The British Conservatives and their competitors in the post-Thatcher era

Since the end of the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, the Conservatives have struggled to regain hegemonic position they enjoyed under her leadership. This chapter analyses these travails in relation to the silent revolution and the silent counter revolution, which have presented difficulties to parties on the right across Western Europe. It argues that, as a classic catch-all party, the Conservatives have had to battle to hold together a sufficiently broad electoral coalition, challenged in the political centre by the Liberal Democrats and (for a time) New Labour, and on the right by Eurosceptic populists in the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and more recently the Brexit Party. As the chapter explores, the Conservatives in opposition after the 1997 general election responded initially to the silent counter revolution, attempting to shore-up their support on the right. Ongoing electoral defeat saw the party under David Cameron embrace modernisation in an effort to signal catch-up with the process of value change identified in Inglehart’s (1977) ‘silent revolution’ thesis. In more recent years, and especially since the 2016 vote for Brexit, the Conservatives have sought once again to contain, and arguably have embraced, the silent counter revolution of the populist right