Why did Labour win the 1997 General Election?
The 1997 election was not like any other election in post war history. Usually a government will start its term strongly and finish it strongly while having a rough period in its middle years. However for the Conservatives it got worse from the day sterling dropped out of the ERM all the way back in 1992.
The result of the '97 election was immediately hailed by most political analysts as a labour landslide victory. Seeing as they now had 418 (a gain of 147 on 1992) seats in the House of Commons this is hardly suprising but what was failed to be noticed was that they only received 44.4% of the vote within Great Britain and yet gained 643% of the seats in the Lower House. The Conservatives have felt annoyed as they received only 13.1% less votes than Labour at 31.3% but they only got 165 seats in the Commons (making a loss of 171 seats from '92).
The main feature of this election was the fact that constant hostility to the Conservatives played a major part in getting them thrown out of office. In marginal constituencies the Conservatives had managed to gain a fair majority of them in 1992 but in the 1997 election people had had enough of them and in many of these seats there was on average a 12% swing against the Tories. Conservative MP's who managed to survive the tactical voting in these were still heavily voted against. Teresa Gorman suffered a huge 17.6% swing against her in Billericay (the 8th largest anti-Tory swing in the country); even Sir Edward Heath suffered a 14% swing against him. The biggest swings were seen in the Southeast of England, which were long time Conservative strongholds. In London 10 out of 41 Conservative seats were seen to suffer a 17% swing against the Tories. Michael Portillo, who had been seen by many Tories as a future leader of the party lost his seat with a swing of 17.4% against him but only part of this was down to tactical voting the rest was mainly down to his own supporters as in 1992 Portillo had 58% of the vote in 1992, go to Labour.
The 1997 election was not like any other election in post war history. Usually a government will start its term strongly and finish it strongly while having a rough period in its middle years. However for the Conservatives it got worse from the day sterling dropped out of the ERM all the way back in 1992.
The result of the '97 election was immediately hailed by most political analysts as a labour landslide victory. Seeing as they now had 418 (a gain of 147 on 1992) seats in the House of Commons this is hardly suprising but what was failed to be noticed was that they only received 44.4% of the vote within Great Britain and yet gained 643% of the seats in the Lower House. The Conservatives have felt annoyed as they received only 13.1% less votes than Labour at 31.3% but they only got 165 seats in the Commons (making a loss of 171 seats from '92).
The main feature of this election was the fact that constant hostility to the Conservatives played a major part in getting them thrown out of office. In marginal constituencies the Conservatives had managed to gain a fair majority of them in 1992 but in the 1997 election people had had enough of them and in many of these seats there was on average a 12% swing against the Tories. Conservative MP's who managed to survive the tactical voting in these were still heavily voted against. Teresa Gorman suffered a huge 17.6% swing against her in Billericay (the 8th largest anti-Tory swing in the country); even Sir Edward Heath suffered a 14% swing against him. The biggest swings were seen in the Southeast of England, which were long time Conservative strongholds. In London 10 out of 41 Conservative seats were seen to suffer a 17% swing against the Tories. Michael Portillo, who had been seen by many Tories as a future leader of the party lost his seat with a swing of 17.4% against him but only part of this was down to tactical voting the rest was mainly down to his own supporters as in 1992 Portillo had 58% of the vote in 1992, go to Labour.
