The Conservative Party, officially the Conservative and Unionist Party and also known colloquially as the Tories, is one of the two main political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Labour Party. It is the current governing party, having won the 2019 general election. It has been the primary governing party in the United Kingdom since 2010. The party is on the centre-right of the political spectrum, and encompasses various ideological factions including one-nation conservatives, Thatcherites, and traditionalist conservatives. The party currently has 356 Members of Parliament, 260 members of the House of Lords, 9 members of the London Assembly, 31 members of the Scottish Parliament, 16 members of the Welsh Parliament, 2 directly elected mayors, 30 police and crime commissioners, and around 6,654 local councillors. It holds the annual Conservative Party Conference. The Conservative Party was founded in 1834 from the Tory Party and was one of two dominant political parties in the 19th century, along with the Liberal Party. Under Benjamin Disraeli, it played a preeminent role in politics at the height of the British Empire. In 1912, the Liberal Unionist Party merged with the party to form the Conservative and Unionist Party. In the 1920s, the Labour Party became the Conservatives' main rival. In 2010, the Conservatives entered a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. Following the 2015 general election, the Conservatives formed a government with a small majority. A snap general election in 2017 resulted in the Conservatives losing their majority and governing through a confidence and supply arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party. In the 2019 general election, the Conservatives won an 80-seat majority, but a series of scandals led to a motion of no confidence in Boris Johnson, the July 2022 government crisis and the prime minister announcing his resignation pending a leadership contest. Johnson was succeeded by Liz Truss, who announced her own resignation less than two months later following another government crisis. Rishi Sunak was elected unopposed as leader of the party on 24 October 2022. The party has generally adopted liberal economic policies favouring free markets, including deregulation, privatisation, and marketisation, since the 1980s, although historically it advocated for protectionism. The party is British unionist, opposing a united Ireland as well as Scottish and Welsh independence, and has been critical of devolution. Historically, the party supported the continuance and maintenance of the British Empire. The party has taken various approaches