In contrast the Conservatives had stayed relatively the same throughout that period.
But it is clear that the bringing in of Tony Blair was very influential. The face of Labour was being changed by Tony Blair he became increasingly more attractive to the middle class, where traditionally they were linked to the working class and trade unions. While all of this was happening John Major was becoming increasingly disliked by the public and was also being slowly detached from his government.
In the papers they were portraying him as weak and indecisive in the way that he ran the country. For the first time in many years were getting the backing of many national papers, which were seen as pro conservative.
We saw that the ‘ New Labour ’ party was wooing the papers such as the Sun and Daily Mail. But in fact the pro Labour papers like the Mirror was seen to change to the Conservative side. Also people reading the pro Conservative papers were exposed to more critical coverage that normal.
The influence of pro Labour and pro Conservative papers can often cancel each other out. Although some people may be swayed by what they read in the papers at that time but this may not have had a very big impact on the overall election as we are not all ‘ sheep ’.
One the major polices that labour were plugging was the economy as they realised that it was a weak point in the Conservative government because of “ Black Wednesday ” and also the dispute over VAT.
The ‘New Labour’ image played a large part in creating new support from younger people and women. They did this by having more women and young people being represented and had a younger more active party membership. But the Conservative government had many members over 60 years old with very traditional views. As well as this many of the Conservatives had a sleazy background where the Labour party had a fresh clean image. The Labour party also seemed very together and united over different issues, but the Conservatives looked quite broken up by their different views on important subjects like Europe.
Overall we see that the new image and the togetherness of the Labour. Had greatly increased support whereas the Conservatives looked the complete opposite. And they paid for this as 2 million people had swapped from Conservative to Labour and also had lost lots of strong seats and were in a state of disarray.
My view is that Labour won the election because the campaigned better and this was showed in the voting as their voters turn up to vote for them whereas the Conservatives had low turn outs in the polls.
With most things the ability to evolve is crucial and the labour party were able to this, unlike the Conservatives.
