The modern political history of the United Kingdom (1979–present) began when Margaret Thatcher gained power in 1979, giving rise to 18 years of Conservative government. Victory in the Falklands War (1982) and the government's strong opposition to trade unions helped lead the Conservative Party to another three terms in government. Thatcher initially pursued monetarist policies and went on to privatise many of Britain's nationalised companies such as British Telecom, British Gas Corporation, British Airways and British Steel Corporation. She kept the National Health Service. The controversial "poll tax" to fund local government was unpopular, and eventually led to a leadership challenge triggered by Michael Heseltine. Thatcher initially intended to fight the leadership election to the end, but eventually stepped down as party leader, having failed to accrue enough support to win. She was succeeded by the eventual winner, John Major.
Thatcher's successor, John Major, replaced the "poll tax" with Council Tax and oversaw successful British involvement in the Gulf War. Despite a recession, Major led the Conservatives to a surprise victory in 1992. The events of Black Wednesday in 1992, party disunity over the European Union and several scandals involving Conservative politicians all led to the Labour Party winning a landslide election victory under Tony Blair in 1997. Labour had shifted its policies from the political left closer to the centre, under the slogan of 'New Labour'. The Bank of England was given independence over monetary policy and Scotland and Wales were given a devolved Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly respectively, whilst London wide local government was also re-established in the form of an Assembly and Mayor. The Good Friday Agreement was negotiated in 1997 in an effort to end The Troubles in Northern Ireland, with a devolved, power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly being established in 1998.
Blair led Britain into the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars before leaving office in 2007, when he was succeeded by his chancellor, Gordon Brown. The 2008 financial crisis led to Labour's defeat in the 2010 election. It was replaced by a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, headed by David Cameron, that pursued a series of public spending cuts with the intention of reducing the budget deficit. In 2016, the UK voted in an advisory referendum to leave the European Union, which led to Cameron's resignation. Cameron was succeeded by his home secretary, Theresa May.
May engaged in a policy to take the country out of the European Union through her flagship Brexit withdrawal agreement. When this deal failed to pass through the House of Commons three times, May resigned. The subsequent Conservative leadership election was won by former Foreign Secretary and Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who became prime minister in July 2019. A Conservative landslide victory in the general election five months later allowed for a majority government and the UK's withdrawal from the EU in January 2020. Amid numerous scandals and a government crisis, Johnson resigned in September 2022 and was succeeded by his Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. She was appointed prime minister by Queen Elizabeth II, just two days before the latter's death. Amid yet another government crisis, Truss resigned seven weeks into her tenure in October 2022, and was succeeded by Rishi Sunak, the first prime minister to be appointed during the reign of King Charles III. The Conservatives' popularity remained low after the successive government crises, all led to the Labour Party winning a landslide election victory under Keir Starmer in 2024. Following sustained low approval ratings, Starmer resigned amid a leadership crisis within the Labour Party and was succeeded by Andy Burnham in July 2026.
Conservative Government, 1979–1997 Margaret Thatcher (1979–1990)
Thatcher formed a government on 4 May 1979, in a political landscape that had been majorly changed by the Winter of Discontent and had lead to an anti-union sentiment leading up to the 1979 general election. Thatcher was elected on a platform of rebuilding the UK's economy and restoring hope during a divided period. Thatcher was incensed by one contemporary view within the Civil Service that its job was to manage the UK's decline from the days of Empire, and wanted the country to punch above its weight in international affairs. She was ideologically similar to Ronald Reagan, elected President in 1980 in the United States, and to a lesser extent, Brian Mulroney, who was elected in 1984 in Canada. It seemed for a time that conservatism might be the dominant political philosophy in the major English-speaking nations for the era.
Irish issues
Northern Ireland was in a violent phase.Frank Gaffikin, Northern Ireland: The Thatcher Years (1989). Insurgents planted bombs and assassinated its foes, including in 1979 Airey Neave, Thatcher's close friend who was expected to take charge there. The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), a republican paramilitary group, claimed responsibility. On 27 August 1979, the IRA assassinated Lord Mountbatten, a member of the royal family, and other units killed 18 soldiers with a roadside bomb.Robert M. Pockrass, "Terroristic murder in Northern Ireland: Who is killed and why?." Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 9.4 (1987): 341–359. Sheer luck on the early morning of 12 October 1984 saved Thatcher's life as five were killed by a bomb planted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in Brighton's Grand Hotel during the Conservative Party conference.Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher: At Her Zenith (2016) 2: 309–16.
In 1981, a new tactic was used to mobilize support, as Provisional IRA and Irish National Liberation Army prisoners went on hunger strikes to claim legitimacy for their cause in the act of making the ultimate sacrifice.Aogan Mulcahy, "Claims-making and the construction of legitimacy: Press coverage of the 1981 Northern Irish hunger strike." Social Problems 42.4 (1995): 449–467. It was a historic tactic that was revived for maximum impact, although it was attacked by the major news media and denounced by Catholic bishops.George Sweeney, "Irish hunger strikes and the cult of self-sacrifice." Journal of Contemporary History 28.3 (1993): 421–437. in JSTOR
Thatcher continued the policy of "Ulsterisation" promoted by the previous Labour government, believing that the unionists of Ulster should be at the forefront in combating Irish republicanism. This meant relieving the burden on the mainstream British Army and elevating the role of the Ulster Defence Regiment and the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
In November 1985, Thatcher signed the Hillsborough Anglo-Irish Agreement, bringing the Dublin government into the peace process. P. J. McLoughlin finds the consensus of scholars is that it was a significant factor contributing to the development of the Northern Ireland peace process.P. J. McLoughlin, "‘The First Major Step in the Peace Process’? Exploring the Impact of the Anglo-Irish Agreement on Irish Republican Thinking." Irish Political Studies 29.1 (2014): 116–133. However, the agreement was greeted with fury by Irish unionists. The Ulster Unionists and Democratic Unionists made an electoral pact and on 23 January 1986, staged an ad hoc referendum by re-fighting their seats in by-elections, and won with one seat lost to the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). Then, unlike the Sunningdale Agreement in 1974, they found they could not bring the agreement down by a general strike. This was another effect of the changed balance of power in industrial relations. The Hillsborough agreement stood, and Thatcher punished the unionists for their non-cooperation by abolishing the devolved assembly she had created only four years before.
Economics
In economic policy, Thatcher and her Chancellor Sir Geoffrey Howe started out with policies, including higher interest rates, to drive down the rate of growth of the money supply. She had a preference for indirect taxation over taxes on income: in 1979 exchange controls were abolished and the top rate of income tax on "unearned" income cut from 98% to 60%, but value-added tax (VAT) was increased sharply to 15% with the result that inflation also rose. These moves hit businesses, especially in the manufacturing sector, and unemployment – which had stood at 1,500,000 by the time of the 1979 general election – was above 2,000,000 by the end of 1980. It continued to rise throughout 1981, passing the 2,500,000 mark during the summer of that year – although inflation was now down to 12% compared to 27% two years earlier. The economy was now in recession.
Her early tax policy reforms were based on the monetarist theories of Milton Friedman rather than the supply-side economics of Arthur Laffer and Jude Wanniski, which the government of Ronald Reagan espoused. There was a severe recession in the early 1980s, and the Government's economic policy was widely blamed. In January 1982, the inflation rate dropped to single figures and interest rates fell. Unemployment peaked at 3.1 million and remained at that level until 1986.See "1982: UK unemployment tops three million" BBC: On This Day The recession of the early 1980s was the deepest in Britain since the depression of the 1930s and Thatcher's popularity plummeted; most predictions had her losing the next election.
Falklands War
In Argentina, an unstable military junta was in power and keen on reversing its huge economic unpopularity. On 2 April 1982, it invaded the Falkland Islands, the only invasion of a British territory since World War II. Argentina has claimed the islands since an 1830s dispute on their settlement. Thatcher sent a naval task force to recapture the Islands. The ensuing Falklands War saw the swift defeat of Argentina in only a few days of fighting, resulting in a wave of patriotic enthusiasm for Thatcher personally, at a time when her popularity had been at an all-time low for a serving prime minister. Opinion polls showed a huge surge in Conservative support which would be sufficient to win a general election. In the end, the war probably raised the Conservative vote by about six points, according to scholarly studies of the polling data.Helmut Norpoth, "The Falklands war and government popularity in Britain: Rally without consequence or surge without decline?." Electoral Studies 6.1 (1987): 3–16.Harold D. Clarke, William Mishler, and Paul Whiteley. "Recapturing the Falklands: models of Conservative popularity, 1979–83." British Journal of Political Science 20#1 (1990): 63–81.
This "Falklands Factor", as it came to be known, was crucial to the scale of the landslide Conservative majority in the June 1983 general election, with a fragmented Labour Party enduring its worst postwar election result, while the SDP–Liberal Alliance (created two years earlier in a pact between the Liberal Party and the new Social Democratic Party (UK) formed by disenchanted former Labour MPs) trailed Labour closely in terms of votes but won few seats.David E. Butler, et al., The British General Election of 1983 (1984).Helmut Norpoth, "The popularity of the Thatcher government: A matter of war and economy." in Norpoth et al. eds., Economics and politics: The calculus of support (1991): 141–60.
Hong Kong
China demanded the return of Hong Kong with the expiration of Britain's 99-year lease on most of the territory in 1997. Thatcher negotiated directly in September 1982 with that country's leader Deng Xiaoping.Chi-kwan Mark, "To ‘educate’ Deng Xiaoping in capitalism: Thatcher’s visit to China and the future of Hong Kong in 1982." Cold War History (2015): 1–20. They agreed on the Sino-British Joint Declaration over the Question of Hong Kong which provided for a peaceful transfer of Hong Kong to Beijing's control in 15 years' time, after which the city would be allowed to retain its "capitalistic" system for another 50 years.