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Wets
During the 1980s, members of the moderate wing of the British Conservative Party who opposed some of the more hard-line policies of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were often referred to by their opponents as "wets". Thatcher coined the usage in 1979–80, with the meaning of feeble, lacking hardness, or willing to compromise with the unions. The label was especially applied to senior members of her government who were nevertheless outside Thatcher's inner circle and who expressed opposition to her strict monetarist policies designed to tackle inflation, and her cuts to public spending. Etymology In British slang, "wet" meant "inept, ineffectual, effete". Within the political context, the term was used by Thatcher's supporters as both as a noun and as an adjective to characterise people or policies which Thatcher would have considered weak or "wet". History United Kingdom Hugo Young identifies the most important "inner" wets as Jim Prior, Peter Walker, and Sir Ian Gilmour, ...
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Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, officially the Conservative and Unionist Party and also known colloquially as the Tories, is one of the Two-party system, two main political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Labour Party (UK), Labour Party. It is the current Government of the United Kingdom, governing party, having won the 2019 United Kingdom general election, 2019 general election. It has been the primary governing party in Britain since 2010. The party is on the Centre-right politics, centre-right of the political spectrum, and encompasses various ideological #Party factions, factions including One-nation conservatism, one-nation conservatives, Thatcherism, Thatcherites, and traditionalist conservatism, traditionalist conservatives. The party currently has 356 Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Members of Parliament, 264 members of the House of Lords, 9 members of the London Assembly, 31 members of the Scottish Parliament, 16 members of the Senedd, Welsh Parliament, 2 D ...
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BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online news coverage. The service maintains 50 foreign news bureaus with more than 250 correspondents around the world. Deborah Turness has been the CEO of news and current affairs since September 2022. In 2019, it was reported in an Ofcom report that the BBC spent £136m on news during the period April 2018 to March 2019. BBC News' domestic, global and online news divisions are housed within the largest live newsroom in Europe, in Broadcasting House in central London. Parliamentary coverage is produced and broadcast from studios in London. Through BBC English Regions, the BBC also has regional centres across England and national news c ...
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David Hunt, Baron Hunt Of Wirral
David James Fletcher Hunt, Baron Hunt of Wirral, (born 21 May 1942) is a British Conservative politician who served as a member of the Cabinet under the Thatcher and Major administrations, and was appointed to the Privy Council in 1990. Education Hunt was educated at Liverpool College, an independent school for boys (now co-educational), in Liverpool, at the time in Lancashire (and now in Merseyside), followed by the University of Bristol, where he studied Law. In 1965, representing the university, he won ''The Observer'' Mace debating competition, speaking with Bob Marshall Andrews (who would also go on to become an MP, for Labour.) In 1995, the competition was renamed the John Smith Memorial Mace, and is now run by the English-Speaking Union. Early life Born in Glyn Ceiriog in 1942, the son of former Royal Naval Reserves Officer Alan N Hunt OBE and Jessie E E Northrop, David Hunt was the middle child of three, with two sisters. Growing up, David was an active member of the ...
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Edward Heath
Sir Edward Richard George Heath (9 July 191617 July 2005), often known as Ted Heath, was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1970 to 1974 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1965 to 1975. Heath also served for 51 years as a Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament from 1950 to 2001. Outside politics, Heath was a yachtsman, a musician, and an author. Born to a lady's maid and a carpenter, Heath was educated at a grammar school in Ramsgate, Kent (Chatham House Grammar School for boys) and became a leader within student politics while studying at the University of Oxford. He served as an officer in the Royal Artillery during the Second World War. He worked briefly in the Civil Service (United Kingdom), Civil Service, but resigned in order to stand for Parliament, and was elected for Bexley (UK Parliament constituency), Bexley at the 1950 United Kingdom general election, 1950 el ...
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Alan Haselhurst, Baron Haselhurst
Alan Gordon Barraclough Haselhurst, Baron Haselhurst, (born 23 June 1937) is a British Conservative Party politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Saffron Walden from 1977 to 2017, having previously represented Middleton and Prestwich from 1970 to 1974. Haselhurst was Chairman of Ways and Means from 14 May 1997 to 8 June 2010, and later Chairman of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association between 2011 and 2014. He was the oldest Conservative MP when he stood down at the 2017 general election. In May 2018, he was appointed as a life peer, and currently sits in the House of Lords as Baron Haselhurst. Early life and career Alan Gordon Barraclough Haselhurst was born at South Elmsall, near Hemsworth, Yorkshire and educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, then Cheltenham College in Gloucestershire, before going to Oriel College, Oxford. He was elected President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1958 and, for two years, served as Secretary an ...
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Stephen Dorrell
Stephen James Dorrell (born 25 March 1952) is a British Liberal Democrat politician. He served as the Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Loughborough between 1979 and 1997 and then for Charnwood from 1997 to 2015. Dorrell most recently served for four years as Chairman of the House of Commons Health Select Committee from 2010 to 2014. In the 1990s he was a full member of John Major's Cabinet for almost three years, whilst serving as both Secretary of State for National Heritage and then Secretary of State for Health until the 1997 general election. He did not contest the 2015 general election and retired from the House of Commons. Returning to politics in 2019, he left the Conservatives and stood as a Change UK candidate at the 2019 European Parliament election. After failing to be elected, he defected to the Liberal Democrats and was the unsuccessful Liberal Democrat candidate for Buckingham in the 2019 general election. Early life and education Dorrell was born ...
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Kenneth Clarke
Kenneth Harry Clarke, Baron Clarke of Nottingham, (born 2 July 1940), often known as Ken Clarke, is a British politician who served as Home Secretary from 1992 to 1993 and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1993 to 1997 as well as serving as deputy chair of British American Tobacco from 1998 to 2007. A member of the Conservative Party, he was Member of Parliament (MP) for Rushcliffe from 1970 to 2019 and was Father of the House of Commons between 2017 and 2019. The President of the Tory Reform Group since 1997, he is a one-nation conservative who identifies with economically and socially liberal views. Clarke served in the Cabinets of Margaret Thatcher and John Major as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster from 1987 to 1988, Health Secretary from 1988 to 1990, and Education Secretary from 1990 to 1992. He held two of the Great Offices of State as Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer. He contested the Conservative Party leadership three times—in 1997, 2001 and ...
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Anthony Barber
Anthony Perrinott Lysberg Barber, Baron Barber, (4 July 1920 – 16 December 2005) was a British Conservative politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1970 to 1974. After serving in both the Territorial Army and the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, Barber studied at Oxford and became a barrister. Elected as MP for Doncaster in 1951, Barber served in government under Harold Macmillan as Economic Secretary to the Treasury and Financial Secretary to the Treasury, before being appointed Minister of Health by Alec Douglas-Home in 1963. After losing his seat in 1964, he won the 1965 by-election in Altrincham and Sale and returned to Parliament. Barber was appointed as Chancellor of the Exchequer by Edward Heath in 1970, and oversaw a major liberalisation of the banking system, replaced purchase tax and Selective Employment Tax with Value Added Tax, and also relaxed exchange controls. During his term the economy suffered due to stagflation an ...
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Moderates (Liberal Party Of Australia)
Moderates, also known as Modern Liberals or small-l liberals, are members, supporters, or voters of the Liberal Party of Australia who are economically conservative, but progressive on social and environmental policies. They compete with the Liberal Party's other two factions: The National Right and the centre-right. Geographical base Moderate Liberals often represent inner city and wealthy House of Representatives seats or are in the Senate. The Moderates are noted as having very little presence in the state of Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania, while in Victoria the nominal Moderate faction is not affiliated with those of the other states. Membership Prominent moderates include former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, former Foreign Affairs Minister and former Deputy Leader Julie Bishop, former Defence Minister and former Deputy Leader Christopher Pyne, former Attorney-General George Brandis, and former Liberal-turned-independent MP Julia Banks. Prominent moderate ...
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Liberal Party Of Australia
The Liberal Party of Australia is a centre-right political party in Australia, one of the two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-left Australian Labor Party. It was founded in 1944 as the successor to the United Australia Party and has since become the most successful political party in Australia's history. The Liberal Party is the dominant partner in the Coalition with the National Party of Australia. At the federal level, the Liberal Party and its predecessors have been in coalition with the National Party since the 1920s. The Coalition was most recently in power from the 2013 federal election to the 2022 federal election, forming the Abbott (2013–2015), Turnbull (2015–2018) and Morrison (2018–2022) governments. After the Liberal Party lost the 2022 Australian federal election, Morrison announced he would step down as leader of the Liberal Party. Deputy Leader Josh Frydenberg also lost his seat, making senior Liberal MP Peter Dutton ...
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Monday Club
The Conservative Monday Club (usually known as the Monday Club) is a British political pressure group, aligned with the Conservative Party, though no longer endorsed by it. It also has links to the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) in Northern Ireland. Founded in 1961, in the belief that the Macmillan ministry had taken the party too far to the left, the club became embroiled in the decolonisation and immigration debate, inevitably highlighting the controversial issue of race, which has dominated its image ever since. The club was known for its fierce opposition to non-white immigration to Britain and its support for apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia. By 1971, the club had 35 MPs, six of them ministers, and 35 peers, with membership (including branches) totalling about 10,000. In 1982, the constitution was re-written, with more emphasis on support for the Conservative Party, but it remained autonomous from the party. In-fighting over the club' ...
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Federation Of Conservative Students
The Federation of Conservative Students (FCS) was the student organisation of the British Conservative Party from the late 1940s to 1986. It was created to act as a bridge between the student movement and the Conservative Party. It produced several magazines, and had regular Assembly meetings in which motions would be voted on. It had supported some controversial actions, such as the legalisation of various drugs, and the privatisation of the Trident nuclear missiles. There was continual tension between central party, which funded the organisation, and the Federation – which often used the funds on exploring unconventional policies. The Federation had considerable influence on national politics (considered by some to be "the fast track to the next Conservative Party"), as committee members were consulted by MP's, and Ted Heath specifically had speeches written by the Federation's chairmen. In its final years it became known colloquially as " Maggie's Militant Tendency", ...
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