The tories are the conservative party. They are our right-wing, mainstream party. Politically, they are closer to the Democrats than republicans, but that’s mostly because America is so extreme right wing compared to most of Europe.

A few years ago, they took a lurch to the right, as well as purging a lot of the less extreme and/or intelligent members. Thankfully, they got throughly bitchslaped out of power recently. We are now into the cleanup phase of their damage (including brexit).