This book considers the development of the Conservative Party's social policies from 1997 to the period following the 2010 general election. That election brought a number of major surprises. One was that despite large opinion poll leads throughout most of 2008 and 2009, the Conservatives failed to gain an overall majority in the House of Commons; another was the coalition subsequently formed with the Liberal Democrats and the policy agreements that emerged from it. This chapter considers the genesis of the Conservatives’ positions on social policy up to the general election and its immediate aftermath, and thus provides a broad framework for the remainder of the book. It outlines a number of issues that are considered in greater depth in the chapters that follow.

Following the 1997 general election considerable attention was paid to the extent to which the policies, and particularly the social policies, of ‘New Labour’ differed from those of ‘Old Labour’, and, at the same time, the extent to which they were similar to or different from the New Right-influenced Thatcher and Major governments that preceded them. After 18 years of Conservative government and the changes in Labour policies, those questions were entirely understandable. When the Conservatives returned to office in 2010, after 13 years of Labour in power, and with some having argued that the intervening years had seen the emergence of something of a new political consensus on welfare, there were a number of issues worthy of consideration, even before the coalition with the Liberal Democrats:

• • the extent to which the Conservatives’ policies were similar to or different from those of previous Conservative governments and oppositions, including from both the Thatcher era and earlier;

• • the extent to which Conservative policies differed from those of the Labour governments led by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown;

• • how the Conservatives reached the policy positions that they held by the time of the 2010 general election;

• • the ideas and beliefs that underpinned the Conservatives’ approach to social policies;

• • the implications of these policies for the future of social policy and the welfare state in the United Kingdom;

• • and (following the election and the formation of the Coalition government) the extent of the influence of the Liberal Democrats on the new government's policies.