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Historic Elections: The 1997 General Election and Blair's New Labour Revolution
32 Plays15 days ago
Ethan Reuter speaks with Sir John Curtice, Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde, senior research fellow at the National Centre for Social Research, and one of Britain's foremost election analysts, about the 1997 general election that ended eighteen years of Conservative rule and delivered Tony Blair's Labour Party a majority of 179 seats. The conversation ranges across the sweeping constitutional programme of Labour's first term — Scottish and Welsh devolution, the creation of the London Assembly and mayoralty, the Human Rights Act, and the ill-fated push for English regional government — before examining the political conditions that made such a transformation possible. From the shadow of Black Wednesday and the sleaze that hollowed out John Major's government, to the demographic realignment that saw Labour capture vast swathes of Middle England, and from Blair's mastery of political symbolism and Cool Britannia to the question of whether New Labour was Thatcherism by another name, this episode asks what 1997 truly changed — and what the landslide of 2024 can and cannot learn from it.
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Transcript
Introduction to the 1997 UK Election
00:00:00
Speaker
you
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Observations Podcast. My name is Ethan Reuter and in today's episode we'll be talking about the 1997 election.
Labour's Landslide Victory and Political Shift
00:00:17
Speaker
A landslide victory for Tony Blair's Labour that ended 18 years of Conservative government and sent a clear signal that British politics had moved on. Labour won a huge majority of 179 seats with 418 seats in total.
00:00:30
Speaker
John Major's Conservatives were routed. In short, 1997 is not just a change of government, it is a change of political direction.
Guest Introduction: Sir John Curtis
00:00:38
Speaker
I'm delighted to be joined today by Sir John Curtis, who is one of Britain's best known election analysts and a professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde.
00:00:47
Speaker
He is a senior research fellow at the National Centre for Social Research, having recently published the British Chotel Attitude Survey 42. He is a familiar stalwart on BBC election nights for decades, has written bylines in various national newspapers, and was knighted in the 2018 New Year's Honours for services to social science and politics.
00:01:05
Speaker
Welcome to the show and thank you for being here No, nice to be here, Ethan.
00:01:11
Speaker
So let's start off with what is the most impactful thing about the 1997 election? What about it is, is epoch defining?
00:01:22
Speaker
Well, if we're talking about what is the legacy of the government that, of course, in the end, by winning two further elections in 2001 and 2005, in the end, it it ended up having 13 years in power. So um one of the very clear distinguishing characteristics of the program on which Labour were elected 1997 and and was for the most part, implemented in its first four years, between 1997 and 2001, was a substantial program of constitutional change.
Blair's Approach to Constitutional Changes
00:02:02
Speaker
Now, it has to be said straight away that a lot of this program had been or was being developed before Tony Blair became leader in 1994. So it's not necessarily true that this is particularly but Blair's legacy. Indeed, in some respects, Blair was sometimes thought to be somewhat wary of it. um of ah So what what what are we talking about
Devolution in Scotland and Wales
00:02:23
Speaker
here? Well, above all, we're talking about devolution for both Scotland and for Wales.
00:02:32
Speaker
Blair had ah intervened in the process in a couple of years before the election in insisting that there should be referendums in both Scotland and in Wales before this should be before this should be pursued.
00:02:48
Speaker
But the truth is that certainly in Scotland, the climate for introducing the Scottish Parliament was much more propitious than it had been back in 1997, when a similar referendum had been lost and indeed was to lead to the downfall of Jim Callaghan's government. and the Conservative government that was defeated in 1997 because the proposals that were being that Labour effectively were backing being put to the election well they had been developed through what's known as the Scottish Constitutional Convention which was a body of Labour, Liberal Democrat politicians but also various aspects of Scottish civil society the churches, the trade union unions etc.
00:03:33
Speaker
I need to provide a forum in within which Labour and the Liberal Democrats had effectively come to an agreement about what the Parliament should be about, how it should be constituted, including above all the electoral system of proportional representation. um So, you know, it was some that went through relatively easily in the referendum of September 1997. And on the of July the Parliament met for the first time
00:04:03
Speaker
um In Wales, ah the ground was nothing like so well prepared. And in effect, devolution for Wales was something that Labour was pursuing, primarily because they were pursuing it for Scotland.
00:04:16
Speaker
um But ah in the event the referendum was very, which was very carefully timed to be held the week after the Scottish referendum and the expectation that this might generate some momentum, that in the end was very narrowly won. And so what we now know as the Welsh Senate was created at that stage, a much less powerful body than one now. Effectively, in particular, it was not a body that could make new primary legislation. It could only make secondary legislation, but that all subsequently changed in subsequent years. And of course, the Scottish Parliament changed. was initially created with a very, very limited tax raising power, and a power that was actually the subject of a separate vote in the referendum in September 1997, never actually used.
00:05:03
Speaker
But in the wake of the 2014 independence referendum, then Scotland was giving ah well more straightforward ah powers over income tax, which indeed it has used. And the structure of income tax rates is different in Scotland now from from south of the border. So that was yeah devolution to Scotland and Wales. Also devolution to London, um the Greater London Assembly and the London Mayor was established in 2000. That was also a creature of... And Labour here essentially reversing what in effect was the decision under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s to get rid of what was then the ah the the Greater London Council. But the idea of directly elected mayors
00:05:50
Speaker
rather and using direct mayors to run local government and to provide the executive for local government um as opposed to the committee system that was often a multi-party committee system that was used to run local government.
Challenges of Regional Devolution in England
00:06:05
Speaker
That was also something that Labour championed. It did get spread to some degree, although in truth...
00:06:12
Speaker
ah because these were also meant to be held or mayors were only meant to be created in the wake of referendums in favour. Actually, it was discovered that referendums, that the electorate often rejected the idea of a directed mayor and also the idea got to some degree um met a certain degree of ribaldry when in Hartlepool the person who was elected had taken on the name of the of the the mascot of the of the local football club. So electorate mayors were introduced to some degree but it did not progress in the same way as Labour hoped.
00:06:52
Speaker
It was also intended that the devolution for Scotland and Wales should be counterbalanced by a system of regional devolution in Scotland.
00:07:04
Speaker
um However, the demand for that, sorry, regional devolution England. the that the The demand for that, however, was much less than was the case in Scotland. um And what was also proved to the case by the time Labour actually got around to having putting together some proposals, which which was for the northeast of England. england And there was a referendum in 2004.
00:07:32
Speaker
By the time Labour had got i got around to that, it it decided to focus on the northeast of England because that's where there seemed to be the greatest demand. But John Prescott, the deputy prime minister who was in charge of coming up proposals, found it very, very difficult to persuade um Whitehall departments to be willing to allow power to go to um this proposed Northeast Assembly. Whereas in the case of Scotland and Wales, what was being proposed essentially were the...
00:08:05
Speaker
with but powers and with the responsibilities of the Scottish office and the Welsh office, which were already therefore demarcated from the English departments, for example, Agriculture One Office example. So therefore introducing devolution for Scotland and Wales didn't meet a great deal of resistance from Whitehall because it didn't require other Whitehall departments
Constitutional Changes: Human Rights and Freedom Acts
00:08:25
Speaker
to give up anything. But in the case of devolution for england it did john prescott struggled to get very much power uh but at the same time how was this is going to be financed it was going to be financed by council tax and um uh dominic cummings and friends who of course were to prove to be in in later years crucial uh matthew ellick was the other one uh crucial in scuppering and a few other referendums uh um
00:08:55
Speaker
were essentially in the campaign against the North East referendum and the electorate were essentially being invited to pay more tax for a body that wasn't clear really what he could do to a great deal and that loss so that aspect of the whole constitutional program changed was lost What of course was also introduced was the Human Rights Act, now very much the subject of controversy in the wake of the Raabite immigration that yeahp put the Open Convention of Human Rights and into domestic law. It also introduced freedom of information, again somewhat controversial. Perhaps not always worked out to so to much to to the extent that people would would have liked, but certainly it's provided journalists with a ready means of being able to extract information, not only out of governments, but also out of other organisations.
00:09:44
Speaker
But of course, what was also true and didn't in the end happen was that in the wake of losing four elections in a row, Labour in the 1992-97 Parliament had edged towards the possibility of changing the electoral system.
00:10:02
Speaker
um The truth is that Labour had come increasingly come to the conclusion that perhaps it was never going to be able to do well enough to be able to win an overall majority in a general election, that actually first past the post was a barrier to it getting into power. um And that certainly, um despite what the opinion polls were saying,
00:10:28
Speaker
there was widespread doubt within Labour, let alone beyond Labour, that he could actually win an overall majority in what proved to be the 1997 German election.
00:10:41
Speaker
And that therefore, perhaps the party also needed to think about what kind of deal It would need to make with the Democrats who would be heard who had it between 92 and 97 had shifted their position under Padi Ashtar and their leader to say that basically they wouldn't sup with the Tories, they would only deal with Labour.
00:11:02
Speaker
The Liberal Democrats, of course, had long, long been in favour of electoral reform because electoral system had made life very difficult for them. And in fact, I mean, Raymond Plante, political theorist, had written had run a commission for Labour, It had recommended that Labour should shift. By the time Labour got to its manifesto, it said, well, what we'll do, we will have a commission on what alternative electoral system that we might have.
00:11:30
Speaker
And then we will put the recommendations of that commission to a referendum. Well, of course, in the event... Labour won, as you've already pointed out in your introduction, with a majority of 179. So all of a sudden, changing the electoral system rather lost its lure. But of course, Labour were left with the promise to have a commission of referendum. So the commission happened.
00:11:56
Speaker
It was chaired by Roy Jenkins, one time Chancellor the Exchequer for Labour and Home Secretary, and then latterly ah one of the Gang of Four that created the Social Democratic Party, which ah defected away from Labour. and caused Labour a lot of trouble in the 1980s, which did come up from recommendation, which is basically a ah ah variation of an additional member system, but with the alternative vote being used to use the directly elected members.
00:12:29
Speaker
But funnily enough, the referendum never happened. And so that was another bit of Labour's constitutional reform programme, which, by the way, i again, a crucial thing to realise, and perhaps I should have said earlier, this constitutional reform programme was actually negotiated by Robin Cook and Bob McLennan, Bob McLennan, then ah a leading social democrat, between Labour and the Democrats. So this was actually not just Labour's programme. It was a programme that had been agreed, not just in Scotland, the Democrats, but also much more broadly. um And certainly I think it was fairly open secret that if Labour didn't get an overall majority, they would be seeking to have coalition with Democrats. This would be a crucial foundation of that. And indeed, there was actually a cabinet committee created on which the Democrats did sit for a while, though frankly, it didn't make that much difference. So certainly much of the constitutional architecture, some of which has had profound implications,
00:13:29
Speaker
Scotland is the you know the independence referendum in Scotland, the way in which Wales has has diverged from England. um The Human Rights Act, Freedom of Information, these are all pretty permanent changes to our constitutional landscape.
00:13:47
Speaker
So that is very clearly long term legacy of that Labour government. Beyond that, I think one could be much more circumspect about what new labour actually meant, because, of course, one of the crucial attributes of new labour as defined by Tony Blair was a movement away from a lot of traditional labour positions and in favour of retaining
00:14:19
Speaker
changes that had been made by the conservatives between 1979 and 1997.
Economic Policies and Welfare Reforms
00:14:27
Speaker
So, for example, Labour were not reversing the sale of council houses to to to people who had been tenants for a reasonable period of time. um It certainly wasn't terribly interested in renationalizing any of the industries that had been denationalized.
00:14:45
Speaker
and That was all being accepted. It certainly wasn't going back to the status quo ante so far um as the regulation of the trade union activity was concerned, although you know there was some loosing of the regulations. um And indeed, in in one respect, um which again has very ah contemporary echoes, um intriguingly, one of the criticisms that Labour made of the previous Conservative government was that it had spent too much money on welfare. That it it argued it had it it had squandered the proceeds of North Sea oil revenues, which were very high in the in the early 1980s, on basically paying ah large amounts of unemployment benefit in the wake of the substantial de-industrialisation of the British economy that occurred in the 1980s, the decline of steel, coal, e etc., etc.
00:15:44
Speaker
um um and we did see for labor came up with the mantra welfare uh welfare to work um rights and responsibilities and labor were very keen to reduce the welfare bill by getting people back into the labor market and it has to be said that because they had prepared the ground somewhat in advance Yes, they hit some difficulty, but they've not hit the hit the they never hit the level of difficulty that occurred um for for the current Labour government. So to that extent, therefore,
00:16:17
Speaker
Labour didn't really necessarily change the economic and social environment to the extent um that one we might imagine. Now, that said, what is true is that, of course, initially, Labour came to power. This is one of its big promises. It said it wouldn't increase power.
00:16:37
Speaker
taxes or at least It certainly would increase income tax. It blamed its defeat in 1992 on the so-called shadow budget that John Smith, the then chanceor shadow chancellor, had presented in which he said Labour would need to increase spending in order to spend more on the health service. Labour decided that's why they lost. The truth is the polling evidence, not least in British social activities, which are responsible, was saying throughout the nineteen ninety s no ah ah no, no, no, no.
00:17:06
Speaker
People are much more concerned about the state of the health service and the poor quality of schooling, which was particularly an issue in London at the time, than they are about the level of taxation. But frankly, Labour disbelieved what the polling was saying.
00:17:22
Speaker
But eventually, about two years, and and they said for the first two years, we will keep to the conservative spending plans, which meant not keeping ah public spending at quite at a low level, even though the outgoing conservative chancellor, Kenneth Clark, said that, frankly, we would never have kept them.
00:17:41
Speaker
But anyway, in the end, that isn't something that Labour kept to. a Labour eventually discovered that um there was pressure for improving the health service, particularly what by then were regarded as high levels of weight in this, although nothing like the level they are
Public Spending and Service Improvements
00:18:01
Speaker
now. um About two years in, Labour started ah turning the turning the spending taps on. john made ah Tony Blair was basically forced by David Frost, who used to do the Sunday Morning BBC programme, into making a promise that public expenditure on health as a percentage of GDP would match the European average.
00:18:24
Speaker
And Labour started turning on the spending tax, using a lot of targets in order, again, West Street is doing this again now, doing a lot of targets in order to try to improve the performance of the health service, particularly with respect ah to a waiting list. And indeed, ah eventually what what the government did was to increase spending. It did put up taxes, but it just did it through national insurance rather than income tax and wasn't any great row about it. um
00:18:55
Speaker
um And so public spending as a share of GDP did go up to some degree, as as did taxation. Weighting lists were reduced. Satisfaction with the whole service reached what was then, in terms of the time series we had, at a record level. And also, I think most people would say that the quality of school education, and particularly education in London, and was quite substantially turned around.
00:19:21
Speaker
um So I think certainly the fabric of Britain's public services, were improved although whether that's a long-term legacy is ah is is is another whole matter because of what happened subsequently not least with respect to COVID and certainly the subsequent government had some success in reducing public expenditure as a share of GDP I mean these weren't dramatic movements not as dramatic as those that occurred more recently um otherwise of course the other
00:19:53
Speaker
Two big changes that happened.
Blair's Foreign Policy: Iraq War
00:19:55
Speaker
Well, one, of course, is the area of foreign affairs, which in the end is the area destroyed Blair's reputation. Tony Blair revealed himself as what became known as a liberal interventionist. Now, basically, the UK should be willing to take military action to promote liberal causes in the rest of the world. And we were, for example, helping out. We we involved in we got involved in in Sri Lanka, and not Sri Lanka, in Sierra Leone.
00:20:24
Speaker
ah taking military action there um but there was also a degree of involvement with the whole Yugoslav situation but of course the big call that was made in favor of liberal interventionism was Iraq in 2001 on the grounds that Saddam Hussein the then head of the Iraqi government the president of Iraq possessed weapons of mass destructions that were capable of inflicting damage within 45 minutes on British bases in the end this intelligence claim was was proven to be unfounded. The fallout from the Iraq war was not the restor was not the arrival of democratic liberal democratic government in Iraq.
00:21:15
Speaker
um And although Labour managed to win in 2005, this hung like a a a weight around Tony Blair's tony bearir ever after. The other thing, of course, which we could classify as being part of the constitutional change programme, but I think in some respects was different. um And it built on developments that had already occurred under the Conservatives, really but going all the way back to 1985.
Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement
00:21:45
Speaker
But and the good the Good Friday Agreement in 1999 saw the advent of the restoration of devolved government for Northern Ireland, but very, very different. from the Stormont that had disappeared um in the early 1970s. That was something that Mo Merlin, the Secretary State for Northern Ireland, and Blair himself were very heavily involved and invested in, and did manage to put together this um set of institutions which got Sinn Féin and the nationalist community on board. Ian Paisley and the DUP stayed out at that stage. That was one of its weaknesses. It had a very rocky ride for a very long time, substantial periods of not being in operation, but has now become
00:22:34
Speaker
um a seemingly stable set of institutions but a set of institutions which perhaps unbelievably 30 years ago now has a member of Sinn Féin as its first minister.
Public Persona: Blair vs. Major
00:22:48
Speaker
And I want to drill slightly more into the profiles of the leaders going into the election. What did Blair versus Major represent as personal characters and how did that impact the election?
00:23:03
Speaker
Well, in some respects, they were the opposite of the stereotypes that you might imagine. Tony Blair, educated at Fetis College in Edinburgh, which, by the way, is the Eton of Scotland, and the University of Oxford.
00:23:23
Speaker
John Major... from a working class background in South London who did not go to university. um So in some respects Blair, who in truth his his his his his background was relatively middle class but not ah know not not not not not upper middle class. um But I mean, Tony Blair came from a much more privileged background than John Major ever did. um They also contrasted in in in two other ways, Tony Blair,
00:23:56
Speaker
And in a sense, there's almost undoubtedly reason why i became media. Tony Blair was a very, very effective public speaker. The word charismatic applies. um And if you were, and you can find plenty of these on the YouTube, and let listen, for example, to Tony Blair's speech on the night of his of his election success or whatever, but but um um highly charismatic, highly effective, commanded an audience, And also very, very good on very very good good on television. very good Very, very good with an audience.
00:24:32
Speaker
John Major, in contrast, a very poor public speaker. He struggled to come he struggled in any way to make a progress. yet ah Why did he become prime minister, given he was a bad public speaker? Answer, sir he could work a room brilliantly. John Major in small group interventions was charismatic.
00:24:57
Speaker
And he could, ah with a small group of group of people, he dominated the room. So Blair, both of them actually had a valuable political skill. It was John Major's ability to work the tea room in the wake of the downfall of Margaret Thatcher that helped to ensure that it was he and not Michael Heseltine who had stood against Thatcher and had basically brought her down, who who in the end won the Conservative ah contest in 1990.
00:25:29
Speaker
And, you know, his his ability to work with MPs was his central piece of political capital. um Blair, probably as an individual personality, wasn't as good as Major in that respect. But, you know, he had clearly demonstrated an ability to reach to the wider public. And when John Smith ah died ah very suddenly in 1994, and it was a question of was it going to be Tony Blair or Gordon Brown? It was this asset that gave Tony Blair his advantage. Two other things then to say about the contrast between them.
00:26:08
Speaker
John Major inherited party that was in deep electoral trouble in 1990 and a party that was deeply split on the issue of Europe.
00:26:21
Speaker
um I think John Major deserves a great deal of credit in managing to negotiate the Maastricht Treaty before the 1992 Treaty with crucial opt-outs on the so-called social chapter, which is essentially the labour market regulation, and also...
00:26:37
Speaker
um on the on the single currency and that as a result managed to keep his party together in the run up to the 92 election which of course the Conservatives won narrowly in terms of seats but actually very comfortably in terms of votes the electoral system worked against the Conservatives in 1992 um Tony Blair, in contrast, although there is a tendency to credit him and the and the way in which, as I briefly described earlier, changed the orientation of the Conservative Party, that you know this move of the Labour Party towards the centre was the foundation of of the success in 1997. Everybody seems to forget
00:27:19
Speaker
that actually by the time that Tony Blair had become leader, Labour had just won the European elections with 44% of the vote, which by the way is no more, which is exactly what Blair got in 1997. He inherited a party that was well in the lead against an opposition which because of Black Wednesday in September 2018,
00:27:44
Speaker
1992 which is i when the pound was forced out of the european exchange rate mechanism because of a market crisis and like all such crises it did severe damage to the government standing in the polls its economic competence it never recovered it exposed all the divisions on europe within the conservative party that then dogged it throughout the 92 to 97 parliament In the end, all generals are lucky.
00:28:07
Speaker
Blair was a lucky general, a much luckier general than John Major. John Major... you know keeping his party together from 1992 to 1997, very, very difficult. Yeah, he wasn't charismatic, but he was, as I've already suggested, personally engaging.
00:28:29
Speaker
And I think one would probably, i think I would probably argue that certainly John Major was a more effective communicator than Rishi Sunak. And certainly Tony Blair was an awful lot better communicator than Keir Starmer.
00:28:45
Speaker
And in terms of the huge swing in the Labour Party, what exactly did it signal to the Conservatives on the night of the election?
Conservatives' Credibility Loss Post-Black Wednesday
00:28:55
Speaker
Well, look, at the honest truth is already suggested. The Conservative Party lost the election on the 18th of September 1992 when the pound was forced out of the exchange rate mechanism.
00:29:04
Speaker
Game set and match. If you go through the history of these things, with the kind of partial exception of Labour in 1950, and it's been true subsequently, no government that has presided over a market or financial crisis has survived altogether. at the subsequent election. Labour and devaluation 1967 in 1970. The imf crisis loses in The Conservatives they lose out um in Of course, the end of this new government.
00:29:40
Speaker
the financial crash of ah two thousand eight two thousand and Liz Truss and the fiscal event of 2022 and the Conservatives lose overwhelmingly in 2024. And they lose even though, and i think this is absolutely crucial to remember.
00:30:02
Speaker
Actually, in the wake of the Black Wednesday, the UK began to enjoy its best period of economic growth since the end of the Second World War. um We had ah quite steady economic growth of around 3% a year, and we managed it while keeping inflation low. And this was the first time in Britain's post-war economic history, that economic growth had been sustained and quite substantial without it resulting in high levels of inflation and therefore the implementation of what got to be known as stop-go policies, i.e.
00:30:41
Speaker
growth seems to be too fast, inflation is taking off, so the government tries to put the fiscal brakes on to reduce reduce the economy, unemployment would then go up, and then yeah there was another crisis, and then you turn the taps back on again. um as growth had gone down and employment went up. That cycle stopped for the first time.
00:31:01
Speaker
But the public never credited the government with this. And anybody who thinks, well, a government will win or lose elections simply by achieving economic competence. The ah the history of 92 to 97 matters. The symbolism of seeing a Norman LeMond, the then chancellor, scurry out of the dark...
00:31:22
Speaker
and The evening September dark out of the Treasury, basically putting up the flag saying we're out, we're leaving. That visual image was worth more than however many more pennies were in people's pockets by the time of the 1997 general election.
Media Influence in the 1997 Election
00:31:42
Speaker
And what effect does the media specifically put on this election? There is a general consensus that this is the start of spin politics and obviously there's debates around this with Thatcher's and Wilson's advisers, but what effect does the media and declarations play in 1997?
00:32:02
Speaker
Right. there There are a couple of things to say about the media. I mean, the one is um the position of the newspaper industry, which is, you know, we are this is the very early days of the Internet. Most people don't have access to the Internet, although the mobile phone is beginning to be with us.
00:32:24
Speaker
ah So um therefore, newspapers, and again, were we're talking about the world in which you know broadcasting is is dominated by the terrestrial channels still, albeit we've got five of them. And we've got the beginning of cable, Sky News, and now important part of the framework. But essentially, it's terrestrial television and newspapers.
00:32:51
Speaker
Now, newspapers, of course, historically, um ah more of them have been inclined to support the Conservatives than to support Labour. And indeed, famously, after the 1992 election, the Sun newspaper, which had backed the Conservatives quite vociferously with some pretty lurid headlines, put ah put out the claim. It was the Sun what won a W-O-T.
00:33:15
Speaker
Frankly, those of us who've done subsequent research went, no, it wasn't. But it's still the subject of of of some this remark. Anyway, um what what what by 1997, the media, the newspaper landscape had changed. The sun changed sides. The sun backed Labour.
00:33:35
Speaker
um they So we had the guide in the Daily Mirror. A lot of the traditional conservative newspapers were heavily Eurosceptic. They therefore weren't backing the Tories very strongly. um Even you know the the independent the Independent were also backing Labour. I think the Financial Times were quite sympathetic as well. um So the truth is, actually, in terms of newspaper readership, Labour has something like a two to one advantage for the first time. However, what was the moral of all of this? Not that the newspapers won it for Labour, but rather the Sun in particular, as a newspaper with a quite mixed readership, followed the tide.
00:34:21
Speaker
In other words, in 1992, it was clear that some readers who tended to be more conservative than the population in general, that a majority of them were backing the conservatives. By 1997, this wasn't true. And a newspaper and an industry which by that stage but it was already clear, and the the internet, as I said, still to come, was beginning to lose its readership.
00:34:44
Speaker
it was it could not afford to take the risk of losing more readers. And certainly the research I did in that era showed quite clearly that actually if people were reading newspapers whose political line was out of tune with their preference, they were at least as likely to change the newspaper they read as they were to change their preference. right So and so that's that that's what that's one thing to say. Now, the second thing to say is that In some ways, the the the campaigning day and the structure and the way in which the news the the parties interacted with the media was still the traditional rhythm that had been established in the late 50s or so. And that is the morning press conference
00:35:33
Speaker
was a crucial part of the day so liberal democrats would start off and then the press would go to that and then they would go to labor and then they would go to the toys and that was the way in which the parties hoped at least until lunchtime to to be able to lay out their stall and would dominate the news that said what was What also became clear is that that those press conferences, it was no longer what was said openly in those press conferences that mattered, but also what was being said privately by the so-called spin doctors.
00:36:10
Speaker
And Labour, I mean, using Alistair Campbell, for example, a Sheila Gunn for the Conservatives, they and their ah professional colleagues, their their ability to talk to journalists,
00:36:23
Speaker
unattributably to say that you know you know what they said on on on the platform well what they really meant was this or this is actually what we're really trying to achieve um um so spinning um to to journalists as to what the party was trying to do what's trying to achieve and and being able to do that a attributable basis as opposed to ah best private conversations politicians that had become um rather more important.
00:36:54
Speaker
um What was also ah true is that we were entering the era of rolling news. Sky News was already one established. BBC had started Radio 5. So what also became increasingly important was to be able to rebut the arguments of your opponents. And again, the spin doctors played an important role here. But also, you know if a party made a claim, you need to be able to do the research quickly to be able to say, well, hang on, what is the position? What did this party say about this in the past, et cetera, et cetera?
00:37:31
Speaker
and you know again early digital technology was being deployed labor has something called Excalibur so that with rolling news you could get a spokesperson on within an hour or so and rebut whatever claim had been made about you know if labor got to power then the world will collapse tomorrow if the conservatives came to power there will be there there will be a world revolution that these exaggerated claims which are the that the meat and drink of election campaigns, the claims could be rebutted. So that also becomes more... So you begin to see the speeding up of the news cycle in a way that becomes much more common later. And of course, the press conferences have gone and it's all now much more much more fluid. So to that extent, at least, we um are in the world where the news cycle is beginning to speed up and the relationship with the media is beginning to evolve. But it's still, i mean, that the technology is beginning to be there. So the other things that the parties but are are still putting a lot of effort in doing it is to ensure that their candidates get the line.
00:38:39
Speaker
as to what the party is trying to say. So the fact, by the way, I don't show any of here your your your listeners remember the fax machine, but the fax machine was ubiquitous because this was a way, of so you could you could fax all the candidates very quickly.
00:38:56
Speaker
You could post um um things at the end of a telephone line for people to listen to to get the line. um You could begin to send out SMS messages. SMS was beginning to be available and email was beginning to be available as well.
00:39:14
Speaker
um so they were also ways of getting your message out to your candidates to your agents so that they were also articulating the line on regional television or you know or just local newspapers or whatever so there was a clear company so we're beginning to see some of the changes that now are now part of the fabric of election campaigns but in some respects still relatively early days And transitioning into the specific results that we see, um I touched briefly on the introduction on the size of Labour's majority.
Labour's Electoral Strategy and Conservative Defeat
00:39:54
Speaker
What was the actual results for the parties and the vote share that they correspondingly achieved? um Well, Labour got 44% of the vote in Great Britain.
00:40:04
Speaker
um which was enough to give a majority of 179 the conservatives with 31.5 percent of the vote um in Great Britain ended up with 165 seats which was just better than what was then at least um It's worst results in terms of parliamentary seats at least since 1906 when there was the Liberal landslide. Of course in not it's not as bad as it was in 2024. The Liberal Democrats meanwhile they only got about 17% of the vote, not a dramatic improvement, but
00:40:46
Speaker
they for the first time managed to buck the electoral system and they ended up with 46 seats, which was their highest number since 1929.
00:40:59
Speaker
We still only have the typical around half a dozen or so SNP MPs and a handful of MPs from Plaid Cymru. But there were there were a number of crucial features of the result. The first thing to say is that the Conservatives were disadvantaged by the electoral system um in a number of ways. One is, although the boundaries had been updated in the wake of the 92 election to overcome some of what was a substantial disparity between the size of Conservative constituencies and the size of Labour ones, Scotland and Wales were still overrepresented. um
00:41:40
Speaker
And Labour played the boundary review much more effectively than the Conservatives. In that phase of the boundary which is much more important than it is a now, when the parties can make representations to the Boundary Commission, Labour was much more effective at drawing up proposals that were to their advantage in getting the Commission to accept them. So the boundary review didn't have as much... It still left Labour basically with advantage. But then the geography of party support...
00:42:09
Speaker
also changed crucially as a result of tactical voting this is the first election at which anti-conservative tactical voting really really mattered so in places where Labour was starting off second to the Conservatives Labour's vote tended to go up more the more they don't come it didn't go up at so much.
00:42:33
Speaker
um ah But in places where the were Democrats were starting off second, particularly where they weren't too far behind from the Conservatives, they also benefited. Their their vote was going up and they were clearly squeezing Labour. So the Liberal Democrat vote becomes more geographically concentrated. They gain more seats against a Conservative party that is now so much weaker. Similarly for Labour. And meanwhile, the problem for the Conservatives was that um and if this game, this was a a precursor to what happened and to an even greater extent in 2024. Their vote for more fell more heavily in places than they were previously strongest. Their vote was going down by about 11, 12 points as compared
00:43:17
Speaker
with 1992 and given that scale of that loss that almost inevitably meant that that vote was going to go down more heavily in places where they're previously strongest and that's what happened so they therefore ended up losing more seats as a result of the tactical voting because of their losing ground more heavily in places they're previously strongest losing ground more heavily than would otherwise, and losing seats more heavily than would otherwise have been the case. Otherwise, two other things to note.
00:43:48
Speaker
One is the Conservatives scored duck in Scotland um in the wake of their reluctance to embrace the devolution for which it was then clearly quite momentum north of the border. um And secondly, Labour had some success in reversing what had become the north south divide that is support for the Labour Party from really the late 1950s onwards have become increasingly concentrated in Scotland in the north of England the party become less popular in London and in the south of England there was some reversal of that pattern in 1997 although It's not something that in the end proved to be permanent over the longer run, although things have subsequently changed since for telling a tiny different story.
00:44:47
Speaker
But Labour did have some success in appealing to parts of Britain that it has hitherto struggled. And that, of course, was one of Blair's central aims in rebranding his party as new Labour. It was, he i mean,
00:45:02
Speaker
part of new labor's diagnosis was apart from the party having been too left-wing was that it as because the occupational structure of british society was becoming more middle class because also the population distribution was was just gradually shifting towards the south of england the party needed to be able to appeal to middle-class voters in the south of england it had some success in appealing to in something it also by the way had some relative success in appealing to middle class voters.
00:45:34
Speaker
But again, whether or not that worked for labour in the longer run is another story, because there's quite a lot of analysis out there that suggests that in the longer run, one of the reasons why basically labour has now lost its relative strength inside the working class, that that can be dated from the years of new labour, era which, because labour's
00:45:59
Speaker
um ah focus on seemingly are more middle class voters its image as a party of the working class became much diminished there's survey evidence to back that um and that basically the parties the erosion of the party's relative strength amongst the amongst the working class can begin to be um dated from that time so while it may have proven efficacious for Labour in the short run, it did come with long run consequences with which the party at least is uncomfortable, though whether it's necessarily to its disadvantage that it's now the party of young middle class professionals living in London is is another matter for debate about a different election.
The 'Portillo Moment'
00:46:45
Speaker
And touching on a singular moment that almost highlighted the scale of the defeat, what is meant when we say in British politics is a Portillo moment? Yes, well, um one the things we've kind of touched i touched on earlier is that basically, although the opinion polls were actually exaggerating Labour's lead, they were having Labour up in the in the high 40s and there'd been some drop in Labour's lead during the election campaign, but Labour were apparently heading for an easy win. But because the opinion polls had been wrong in 1992,
00:47:23
Speaker
and they had suggested that Labour might emerge as the largest party with an overall majority, but but albeit not necessarily without an overall majority, and in the end the Conservatives ended up being eight points ahead.
00:47:34
Speaker
um That basically therefore the polls were being heavily discounted and that together with the... that that that that therefore people just went this is not going to happen and the idea that the Conservative Party was going to end up with 165 seats and along the way it would lose more than a half a dozen cabinet ministers seemed ridiculous, impossible.
00:48:02
Speaker
Well, somewhere around two or three o'clock in the morning, um Mr Portillo now a well-known television presenter then a very senior conservative politician and again very one of the more charismatic members of of John Major's cabinet and therefore somebody who got attracted attention lost his Enfield Southgate constituency And there was the drama of seeing the Labour candidate winning. He frankly didn't expect to win.
00:48:40
Speaker
And it so happened that the television pictures when uh portillo's defeat was broadcast immediately afterwards the pictures moved to jillian shepherd another cabinet minister in her east anglian seat and she just looked ashen faced And so therefore, you know, and then there were um Michael, Michael Forsyth in Scotland already lost his seat, but there were then other cabinet ministers like William Mordegrave who lost their seats. I think seven of them in the end lost their seats. But this was the moment that dramatically illustrated
00:49:24
Speaker
how Incredibly, it wasn't just Tory MPs in marginal seats that were losing, but senior cabinet ministers who were thought to be very effective Tory politicians and campaigners, they were they were losing out. And this just became symbolic. and One of the journalists wrote...
00:49:47
Speaker
a book saying, were you up for Portillo? I certainly remember it because, i mean, I was sitting in ah in a television studio supposedly feeding details of sophology to presenters. You didn't have to do anything for two hours. this was it it It was a night of of of drama, which in a sense started with um the it started actually with the downfall of daily david miller who was an ex-captain minister who had to resign over um wearing it shall i say wearing a chelsea um football shirt in circumstances that were it was ah a liaison that was not necessarily consistent with his marriage vows um and that um
00:50:29
Speaker
you know he was brought down. And then we had the Portillo moment and it ended with as the sun began, the dawn broke um over the South Bank in London with Tony Blair giving a speech, holding the new dawn. It was not just New Labour, New Britain, it was New Dawn, New Labour. So that you know the pictures of the night were unusually dramatic partly as a consequence of the character of the conservative downfall but again Blair's ability to capture the moment um and to turn it into good visuals so it was ah i in a way that frankly was not anything like it's true of 2024.
00:51:18
Speaker
Yeah, um Blair very famously said, a new dawn has broken, it what? And he almost immediately regretted the decision for the expectations it created. What was the, sense he was speaking almost with a sense of optimism, both for the Labour Party and the country, um that seemed reasonably shared. What was that like at the time? How did the how did the Labour Party feel and how did the country feel?
Blair's Era: A New Dawn for Britain
00:51:46
Speaker
Oh, well, I mean, the Labour Party was frankly elated because they had done well beyond their expectations. um And there the the the truth is that there was a broader public...
00:52:05
Speaker
seemingly enthusiasm for this government. I mean, Labour's strapline have been things can only get better. So despite the state of the economy, because the state of public service, et cetera, et cetera, people look forward to it. And and the truth is, and again, it partly it obviously it's to do with the weaknesses of the Conservatives as well as the French Labour. Apart from...
00:52:24
Speaker
A brief period in 2000 when the government faced attempts to buy lorry drivers to basically block the supply chains with a degree of success for a while. And there was ah just a temporary moment when that government was troubled. But basically, Labour were never behind in the opinion polls otherwise for whole of the four years through to 2001.
00:52:51
Speaker
and i know arguably of of of the 13 years labor i mean those were the four years when you know it was it you know it was it was it was it was indeed new dawn i mean it now never better glad awakening i mean once we got to the iraq war not long after 2001 i mean then the the the mood salad and the mood to change um but you know labor but in blair's Blair was charismatic, able to generate the enthusiasm office of the electorate. And of course, because he delivered this remarkable victory and because he was credited with being responsible for that victory, albeit that is something you can argue about.
00:53:34
Speaker
And he certainly claimed the success as being the result of the way in which he changed his party. Because of all of that, I mean, his authority vis-a-vis his party was very, very strong. um So probably no post-war prime minister has argued behind his attorney office. And of course,
00:53:57
Speaker
the the government inherited an economy that was motoring and it just carried on motoring. This was the era, i mean, it's not just Britain, it was the era of when globalization was achieving all its benefits and before the financial crash that began to reveal some of some of the risks.
Comparing 1997 and 2024 Elections
00:54:18
Speaker
What parallels do you see between 1997 and now or what lessons can we take from 1997 and Biden? um Well, of course, in my in in one sense, um there's an obvious similarity. Labour gets a majority of 174 in 2024, very similar to the majority in 1997.
00:54:41
Speaker
And secondly, it does so off the back of a government that A, had presided over a financial crisis um um and B, was deeply unpopular.
00:54:55
Speaker
um Arguably... Indeed, i did I think in reality, an even more unpopular government in 2024 than the Conservatives had been in 1997.
00:55:08
Speaker
But two fundamental difference. Number one, ah rather than inheriting a relatively rosy situation, yes, the public services needed turning around, but there was the money to do it and the economy was doing well.
00:55:24
Speaker
Starmer inherited an economy which, I mean, had not only was struggling to recover from the pandemic, the cost of living crisis, the Russian-Ukraine war, but also the longer term impact of the financial crisis, but which has meant that economic growth has been more like one to one and a half percent over each year rather than the three percent.
00:55:47
Speaker
of the new Labour era. um ah So it inherited a much more difficult economy, inherited again poor public services, But although the size of the state had expanded very considerably between 1919 and 2024, was also fiscally constrained because we had spent so much money during the pandemic rescuing the labor market um that and also because we've been running deficits for quite a while anyway. Although the conservatives claimed fiscal responsibility, in practice, they were repeatedly running deficits. that the um
00:56:28
Speaker
We maxed out our credit card. um And to that extent, at least the the the the situation facing the new Labour government, policy challenges, much more difficult and the weaponry available to them much more difficult, but had also made the same, a very similar promise to Blair, which was we won't increase taxes.
00:56:54
Speaker
which hasn't necessarily made their life any easier. when Blair couldn't keep to it, and we wait to see whether this government can keep to it. um The other crucial difference, however, is that Sir Keir Starmer is not Tony Blair, or Sir Tony Blair as he now is.
00:57:11
Speaker
He is and was is not a charismatic politician. And whereas Blair had made it clear in advance that he had changed Labour, he made it clear he had a he had he's able to articulate the the direction in which he was trying to change Britain, even though I have argued in many respects, the Britain he wanted to create was a continuation of the Britain that Margaret Thatcher had tried to create. But it was still there was still a clear sense of direction.
00:57:42
Speaker
Starmer has never been able to articulate what he's about, what kind of country he wants to create. He says he's in favor of change. And to that extent, he's some sense is more radical than Blair.
00:57:54
Speaker
But change to what? We don't know other than repairing the damage of the last government. But repairing the damage is not and saying how what you're going to do that is not the same as having a vision of how you're going to take the country forward. um A much lower share of the vote, 35%.
00:58:14
Speaker
People saying they don't know what they stand for. This always looked like a government with a relatively thin electoral base. Unlike New Labour, and unlike New Labour, which, as we said, basically stayed ahead in the polls for all of its four years, the term it gained in 1997.
00:58:33
Speaker
Keir Starmer's case, support for the government has fallen more quickly and more rapidly. than it has done for any previous newly elected government. So the politics is very, very different. And frankly, the politics of this government are nothing like as good as the politics that Labour were able to deploy, albeit in much more favorable circumstances after the 1997 victory.
00:59:01
Speaker
And for those that are particularly interested in the 1997 election, Do you have any further reading recommendations or anything that you would like to direct them to? Well, um I think if you want to understand, I mean, the the book that I was involved in, ah along with a lot of others, which will certainly tell you about how voting behavior was changing in that time, that's called Critical Elections. It's edited by Jeff Evans and Pippa Norris, but a lot of us contributed to that.
00:59:38
Speaker
If you want a quick resume, because we've not talked about greatly in the podcast, about the development between 1992 1997. There was actually a lovely book by Ian Dale called British Election Campaigns, and I wrote the one on 1997. And that has a lot about what happened between 1992 and 1997 and what Blair felt he had did or didn't have to do and how the Tories responded. So if you want a quick introduction to the politics of of that election um and and political manoeuvring beforehand, then that would be the obvious place to go.
Closing Remarks and Book Recommendations
01:00:15
Speaker
Otherwise, of course, there is just the standard, if you want that in much more depth, there is the standard so-called Nuffield study called the British election of 1997, in which you'll certainly see a great deal of discussion based a lot of off-the-record elite interviewing about how the politics of the 1992 to 1997 parliament were handled.
01:00:36
Speaker
Thank you very much for joining me, Sir John Curtis. It's been a pleasure to have you on the show. In the coming weeks, we'll be continuing the theme of elections that changed Britain by talking about the 2010 general election. If you enjoyed this episode, please do follow us for more. We are also available on YouTube. And if you're already listening there, please do like, comment and subscribe. It helps greatly.
01:00:56
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the Observations podcast.