Commons Briefing paper by Sarah Priddy. It was first published on Friday, 27 March 2015. It was last updated on Monday, 17 August 2026.
Conservative Party leaders and officials since 1975
Further reading
Conservative Party structure and organisation
Constitution of the Conservative Party (PDF): Includes leadership election rules and procedures for selecting candidates.
Oliver Letwin, Hearts and Minds: The Battle for the Conservative Party from Thatcher to the Present, Biteback, 2017
Tim Bale, The Conservative Party: From Thatcher to Cameron, Polity Press, 2016
Robert Blake, The Conservative Party from Peel to Major, Faber & Faber, 2011
Leadership elections
The Commons Library briefing Leadership Elections: Conservative Party looks at the current and previous rules for the election of the leader of the Conservative Party.
Current state of the parties
The current composition of the House of Commons can be found on the Parliament website: current state of the parties.
Parliament: facts and figures
This series of publications contains data on various subjects relating to Parliament and Government. Topics include legislation, MPs, select committees, debates, divisions and Parliamentary procedure.
Feedback
Please send any comments or corrections to papers@parliament.uk.
Secondary information
- Type
- Research briefing
- Reference
- SN07154
- Category
- Parliament facts and figures
- Subjects
- Conservative Leadership
- Contains statistics
- Yes
- Published by
- Parliament and Constitution Centre
- House of Commons Library
- Link
- View this Research briefing on researchbriefings.parliament.uk
Librarians' tools
- Timestamp
- 2026-08-17 11:00:19 +0100
- URI
- http://data.parliament.uk/resources/346401
- In Indexing
- http://indexing.parliament.uk/Content/Edit/1?uri=http://data.parliament.uk/resources/346401
- In Solr
- https://search.parliament.uk/claw/solr/?id=http://data.parliament.uk/resources/346401
- Internal location
- http://researchbriefingsintranet.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN07154