Once-mighty Conservative Party is battling to avoid extinction

Britain's Conservatives used to boast they were the world's most successful political party. Not anymore.

- Kemi Badenoch

Kemi Badenoch

The centre-right party that governed the UK for more than 60 of the last 100 years before being ousted in 2024 is embracing Donald Trump-style policies, including mass deportations and government budget-slashing, as it battles to remain a contender for power. The Tories are fighting not just the Labour government to their left, but Reform UK to the right. Nigel Farage's hard-right party has topped opinion polls for months, trounced the Conservatives in May's local elections and has welcomed a stream of defecting Tory members and officials.

"Yes, we have a mountain to climb," Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch told party members at their annual conference, which ends Wednesday in Manchester. "But we have a song in our hearts, and we are up for the fight."

Crowds were thin under the vast vaulted roof of the Manchester Central conference venue, a former railway station in the northwest England city, as delegates absorbed the party's diminished stature.

"It's not in a great place at the moment, we're aware of that," said Neil McCarthy, a member from northern England. "There needs to be passion, and we need to get the message across that we've changed."

Questions of party competence weren't helped by Conservative-branded chocolate bars distributed at the conference on which Britain was misspelled as "Britain."