Cameron–Clegg coalition in the context of "Lords Reform"

David William Donald Cameron, Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton (born 9 October 1966), is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016. Until 2015, he led the first coalition government in the UK since 1945 and resigned after a referendum supported the country's leaving the European Union. After his premiership, he served as Foreign Secretary in the government of prime minister Rishi Sunak from 2023 to 2024. Cameron was Leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016 and served as Leader of the Opposition from 2005 to 2010. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Witney from 2001 to 2016, and has been a member of the House of Lords since November 2023. Cameron identifies as a one-nation conservative and has been associated with both economically liberal and socially liberal policies.

Born in London to an upper-middle-class family, Cameron was educated at Eton College and Brasenose College, Oxford. After becoming an MP in 2001, he served in the opposition Shadow Cabinet under Conservative leader Michael Howard, and succeeded Howard in 2005. Following the 2010 general election, negotiations led to Cameron becoming prime minister as the head of a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats.

Theresa Mary May, Baroness May of Maidenhead (/təˈriːzə/; née Brasier; born 1 October 1956), is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2016 to 2019. She previously served as Home Secretary from 2010 to 2016. She was Member of Parliament (MP) for Maidenhead from 1997 to 2024, and has been a member of the House of Lords since August 2024. May was the second female British prime minister, after Margaret Thatcher, and the first woman to have held two of the Great Offices of State. May is a one-nation conservative.

May grew up in Oxfordshire and attended St Hugh's College, Oxford. After graduating in 1977, she worked at the Bank of England and the Association for Payment Clearing Services. She also served as a councillor on Merton London Borough Council. After two unsuccessful attempts to be elected to the House of Commons, she was elected MP for Maidenhead at the 1997 general election. From 1999 to 2010, May held several roles in shadow cabinets and was Chairman of the Conservative Party from 2002 to 2003. Following the formation of the coalition government after the 2010 general election, May was appointed home secretary and minister for women and equalities, giving up the latter role in 2012. Reappointed after the Conservatives won the 2015 general election, she became the longest-serving home secretary in more than 60 years. During her tenure as home secretary, she pursued reform of the Police Federation, implemented a harder line on drugs policy and further restricted immigration. She oversaw the introduction of elected police and crime commissioners, the deportation of Abu Qatada and the creation of the College of Policing and the National Crime Agency. Although she supported the Remain campaign, May supported Brexit following the outcome of the 2016 referendum. She was elected and appointed prime minister unopposed, succeeding David Cameron.

The 2017 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 8 June 2017, two years after the previous general election in 2015; it was the first since 1992 to be held on a day that did not coincide with any local elections. The governing Conservative Party led by Prime Minister Theresa May remained the largest single party in the House of Commons but lost its small overall majority, resulting in the formation of a Conservative minority government with a confidence and supply agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland.

The Conservative Party, which had governed as a senior coalition partner from 2010 and as a single-party majority government from 2015, was led by May as Prime Minister. It was defending a working majority of 17 seats against the opposition Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn. It was the first general election to be contested by either May or Corbyn as party leader; May had succeeded David Cameron following his resignation as prime minister the previous summer, while Corbyn had succeeded Ed Miliband after he resigned following Labour's failure to win the general election two years earlier.

David Cameron's tenure as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom began on 11 May 2010 when he accepted an invitation of Queen Elizabeth II to form a government, succeeding Gordon Brown of the Labour Party, and ended on 13 July 2016 upon his resignation following the 2016 referendum that favoured Brexit, which he had opposed. As prime minister, Cameron also served simultaneously as First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, and Leader of the Conservative Party.

Following the 2010 general election, Cameron became prime minister at the head of a coalition government between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, as no party had gained an overall majority in the House of Commons for the first time since the February 1974 general election. He appointed Nick Clegg, Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Deputy Prime Minister. Between them, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats controlled 363 seats in the House of Commons, with a majority of 76 seats.

The Liberal Democrats, colloquially known as the Lib Dems, is one of the major political parties in the United Kingdom. Ideologically adhering to liberalism, it was founded in 1988. The party is based at Liberal Democrat Headquarters, which since September 2025 has been based at Buckingham Gate, in the Westminster area of Central London. The party's leader is Ed Davey. It is the third-largest party in the United Kingdom, with 72 members of Parliament (MPs) in the House of Commons. It has 75 members of the House of Lords, 5 in the Scottish Parliament, 1 in the Welsh Senedd, and around 3,200 local council seats. The party holds a twice yearly Liberal Democrat Conference, at which policy is formulated. In contrast to its main opponents, the Lib Dems grant all members attending Conference the right to vote on policy, under a one member, one vote system. As well as voting in the Conference Hall, the party allows its members to vote online for its policies and leadership elections. Members are also free to join organisations representing strands of party thinking, such as Liberal Reform and Social Liberal Forum, and for those under 30 years, Young Liberals.

In 1981, an electoral alliance was established between the Liberal Party, a group which descended from the 18th-century Whigs, and the Social Democratic Party (SDP), a splinter group from the Labour Party. In 1988, the parties merged as the Social and Liberal Democrats, adopting their present name a year later. Under the leaderships of Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy, the party grew in the 1990s and 2000s, focusing its campaigns on specific seats and retained the third-largest party status in the House of Commons, although with significantly more seats than the predecessor Liberal Party. In the 1997 election, the Liberal Democrats doubled their seat count to 46. In 2010, under Nick Clegg's leadership, the Lib Dems were junior partners in the Conservative-led coalition government, in which Clegg served as deputy prime minister. Though it allowed the party to implement some of its policies, the coalition damaged its electoral standing; it lost 48 of its 56 MPs at the 2015 general election, which relegated it to fourth-largest party in the House of Commons. Under the leaderships of Tim Farron, Vince Cable and Jo Swinson, the party refocused as a pro-Europeanist party opposing Brexit. In the 2019 general election, the party garnered 11.5% of the vote on an anti-Brexit platform, but this did not translate into seat gains. However, the party's success was renewed under the leadership of Ed Davey, winning hundreds of councillors and 72 MPs in the 2024 general election, its highest result since 1923, and resuming its status as the third largest party in the House of Commons.

The 2015 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 7 May 2015 to elect 650 members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons. The Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister David Cameron, won an unexpected majority victory of ten seats; they had been leading a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. It was the last general election to be held before the UK voted to leave the European Union (EU) in June 2016.

Opinion polls and political commentators had widely predicted that the election would result in a second consecutive hung parliament whose composition would be similar to the one elected at the previous general election in 2010. Potential coalitions and agreements between parties were intensively discussed; as a result, smaller parties received much more attention during the campaign than in previous UK elections. However, opinion polls underestimated the Conservatives, as they won 330 of the 650 seats and 36.9 per cent of the vote, giving them a small overall majority.

Theresa May served as home secretary from 2010 until 2016. As a member of David Cameron's first government May was appointed as home secretary on 12 May 2010, shortly after Cameron became prime minister, and continued in the post as part of the second Cameron government following the 2015 general election. She held the post until she succeeded Cameron as prime minister on 13 July 2016. May was the second woman to be appointed as home secretary (after Jacqui Smith), and the fourth woman to hold one of the Great Offices of State.

The longest-serving home secretary since James Chuter Ede over 60 years previously, May pursued reform of the Police Federation, implemented a harder line on drugs policy including banning khat and brought in further restrictions on immigration. She oversaw the introduction of elected police and crime commissioners, police investigations including Operation Yewtree, the deportation of Abu Qatada and the creation of the College of Policing and the National Crime Agency.

David Cameron formed the second Cameron ministry, the first Conservative majority government since 1996, following the 2015 general election. Prior to the election Cameron had led his first ministry, the Cameron–Clegg coalition, a coalition government that consisted of members of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg as deputy prime minister.

Following the vote to leave at the EU referendum on the morning of 24 June, Cameron said that he would resign as prime minister after a new Leader of the Conservative Party was chosen after the party conference in the autumn. It was announced on 11 July 2016 that he would resign on 13 July and be succeeded by Home Secretary, Theresa May.