policy During much of the twentieth century the Conservative Party was known as the "natural party of government", a position in part founded upon the party's reputation for pragmatism and economic competence. But the party's reputation for economic stewardship was dealt a blow by Black Wednesday in 1992, in which billions of pounds were spent in a futile effort to keep the pound within the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) system at an overvalued rate. Combined with the recession of the early 1990s 'Black Wednesday' allowed Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to claim from the Conservatives the mantle of economic competence. Many on both the left and right have since argued that New Labour's embrace of market forces and public sector modernisation amounted to little more than stealing the Conservative Party's economic clothes. Though Thatcher's reforms of the 1980s broke Britain's cycle of long-term decline, even while substantially increasing unemployment, the Conservatives have yet to regain their reputation for economic competence since Black Wednesday. Recent Conservative election campaigns have focused much more on the low-salience social or cultural issues of crime, the EU and immigration. The party has now pledged to match Labour spending plans. This is a reversal of their position in 1997. Following the 1997 general election, the Conservative Party opposed Labour's flagship policy for economic stability: the decision to grant the Bank of England independent control of interest rates. Economists had long advocated independent central banks as a means of depoliticising monetary policy and overcoming the problem of time inconsistency (a situation in game theory which shows how a policymaker who cares about both low unemployment and low inflation will achieve neither). Moreover, in the 1990s a number of countries (e.g. New Zealand) pursued such reforms to great effect. However, the Conservatives initially opposed independence for the Bank of England on the grounds that it would be a prelude to the abolition of the pound and membership in the European single currency, and also expressed concern over the removal of monetary policy from democratic control. In the end the popularity of this move amongst economists and the financial community, along with its success at keeping down inflation, has led the Conservatives to accept Labour's policy. The Conservative Party under David Cameron has redirected its stance on taxation, still committed to the general principle of reducing direct taxation whilst arguing that the country needs a "dynamic and competitive economy", with the proceeds of any growth shared between both "tax reduction and extra public investment". Perhaps the most notable Conservative economic policy of recent years has been opposition to the European single currency. Anticipating the growing Euroscepticism within his party, John Major negotiated a British opt-out from the single currency in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, although several members of Major's cabinet (Kenneth Clarke, Michael Heseltine and Stephen Dorrell) were personally supportive of EMU participation. Following Major's resignation after the 1997 defeat, each of the four successive Conservative leaders (William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Howard and David Cameron) have come from the Eurosceptic wing of British politics, and these men have positioned the party firmly against future EMU integration. This policy is broadly popular with the British electorate, although voters typically rank Europe as an issue of low importance compared to education, healthcare, immigration and crime. This may partly explain why the Conservatives were not unable to convert their most popular policy into election victories between 1997 and 2005. Social policy In recent years, 'modernisers' in the party have claimed that the perceived historical association between social conservatism and the Conservatives (manifest in policies such as tax incentives for married couples, the removal of the link between pensions and earnings, and criticism of public financial support for those who do not work) have played a role in the electoral decline of the party in the 1990s and early 2000s. For example, David Willetts has criticised what he termed "the war on single parents", whilst former Conservative Party Chairman Brian Mawhinney observed that the party had "created the impression that if you weren't in a traditional nuclear family, then we weren't interested in you". Since 1997 a debate has continued within the party between 'modernisers' such as Michael Portillo, who believe that the Conservatives should modify their public stances on social issues, and 'traditionalists' such as William Hague and David Davis, who believe that the party should remain faithful to its traditional conservative platform. This resulted in William Hague's and Michael Howard's pre-election swings to the right in 2001 and 2005, as well as the election of the stop-Kenneth Clarke candidate Iain Duncan Smith in 2001. Theresa May famously remarked that the result of all this was that the Conservatives were perceived as "the nasty party". Since the election of Cameron the 'modernisers' appear to have been given more of a voice on social policy. The 2005 election saw the first black Conservative MP, Adam Afriyie, elected in Windsor. Changes in official Conservative Party attitudes on certain issues have not been universally welcomed. The prominent conservative journalist Peter Hitchens has described them as "useless", for what he sees as their persistent acquiescence to prevailing liberal (and Labour) orthodoxy. Foreign policy For much of the twentieth century the Conservative party has taken 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 North Atlantic Treaty Organization to the Commonwealth of Nations. 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 J.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. Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher built a close relationship with American President Ronald Reagan in his opposition to the former Soviet Union, but John Major was largely unsuccessful in his personal contacts with former Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. 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 US Presidents. David Cameron has recently sought to distance himself from George W. Bush and his neoconservative foreign policy, and has called for a "rebalancing" of US-UK ties [10]. Potential Republican 2008 presidential candidate John McCain spoke at the 2006 Conservative Party Conference. On the European Union No subject has more divided the Conservative Party in recent history than the UK's relations with the European Union (EU). Though the principal architect of Britain’s entry into the then-Common Market (later European Community and European Union) was Conservative PM 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. Divisions on Europe came to the fore under the premiership of John Major (1990-1997) when the slow process of integration within the EU forced party tensions to the surface. A core of Eurosceptic Members of Parliament took advantage of the small Conservative majority in Parliament to oppose Government policy on the Maastricht Treaty. By doing so they undermined the Major's ability to govern. In recent years the Conservative Party has become more clearly Eurosceptic, as the Labour Government has found itself unable to make a positive case for further integration and as Eurosceptic or pro-withdrawal parties such as the United Kingdom Independence Party have made strong showings in UK elections to the European Parliament. David Cameron and William Hague) have stated their intention to renegotiate portions of key EU treaties and return a number of powers back to the UK; opinion polls regularly identify Conservative policy on Europe as more popular with the public than that of either the Labour or Liberal Democrat parties. Under current EU law, the degree to which a Conservative Government could implement policy change regarding the EU would depend directly on the willingness of other EU member states to agree to such policies. The Conservatives are a member of the International Democrat Union and its European Democrat Union. In the summer of 2006 the Conservatives became founding members of the Movement for European Reform, following Cameron's pledge to end the fourteen-year-old partnership between the largely Eurosceptic Tories and the more Euro-integrationist, Christian Democratic European Peoples Party (EPP). Within the European Parliament, however, the Tories remain members of an informal bloc called the European Democrats (ED), which is committed to sit in a coalition arrangement with the EPP as the EPP-ED group until 2009. 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 a US President and the British Prime Minister. Internal factions There are three main political factions within the modern Conservative Party: One Nation Conservatives were the dominant faction in the twentieth Century until the 1970s, providing Conservative Prime Ministers such as Stanley Baldwin, Harold MacMillan and Edward Heath. The name itself comes from a famous phrase of Benjamin Disraeli. The basis of One-Nation Conservatism is a belief in social cohesion, and its adherents support social institutions that maintain harmony between people of different interest groups, classes, and -- more recently -- people of different races or religions. These institutions have typically included the welfare state, the BBC, and local government. Some are also supporters of the European Union, perhaps stemming from an extension of the cohesion principle to the international level, though others are strongly against the EU (such as Sir Peter Tapsell). Prominent One-Nation Conservatives in the contemporary party include Kenneth Clarke, Malcolm Rifkind and Damian Green; they are often associated with the Tory Reform Group. The intellectual basis of One Nation Conservatism can be found in the work of Edmund Burke and his emphasis on social institutions ("little platoons") as the foundations of society, as well as his opposition to radical politics of all hues. The second main faction in the Conservative party is the free market, or Thatcherite wing. This wing achieved dominance after the election of Margaret Thatcher as party leader in 1975. The Thatcherite political goal mainly concerns reducing the role of the government in the economy, and to this end they support cuts in direct taxation, the privatisation of public services and a reduction in the size of the welfare state. Matters of social policy are not so clear cut. Although Thatcher herself was socially conservative and a practising Methodist, her supporters harbour a range of social opinions from the libertarian views of Michael Portillo to the traditional conservatism of William Hague and David Davis. Many Thatcherites are also Eurosceptic, since they view many European regulations as unwelcome interference in the free market and a threat to British sovereignty (rare Thatcherite Europhiles include Leon Brittan and Quentin Davies). Many take inspiration from Thatcher's famous anti-EU 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". Thatcherites also tend to be Atlanticist, dating back to the close friendship between Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan. Thatcher herself claimed philosophical inspiration from the works of Burke and Friedrich Hayek, especially the latter's defence of free-market capitalism. The Faith, Flag and Family or Cornerstone Group is the third main faction within the Conservative Party. The name stems from its support for three British social institutions: the Church of England, the unitary British state and the family. To this end, they emphasise England'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 they see as a broken society in Britain. Most oppose high levels of immigration into the UK, and some members have in the past professed controversial opinions on issues of race and ethnicity in modern Britain. Some members also support capital punishment. Prominent MPs from this wing of the party include Andrew Rosindell, Anne Widdecombe and Edward Leigh—himself a prominent Roman Catholic, notable in a faction marked out by its support for the established Church of England. Alan Duncan once referred to this wing as a "Taliban tendency" within the party. The conservative English philosopher Roger Scruton represents the intellectual wing of the Cornerstone group: his writings rarely touch on economics and instead concentrate on providing conservative perspectives on political, social, cultural and moral issues. Sometimes two factions have united to oppose the third. Thatcherite and Cornerstone MPs rebelled over Europe (and in particular Maastricht) during John Major's premiership; and Cornerstone and One Nation MPs united to inflict Margaret Thatcher's only defeat in parliament, over Sunday trading. 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.

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