- ONE-NATION
- Tory Reform Group – Founded in 1975 to promote more moderate policies influenced by Benjamin Disraeli’s ‘One Nation’ Conservatism and Harold Macmillan’s ‘’Middle Way’.
- The group’s website explains that it has historically aimed to combine “economic efficiency” with “the exercise of compassion” and an “interventionist attitude towards unjust social conditions”.
- In the 1980s the group often conflicted with Margaret Thatcher’s Government, arguing that economic policy “took insufficient account of the consequences”, for example the impact on unemployment levels.
- The group is generally much more positive about the EU than other factions.
- THATCHERITE/NEW RIGHT
- Conservative Way Forward – Founded in 1991 to “defend and build upon the achievements of the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher’s leadership, and to adapt the principles of her era in government to modern concerns and challenges”.
- The group supports free markets, deregulation, individual freedom and choice. With the decline of the Tory Reform Group, Conservative Way Forward has come to represent mainstream Conservative thinking and is currently the largest pressure group within the party.
- TRADITIONAL/SOCIAL CONSERVATIVE
- Cornerstone Group – Founded in 2005, with the motto “Faith, Flag and Family’, this socially conservative group aims to preserve “the traditional values which have shaped the British way of life throughout this country’s history”.
- The group supports a strong, unitary British state, opposing the transfer of power to the EU or regional governments.
- It seeks to preserve traditional British culture and spiritual values and is concerned by the impact of immigration.
- The group firmly opposed the David Cameron’s support for same-sex marriage.