Despite not having a leader, a limited campaign budget, and only running candidates in two-thirds of the province's ridings, the UFM won the 1922 election and, not having a leader, asked Professor John Bracken to head the party and become Premier.

In 1928, the United Farmers of Manitoba decided to withdraw from politics and concentrate on being a service and lobbying organization (it later became the ''Manitoba Federation of Agriculture).

Part of the reason for separating the party from the UFM was the perception that the government had a narrow base representing only farmers rather than all Manitobans. This perception led to the party's loss of its majority in 1928 forcing Bracken to form a coalition government .

After the UFM's withdrawal Bracken and his caucus formed the Progressive Party of Manitoba. The party ran in an electoral coalition with the Manitoba Liberal Party and were able to win a majority government Liberal-Progressive government in the 1932. The government was reduced to a minority in 1936 and needed support from Social Credit MLAs to continue.

In government, the Progressives were fiscally cautious however with the Great Depression the government attempted to deal with unemployment by fostering a 'back to the land' movement giving resettlement grants to move the unemployed from cities and town to the countryside.

In 1940, Bracken formed a wartime coalition government which included the Liberal-Progressives, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, Social Credit and Conservatives and in 1942, Bracken left provincial politics to take over the leadership of what became the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. Stuart S. Garson took over as leader of the party and Premier and was himself replaced by Douglas Lloyd Campbell in 1948.

The CCF left the coalition in 1945 and the Conservatives (now called the Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba due to the change in name of the federal party, but without any link with the Progressives) left in 1950 due to dissatisfaction with Campbell's leadership. While Campbell himself entered politics with the UFM in the 1920s, by 1950 his government had essentially become Liberal and what had been the Liberal-Progressives became known as the Manitoba Liberal Party.

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