The strange rebirth of Tory England

Abstract

The Conservative party’s long dominance of British politics was overturned after 1992. The party suffered three consecutive election defeats, the first time this had happened in the modern era, and it seemed to lack the capacity to recover. After the 2005 defeat, however, the party under David Cameron has begun to seize back the political initiative from Labour. Cameron’s leadership is assessed against the background of the long Conservative hegemony, and the undermining of the five key pillars of that hegemony – Union, Empire, Public Service, Property, and Welfare. Cameron is seeking to make the Conservatives electable again by breaking with many of the Thatcherite policies with which the party has been associated, drawing predictable criticism from elements of the Conservative Right. This strategy has had a number of successes, and although many obstacles remain, the Conservatives are once more back in contention in a way they have not been since 1992.