Formerly, a major political party in Britain. It emerged in the mid‐19th century as the successor to the Whig Party and was the major alternative party to the Conservatives until 1918, after which the Labour Party supplanted it. Lord Palmerston’s administration of 1854 is regarded as the first Liberal government. After World War II it was an opposition party of varying fortune, forming a Lib–Lab pact with the Labour government (1977–78), and then the Alliance (1983–87) with the Social Democratic Party, with which it merged in 1988 to form the Social and Liberal Democrats (later renamed the Liberal Democrats).