Conservative political parties

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Conservative political parties are political parties that are committed to conservative principles, which is a sometimes paradoxical notion. In the last years of the U.S.S.R., for example, socialist leaders there found themselves in the role of conservatives, seeking to preserve the status quo ante, as political conservatives in the U.S., Britain and elsewhere were committed to radical transformation of the role of government.

United Kingdom[edit]

The mainstream conservative party in the United Kingdom is the Conservative Party.

To the right of the Conservative Party is the UK Independence Party (UKIP) which combines a libertarian political philosophy with strong Euroscepticism, and has been controversial for a number of members publicly expressing doubts about the veracity of anthropogenic climate change.

On the far right of British politics, the BNP have advocated that Britain should remain primarily for "Indigenous Caucasians". Some dispute the BNP's status as being "far right" and insist that on the basis of their support for a strong welfare state and other economically progressive policies - albeit with the restriction that they are not available for non-whites - that they are on the "left". More sophisticated analyses of the political spectrum than the popular "left-right" spectrum describe this difference much more clearly.

United States[edit]

The United States currently has two main political parties: the Democratic Party and Republican Party. The former is roughly on the centre or centre-left, while the latter is more on the right. Of the two, only the Republican Party can really be considered conservative. This is not to deny that there are conservatives within the Democratic Party, the so-called Blue Dog Democrats for instance. Generally, the base of the Democratic and Republican parties are further to the left and right than the parties themselves: on the Republican side, this includes religious conservative groups like the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition, and the array of paleoconservative, libertarian and nativist groups that have allied around the Tea Party movement and figures like Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.

The United States has a number of more conservative third parties including the Libertarian Party (US) and the Constitution Party (formerly the American Taxpayers' Party).