Three months since being ousted, Britain's Conservatives plot return to power

They might be out of power, but British Conservatives meeting at their annual conference this week were surprisingly upbeat, increasingly convinced they could take back power from the new Labour government sooner than they had previously thought.

With British Prime Minister Keir Starmer under fire over the use of donations and a move to limit winter fuel payments to pensioners, many Conservatives feel they can bounce back quickly after suffering their worst election defeat in July.

It is a marked shift from the immediate aftermath of the election, when Labour won a landslide victory in an election that even Conservatives say was a whole-hearted rejection of their often chaotic and scandal-ridden 14 years in power.

Then the Conservatives believed they could be out of power for at least 10 years. Now, at their conference in the central English city of Birmingham where four leadership hopefuls were an ever-present sight, many were optimistic about unseating Labour at the next election, which must take place by mid-2029.

Marco Longhi, a former Conservative lawmaker who lost his seat in July, said voters were having doubts about Labour. "We have come here thinking we will be back and we will back very soon."

One lawmaker said it was as if the party had spent the summer overcoming its anger over defeat and was now ready to resume the fight - a trait that has made the Conservatives Britain's most successful party, governing the nation alone or in coalition for much of the past 200 years.

The Conservatives lost two-thirds of their seats at the election, ending with just 121 compared with Labour's more than 400 in the 650-seat parliament.

But Conservatives at the conference said the outcome reflected a rejection of them, not a desire for other parties.

"There is no reason why we shouldn't aspire to win that support back," said lawmaker Danny Kruger.

One Conservative lawmaker feared the upbeat mood was a "sugar rush" moment. "If there is still a gap in the polls and we are not close to power (in two years), then people could easily be very frustrated again," he said.