Is UK Conservative Party left wing or right wing?

On economic organisation UK Conservative Party scores +06 on a scale from −10 (common ownership) to +10 (private property and markets). On social and cultural order it scores +05. A single left–right figure combines these and four further measurements that move independently, which is why the atlas reports six.

Is UK Conservative Party authoritarian?

On the organisation of power, which measures whether authority is dispersed among institutions that can stop each other or concentrated in a single centre, UK Conservative Party scores +02. Parliamentary sovereignty; centralising toward Westminster on most policy.

Atlas / Organisations / UK Conservative Party

UK Conservative Party

Tories · 1834– · Britain · Conservative · Electoral party · coding confidence high

+06ECmarket

+05CUtraditional

+02AUmonist

+03SCcentral

+03IDascriptive

−05CHlawful

Each axis runs from −10 to +10, with zero a genuine mixed or balanced position rather than an absence of opinion. A score describes a stated position and a governing record; it is not a judgement of merit. What each score means →

Core principles

Fiscal restraint, national sovereignty, property ownership, controlled migration, gradualism.

Economic model

Lower taxes, deregulation, private provision within public services, fiscal rules.

Organisation of powers

Parliamentary sovereignty; centralising toward Westminster on most policy.

Reading note

Sits well to the economic right of its own 1975 position, and to the economic right of the current US Democratic Party.

Check a claim about UK Conservative Party. The interactive atlas measures the distance between any two organisations across all six axes and shows which ones carry the disagreement.

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The evidence for every score

All six cells are sourced. A rationale explains what the score is measuring and each artefact is something a third party can check without taking anyone's word for it.

EC · Economic organisation · scored +06

Coded +6 today. The same party in 1975 supported nationalised rail, coal, steel and utilities and would have been coded near −2.

Documented act or statutePrivatisation of telecoms, gas, water, electricity and rail between 1984 and 1996.
Programme textThe 1970 and February 1974 manifestos accepted the nationalised industries as settled.

CU · Social and cultural order · scored +05

Coded +5: socially liberal legislation from the party's own governments alongside a traditionalist base.

Documented act or statuteSame-sex marriage was legislated by a Conservative government in 2013 against a majority of its own MPs.

AU · Organisation of power · scored +02

Coded +2: parliamentary in method, with several recent confrontations with legal constraint.

Documented act or statuteThe 2019 prorogation of parliament was ruled unlawful by the supreme court.
Documented act or statuteJudicial review was narrowed and legislation was introduced to disapply parts of human rights law in specific policy areas.

SC · Scale of decision · scored +03

Coded +3: unitary and centralising, with mayoral devolution as the exception.

Documented act or statuteThe Internal Market Act 2020 constrained devolved competences after EU withdrawal.

ID · Rule of membership · scored +03

Coded +5 on migration policy rather than ancestry.

Documented act or statuteThe Rwanda removals policy was legislated in 2024 and found unlawful by the supreme court in 2023.

CH · Method and tempo · scored −05

Coded −5: incremental by disposition, with Brexit as a deliberate discontinuity achieved by referendum.

Documented act or statuteEU withdrawal was pursued through referendum, legislation and treaty rather than outside them.

How it moved

Positions are recorded at dated anchor points tied to a documented moment — a programme adopted, a government formed, a reversal. Nothing is interpolated between them, because nothing is known between them. Figures in amber moved by two points or more from the previous anchor.

Anchor	EC	CU	AU	SC	ID	CH	What it is tied to
1950	−01	+06	−01	+02	+05	−07	Accepted the NHS and all but two of the nationalised industries; denationalised only steel and road haulage.
1975	−02	+06	00	+03	+05	−07	After the Heath government's U-turn: statutory incomes policy, industry rescues, three-day week.
1983	+08	+06	+02	+04	+05	+03	Privatisation of telecoms, gas and utilities; monetarism; union legislation; abolition of the metropolitan councils.
2005	+06	+03	+01	+03	+03	−06	Cameron modernisation: environmental repositioning, and same-sex marriage legislated in 2013.
2024	+06	+05	+02	+03	+03	−05	Rwanda removals policy, ECHR withdrawal debate, post-Brexit regulatory settlement.

Net movement, 1950 to 2024: EC +7, AU +3, ID −2, CH +2. A trajectory records where an organisation has been. It does not forecast, and several organisations in this corpus moved a long way with no warning available in advance.

Where it came from, and what came after

takes its doctrine fromBurkean Conservatism
The party's self-understanding has cited Reflections continuously since the 1830s.

Scores that have been revised

ID +05 → +03Restrictive on admission and civic on belonging. The party has selected leaders and chancellors of recent immigrant descent, which is not compatible with a descent-based membership rule.

Nearest organisations by measured distance

Straight-line separation across all six axes, out of a maximum of 49.0. Proximity means similarity of stated position, not endorsement and not resemblance in outcome.

Countries

Britain

Cite this page

Scores are revised on evidence, so a citation should carry the version it refers to. Version 4.3.1 is current; the revision log records every change.

McGrath, K. (2026). UK Conservative Party. The Political Atlas, version 4.2. https://thepoliticalatlas.com/organisations/ukcon/ (accessed 2026-08-01).

Free to quote and reproduce with attribution. This is a synthesis rather than a peer-reviewed dataset — where an authoritative figure is needed, cite the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the Manifesto Project or V-Dem.