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Three parties currently dominate the national political landscape in Britain: the Conservative Party, the Labor Party, and the Liberal Democrats.

The modern Conservative Party was founded in 1834 and is an outgrowth of the Tory movement or party, which began in 1678. Today it is still colloquially referred to as the Tory Party and its members as Tories. The Liberal Democrats were formed in 1988 by a merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party （SDP）, a Labor breakaway formed in 1981. The Liberals and SDP had contested elections together as the SDP–Liberal Alliance for seven years before. The modern Liberal Party had been founded in 1859 as an outgrowth of the Whig movement or party （which began at the same time as the Tory party and was its historical rival） as well as the Radical and Peelite tendencies.

The Liberal Party was one of the two dominant parties （along with the Conservatives） from its founding until the 1920s, when it rapidly declined and was supplanted on the left by the Labor Party, which was founded in 1900 and formed its first government in 1924. Since that time, the Labor and Conservatives parties have been dominant, with the Liberal Democrats also holding a significant number of seats and increasing their share of the vote in parliamentary general elections in the four elections 1992.

Minor parties also hold seats in parliament:

The Scottish National Party, founded in 1934, advocates for Scottish independence andhas had continuous representation in Parliament since 1967. The SNP currently leads a majority government in the Scottish Parliament.

Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party, has had continuous representation in Parliament since 1974. Plaid has the third-largest number of seats in the National Assembly for Wales, after Welsh Labor and the Welsh Conservative ＆ Unionist Party, and participated with the former in the coalition agreement in the Assembly before the 2011 election.

In Northern Ireland, all 18 M.P.s are from parties that only contest elections in Northern Ireland （except for Sinn Féin, which contests elections in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland）. The unionism Democratic Unionist Party （DUP）, the republican Sinn Féin, the nationalist Social Democratic and Labor Party （SDLP）, and the nonsectarian Alliance Party of Northern Ireland all gained seats in Parliament in the 2010 election, the Alliance Party for the first time. Sinn Féin has a policy of abstentionism and so its M.P.s refuse to take their seats in Parliament. DUP, Sinn Féin, the Ulster Unionist Party （UUP）, and the SDLP are considered the four major parties in Northern Ireland, holding the most seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

In the most recent general election in 2010, the result amounted to a hung parliament, and after several days of negotiations, the Labor Party left the government with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats operating a coalition government.

The Conservative Party won the largest number of seats at the 2010 general election, returning 307 M.P.s, though not enough to make an overall majority. As a result of negotiations following the election, they entered a formal coalition with the Liberal Democrats to form a majority government.

The Conservative party can trace its origin back to 1662, with the Court Party and the Country Party being formed in the aftermath of the English Civil War. The Court Party soon became known as the Tories, a name that has stuck despite the official name being“Conservative”. The term “Tory” originates from the Exclusion Bill crisis of 1678-1681. The Whigs were those who supported the exclusion of the Roman Catholic Duke of York from the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland, and the Tories were those who opposed it. Both names were originally insults: a “whiggamore” was a horse drover, and a “tory” was an Irish term for an outlaw, later applied to Irish Confederates and Irish Royalists, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.

Generally, the Tories were associated with lesser gentry and the Church of England, while Whigs were more associated with trade, money, larger land holders （or “land magnates”）, expansion and tolerance.

The Rochdale Radicals were a group of more extreme reformists who were also heavily involved in the cooperative movement. They sought to bring about a more equal society, and are considered by modern standards to be left-wing.

After becoming associated with repression of popular discontent in the years after 1815, the Tories underwent a fundamental transformation under the influence of Robert Peel, himself an industrialist rather than a landowner, who in his 1834 “Tamworth Manifesto” outlined a new “Conservative” philosophy of reforming ills while conserving the good.

Though Peel’s supporters subsequently split from their colleagues over the issue of free trade in 1846, ultimately joining the Whigs and the Radicals to form what would become the Liberal Party, Peel’s version of the party’s underlying outlook was retained by the remaining Tories, who adopted his label of Conservative as the official name of their party. The crushing defeat of the 1997 election saw the Conservative Party lose over half their seats from 1992 and saw the party realign with public perceptions of them.

In 2008, the Conservative Party formed a pact with the Ulster Unionist Party to select joint candidates for European and House of Commons elections; this angered the DUP as by splitting the Unionist vote, republican parties will be elected in some areas.

After thirteen years as the official opposition, the Party returned to power as part of a coalition with the Liberal Democrats in 2010.

Historically, the party has been the mainland party most pre-occupied by British Unionism, as attested to by the party’s full name, the Conservative ＆ Unionist Party. This resulted in the merger between the Conservatives and Joseph Chamberlain’s Liberal Unionist Party, composed of former Liberals who opposed Irish home rule. The unionist tendency is still in evidence today, manifesting sometimes as a skepticism or opposition to devolution, firm support for the continued existence of the United Kingdom in the face of separatist nationalism, and a historic link with the cultural unionism of Northern Ireland.

The Labor Party won the second largest number of seats in the House of Commons at the 2010 general election, with 258 M.P.s.

The history of the Labor party goes back to 1900 when a Labor RepresentationCommittee was established which changed its name to “The Labor Party” in 1906. After the First World War, this led to the demise of the Liberal Party as the main reformist force in British politics. The existence of the Labor Party on the left of British politics led to a slow waning of energy from the Liberal Party, which has consequently assumed third place in national politics. After performing poorly in the elections of 1922, 1923 and 1924, the Liberal Party was superseded by the Labor Party as the party of the left.

Following two brief spells in minority governments in 1924 and 1929–1931, the Labor Party had its first true victory after World War II in the 1945 “khaki election”. Throughout the rest of the twentieth century, Labor governments alternated with Conservative governments. The Labor Party suffered the “wilderness years” of 1951-1964 （three straight General Election defeats） and 1979-1997 （four straight General Election defeats）.

During this second period, Margaret Thatcher, who became leader of the Conservative party in 1975, made a fundamental change to Conservative policies, turning the Conservative Party into an economic neoliberal party. In the General Election of 1979, she defeated James Callaghan’s troubled Labor government after the winter of discontent.

For most of the 1980s and the 1990s, Conservative governments under Thatcher and her successor John Major pursued policies of privatization, anti-trade-unionism, and, for a time, monetarism, now known collectively as Thatcherism.

The Labor Party elected left-winger Michael Foot as their leader after their 1979 election defeat, and he responded to dissatisfaction with the Labor Party by pursuing a number of radical policies developed by its grass-roots members. In 1981 several right-wing Labor M.P.s formed a breakaway group called the Social Democratic Party （SDP）, a move which split Labor and is widely believed to have made Labor unelectable for a decade. The SDP formed an alliance with the Liberal Party which contested the 1983 and 1987 general elections as a centrist alternative to Labor and the Conservatives. After some initial success, the SDP did not prosper （partly due to its unfavorable distribution of votes in the FPTP （First Past the Post） electoral system）, and was accused by some of splitting the anti-Conservative vote.

The SDP eventually merged with the Liberal Party to form the Liberal Democrats in 1988. Support for the new party has increased since then, and the Liberal Democrats （often referred to as LibDems） in 1997 and 2001 gained an increased number of seats in the House of Commons.

The Labor Party was badly defeated in the Conservative landslide of the 1983 general election, and Michael Foot was replaced shortly thereafter by Neil Kinnock as leader. Kinnockexpelled the far left Militant tendency group （now called the Socialist Party of England and Wales） and moderated many of the party’s policies. Yet he was in turn replaced by John Smith after Labor defeats in the 1987 and 1992 general elections.

Tony Blair became leader of the Labor party after John Smith’s sudden death from a heart attack in 1994. He continued to move the Labor Party towards the center by loosening links with the unions and embracing many of Margaret Thatcher’s liberal economic policies. This, coupled with the professionalizing of the party machine’s approach to the media, helped Labor win a historic landslide in the 1997 General Election, after 18 years of Conservative government. Some observers say the Labor Party had by then morphed from a democratic socialist party to a social democratic party, a process which delivered three general election victories but alienated some of its core base.

The Liberal Democrats won the third largest number of seats at the 2010 general election, returning 57 M.P.s. The Conservative Party failed to win an overall majority, and the Liberal Democrats entered government for the first time as part of a coalition.

The Liberal Democrats were formed in 1988 by a merger of the Liberal Party with the Social Democratic Party, but can trace their origin back to the Whigs and the Rochdale Radicals who evolved into the Liberal Party. The term “Liberal Party” was first used officially in 1868, though it had been in use colloquially for decades beforehand. The Liberal Party formed a government in 1868 and then alternated with the Conservative Party as the party of government throughout the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Members of the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru work together as a single parliamentary group following a formal pact signed in 1986. This group currently has 9 M.P.s. The Scottish National Party has enjoyed parliamentary representation continuously since 1967 and had 6 M.P.s elected at the 2010 election. Following the 2007 Scottish parliament elections, the SNP emerged as the largest party with 47 M.P.s and formed a minority government with Alex Salmond the First Minister.

Plaid Cymru has enjoyed parliamentary representation continuously since 1974 and had 3 M.P.s elected at the 2010 election. Following the 2007 Welsh Assembly elections, they joined Labor as the junior partner in a coalition government.

Since the 2005 General Election, each of the main political parties has changed party leader: David Cameron was elected leader of the Conservatives in 2005, Gordon Brown was elected unopposed to lead the Labor Party （and therefore became Prime Minister） in June 2007, and Nick Clegg was elected leader of the Liberal Democrats in December 2007.

The Conservatives under David Cameron have seen their popularity grow, as shown by their success at the Local Elections in May 2008, the London Mayoral Election and opinion polls which show a strong lead over Labor. They also won an election in Crewe and Nantwich with a swing of 17.6%.

In Scotland, the Scottish National Party made some strong advances, winning the Scottish parliamentary election in May 2007 and gaining support in most national opinion polls since then. In July 2008, the SNP achieved a remarkable by-election victory in Glasgow East, winning the third safest Labor seat in Scotland with a swing of 22.54%. However, in October of the same year, despite confident public predictions by the SNP’s leader Alex Salmond that they would win another by-election in Glenrothes, the seat was comfortably won by Labor with a majority of 6 737 and an increased share of the vote. Given that the SNP won the equivalent Scottish Parliament seat of Central Fife in 2007 this was viewed as a significant step back for the SNP. More recently, the SNP significantly outpolled the Labor Party in the 2009 European election.