When talking about UK politics, I will generally avoid using the terms “Tory” and “Tories” as these have emotional overtones. Instead, I will talk about “the Conservative party, ” or “Conservatives” If and when I use “Tory” it will because those overtones matter. Oddly, there don’t seem to be widely accepted nicknames either for Labour or the Liberal Democrats except for the simple contraction “Lib-Dems.”
Also, I will try to avoid the increasingly meaningless terms “right” and “left.” Instead, I will talk about where policy lies on two axes: state control versus economically liberal, and authoritarian versus libertarian.