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The British General Election 1997
Dr John Hart
Consultant
Politics and Public Administration Group
26 May 1997
Contents
Introduction
The Election Campaign
Initial Support Levels
The 'Sleaze' Factor
Europe
Labour Strategy
The Vote
Conservative Non-Voting
Votes, Seats and Proportionality
Preliminary Analysis
Women Members
Labour's Policy Direction
The Labour Manifesto
A Cautious Approach
Party Politics and the 1997 Election
The Labour Party and Restless Backbenchers
The Conservative Party and the Leadership Contest
The Future of the British Electoral System
Conclusion
Endnotes
Appendix: Major Legislation for First Session of Parliament
The enormous size of the Labour Party's victory in the British General
Election held on 1 May 1997 surprised many election analysts.(1) Even
though all the opinion polls showed a substantial Labour lead over the
Conservatives throughout the six-week campaign, few commentators, if any,
foresaw either the extent of Labour's landslide victory or the devastating
Conservative defeat.
This paper offers a preliminary analysis of the 1997 election. In summary,
it argues:
- that the 1997 election campaign was not very relevant to the way voters
voted;
- that the election results need to be treated a little more cautiously
than they generally have been in the immediate post-election media analysis;
- that the campaign did not provide a clear indication of the policies
of the new Labour Government, but neither is it fair to say that the
Labour Party provided no indication of its policy direction; and
- that the election outcome makes both major parties prone to a greater
or lesser degree of internal party disunity.
In view of the Labour Party's victory and its campaign commitment to
establish an independent commission on voting systems followed by a referendum,
the final section of this paper considers the future of the British first-past-the-post
method of electing MPs, the proportional representation alternative, and
other related issues.
Initial Support Levels
When Prime Minister John Major formally requested a dissolution of Parliament
on 17 March, opinion polls were indicating a large Labour lead. An National
Opinion Poll (NOP) published in The Sunday Times the day before
Mr. Major's election announcement showed Labour at 52%, the Conservatives
at 27% and the Liberal Democrats at 13%. The day after the election was
called, a Gallup Poll in The Daily Telegraph had Labour ahead of
the Conservatives by 28%. Not a great deal changed during the course of
the campaign. Two weeks into the contest, on 2 April, an International
Communicative and Marketing (ICM) poll in The Guardian put Labour
at 46%, the Conservatives at 32%, and the Liberal Democrats at 17%, which
turned out to be remarkably close to the actual share of the vote on 1
May. From then on, all the major opinion polls reflected a similar and
consistent division of partisan support and the difference between the
polls and the 1 May outcome was generally within the usual margins of
error.(2)
Indeed, the polls had been registering a shift in the balance of partisan
support towards the Labour Party since mid-1992. So, too, had the voters
who participated in the 18 by-elections held during the last Parliament.
The Conservative Party not only failed to win any of them, but also managed
to lose some very safe seats in the process. In the first by-election
after the 1992 General Election, the Conservatives were defeated in the
very safe seat of Newbury with a 28.4% swing to the Liberal Democrats.
In the second by-election in Christchurch in July 1993, a 22,000 vote
Tory majority became a Liberal Democrat majority of 16,000. The worst
ever by-election record in a single Parliament was capped off by the loss
of Wirrall South in February 1997 with a 17% swing against the Conservatives.
In the lead-up to the election, voter surveys were registering not just
a change in the voting intention of the British electorate but also a
preference for Labour Party policy over Conservative policy. Between 1992
and 1996 there were significant shifts in the policy predilections of
British voters in favour of the Labour Party. By 1996, Labour was the
preferred party on most policy issues including economic management. The
only policy areas where Conservatives had the edge on Labour were defence
and Northern Ireland. By March 1996, Labour was even thought to be better
than the Conservatives on crime and law and order, a traditionally strong
Conservative issue.(3)
The six-week campaign did not seem to shift public opinion to any measurable
extent. It appears that a large proportion of the British electorate had
made up their minds before the election campaign had begun. This is not
altogether surprising and would be quite consistent with survey data which
has shown that, over the last 25 years, less than a quarter of the British
electorate have decided how to vote during the campaign itself.(4)
The 'Sleaze' Factor
If the Conservative Party had hoped that a long campaign would give
it time and opportunity to change the minds of voters, or persuade those
who made their voting decision during the course of the campaign, then
its hopes were dashed by its own inability to control the campaign agenda.
The first three weeks of the campaign were dominated by the so-called
'sleaze' issue. Because of the prorogation of Parliament the Parliamentary
Commissioner for Standards, Sir Gordon Downey, was unable to present his
report on the 'cash-for-questions' affair. This led to suggestions of
a deliberate cover-up by the Prime Minister and also generated widespread
concern about two particular Conservative candidates, Mr. Neil Hamilton
and Mr. Tim Smith, who had admitted lobbying on behalf of and taking money
from the Egyptian-born owner of Harrods, Mohamed Al-Fayed. Subsequent
pressure on the two to relinquish their candidacies for re-election compounded
the problem. Tim Smith did stand down, but Neil Hamilton convinced his
constituency association to support him and continued as the Conservative
Member of Parliament for Tatton even after John Major had urged him to
pull out.(5) Mr. Major had also attempted to get another Conservative
candidate to stand down in order to diffuse the sleaze factor. Piers Merchant,
the Tory candidate seeking re-election in the seat of Beckenham, had been
photographed by The Sun newspaper kissing and cuddling a 17-year-old
nightclub hostess. He, too, had managed to get his local association to
endorse his candidacy in spite of all the adverse publicity and thus successfully
resisted the pressure from the Prime Minister.
Not only did the Hamilton and Merchant cases ensure that the 'sleaze'
issue dominated the opening weeks of the campaign, but they also raised
more questions about John Major's ineffectiveness in controlling his own
party which, in turn, reflected on the broader question of the Prime Minister's
leadership abilities. Neil Hamilton's continuation as a candidate symbolised
the mess that the Conservative Party had got itself into and, ultimately,
was damaging to his party. His refusal to stand down led to the withdrawal
of the Labour and Liberal Democrat candidates in Tatton so that the seat
could be contested by a high-profile 'anti-sleaze' candidate in the shape
of well-known BBC reporter, Martin Bell. Hamilton subsequently lost what
was one of the safest Tory seats in the country to Mr. Bell. In terms
of the electoral impact of the 'sleaze' factor, financial impropriety
was more damaging than marital infidelity: Mr. Merchant held his seat
of Beckenham with a comfortable majority.
Europe
In the second half of the campaign, 'sleaze' was displaced on the election
agenda by the issue of European monetary union and the single European
currency. Once again, the divisions within the Conservative Party and
the weakness of Mr. Major's leadership were highlighted. While the official
Conservative position on the single currency was to keep options open,
over 200 Conservative candidates expressed outright opposition to the
single currency in their own election addresses. It appeared that Mr.
Major was prepared to tolerate this defiance rather than face a serious
confrontation on the issue, and thus he ensured that Europe dominated
the remainder of the campaign in a way which kept the Conservative Party
on the defensive. Even efforts to turn the Europe issue to the Party's
own advantage backfired. A controversial Conservative election poster
depicting a minute Tony Blair sitting in the lap of a giant Helmut Kohl
became a news story in itself, and two unwanted interventions into the
election campaign by the President of the European Commission and an EU
Commissioner deflected attention from what Mr. Major was trying to say
about Europe.
The domination of the campaign agenda by the sleaze issue and Europe
prevented Mr. Major from fighting the election on the grounds of his choice,
namely the state of the economy and what was a quite credible Conservative
record of economic management since 1992.
Labour Strategy
The Labour Party was very successful in its highly controlled, disciplined
and cautious campaign. There was very little discussion of the specifics
of Labour policy, and the party's decision to pull out of negotiations
for a television debate between the party leaders probably worked to its
advantage by denying John Major his last opportunity to embarrass Mr.
Blair in front of the whole nation. Moreover, the Labour candidates who
had been frustrated by Tony Blair's 'modernisation' of the party managed
to keep that frustration to themselves, even when the party leader seemed
to repudiate Labour Party policy on privatisation. If the Labour Party
had the election won before the campaign began, as the polls indicate,
then the carefully controlled campaign strategy can hardly be faulted
from the party's point of view.
On the face of it, the outcome of the vote on 1 May was quite clear
and unambiguous: an overwhelming victory for the Labour Party which forced
journalists to reach for superlatives. Labour won 418 of the 659 seats
in the House of Commons,(6) the largest haul of seats by any single party
in British electoral history. Conversely, the Conservatives lost 178 of
the seats they held in the last Parliament and retained just 165, their
lowest number of seats since 1906. The Conservative Party also recorded
its lowest share of the vote (31.4%) since 1832. The Liberal Democrats
finished with 46 seats, the best performance of a minor party since the
election of 1923, although their share of the vote and their aggregate
number of votes were lower than in 1992. The overall swing to the Labour
Party of 10.5% was massive and unprecedented. The election was more than
a landslide for the Labour Party; it was a crushing defeat of catastrophic
proportions for the Conservatives.
The decimation of the Conservative Party was particularly dramatic in
Scotland and Wales. The Conservatives won on 17.5% of the vote in Scotland
and lost all of the 11 Scottish seats they held in the previous Parliament
(five to Labour, four to the Scottish Nationalists, and three to the Liberal
Democrats), leaving them with no parliamentary representation from Scotland.
Similarly, there are now no Conservative MPs from Wales. With just 19.6%
of the Welsh vote, the Conservatives lost all eight of their Welsh seats
(seven to Labour and one to the Liberal Democrats).
The swing from Conservative to Labour varied in strength according to
the nature of each constituency, but almost all Labour candidates, including
those contesting safe Labour seats, registered a significant swing in
their favour. Even in safe Labour seats, swings in the order of 14% were
recorded in some places.(7) Moreover, almost all Labour MPs seeking re-election
in 1997 increased substantially the size of their majorities, in most
instances at the expense of the Conservative Party.
Conservative Non-Voting
Seats, swings, and majorities all serve as indicators of Labour's crushing
victory, but they need to be tempered by two critically important statistics
which go a long way towards explaining the nature of Labour's win and
the best-ever performance of the Liberal Democrats. Firstly, the turnout
in 1997 (the lowest in a British General Election since 1935) was only
71.3% falling from the 77.7% recorded in 1992. Secondly, the aggregate
Conservative vote also fell dramatically from the 1992 total by more than
4.5 million. A comparison of the change in aggregate votes for the three
leading parties between 1992 and 1997 is interesting (see Table 1). Although
the Labour vote increased by just under 2 million, the Conservative vote
declined by more than twice as much. Assuming for a moment that all the
additional Labour votes in 1997 came from 1992 Conservative voters (which,
of course, would almost certainly not be the case), there are still more
than 2.5 million lost Conservative votes to account for. Given the fall
in the Liberal Democrat vote and the fact that the size of the electorate
seems not to be a relevant factor, it begins to appear that a lot of Conservative
voters stayed at home on 1 May rather than transferring their voting allegiance
to a different party. It is difficult to be more specific about the reason
for the fall in the Conservative vote until survey data becomes available,
but it is tempting to suggest that Labour probably did as well as it did
because of Conservative non-voting.
Table 1. Change in Aggregate Vote 1992-1997
Party 1992 1997 Difference
Conservative 14 092 891 9 590 565 -4 502 326
Labour 11 559 384 13 551 381 +1 991 997
Liberal Democrats 5 999 384 5 243 322 -756 062
One can illustrate this by looking at any number of constituency results
in which the Labour vote increases, but the Conservative vote falls by
a much greater amount without going to the minor parties or fringe candidates.
For example, in the south-west London seat of Putney, one of the many
that switched from Conservative to Labour, the Labour vote increased by
just 2422 over the 1992 figure, but the Conservative vote fell by over
8000. As the Liberal Democrat vote in Putney also fell in 1997 and the
seven fringe candidates picked up only 2000 votes between them, it appears
that Conservative non-voters cost their party the Putney seat this year
notwithstanding the gains made by Labour.
Conservative non-voting also helps explain both the increased majorities
for many Labour candidates and at least part of the massive swing to Labour.
In the Yorkshire constituency of Halifax, for example, Alice Mahon retained
the seat for Labour with a majority of over 11 000 votes compared to her
majority in 1992 of a mere 478. But Mahon's vote went up by only 2350
in 1997. The critical factor in turning Halifax from a very marginal seat
into a safe one was the fall in the Conservative vote of over 8000 resulting
in a swing to Labour of 10.7% Similarly, in the nearby seat of Huddersfield,
Labour incumbent Barry Sheerman more than doubled his majority of 7258
to 15 848, but he did it with just 1,339 more votes than he obtained in
1992. The vote for the Liberal Democrat in Huddersfield was down by 135
this year and the vote for the fringe candidates increased by 1700. The
big shift occurred in the Tory vote, which fell by over 7000-a drop of
44%. That accounted for Mr. Sheerman's hugely increased majority and the
10.4% swing to Labour in that constituency.
Similarly, Patricia Hewitt's victory in Leicester West, for example,
was achieved with just six votes more than Labour won last time around
when they lost the seat. Ms Hewitt's good fortune occurred because it
appears that over 8000 voters who voted Conservative in 1992 stayed at
home in 1997. The additional six votes won by Ms Hewitt, combined with
the 8800 fall in the Conservative vote, resulted in a swing to Labour
of 11.6% and a Labour majority of over 12 000.
The same argument can be applied to many of the gains made by the Liberal
Democrats. A number of their victories (e.g. Carshalton & Wallington,
Hereford, Lewes and the Isle of Wight) can be explained by the high incidence
of Conservative non-voting. In the Isle of Wight, the Liberal Democrats
were down on their 1992 vote by more than 5,000, but they gained the seat
from the Conservatives in 1997 because of the 14,000 drop in the Tory
vote, most of which can be attributed to non-voting. Indeed, these kinds
of results help explain why the Liberal Democrats almost doubled the number
of seats in the House of Commons while experiencing a decline in actual
votes and a decline in their share of the total vote.
There are many cases in the British General Election of 1997 that illustrate
the point made by Richard Rose and Ian McAllister that the concept of
swing is not relevant to understanding the loyalties of voters.(8) 'Swing'
describes only the net change in votes. It tells us nothing about
how individual voters decided to vote. The same, of course, applies to
majorities in individual constituencies. As the Sheerman case in Huddersfied
demonstrates, candidates do not necessarily need a huge increase in their
own vote to obtain huge majorities.
Votes, Seats and Proportionality
For most people, the extent of electoral success in Britain is measured
by the total number of seats won and the size of the winning party's majority
in the House of Commons. But, again, the Labour total of 418 seats and
its majority of 179 needs to be put into context.
Because the British electoral system is a first-past-the-post system,
in which a simple plurality in each constituency elects a Member of Parliament,
the votes-seats relationship is distorted. The winning party gets a far
higher percentage of seats than its percentage of votes. The losing major
party is usually disadvantaged in the votes-seats relationship and minor
parties suffer particularly badly unless their vote is concentrated geographically.
Table 2 compares the percentage of votes obtained by the major and leading
minor parties and illustrates how the number of seats obtained overstates
the extent of the electoral victory, as is almost always the case in Britain.
The Labour Party won 63.4% of the seats in the House with 44.4% of the
total vote. The Conservative Party was a little hard done by. On strict
proportionality, its 31.4% of the vote would have given it 207 seats.
Strict proportionality would also have given the Liberal Democrats 113
seats and, doubtless, their 46 MPs will continue to press for the introduction
of proportional representation. Plaid Cymru (the Welsh Nationalist Party)
is almost perfectly represented in the new Parliament, the Ulster Unionists
are over-represented, and the Scottish Nationalists would have had double
their number of seats if votes and seats were proportional. But, if strict
proportionality had been applied to this vote distribution, then Labour
would have been a minority government or the senior partner in a coalition.
Table 2. Votes-Seats Relationship 1997
Party Votes % Vote Number of Seats % Seats
Labour 13 551 381 44.4% 418 63.4%
Conservative 9 590 565 31.4% 165 25.0%
Liberal Democrats 5 243 322 17.2% 46 6.9%
Scottish Nationalists 621 154 1.9% 6 0.9%
Plaid Cymru 161 030 0.5% 4 0.6%
Ulster Unionist 258 349 0.8% 10 1.5%
Preliminary Analysis
None of the above argument is meant to denigrate the Labour victory.
Every British election is played under the same rules of the game and,
under those rules, the Labour Party performed extraordinarily well. The
argument that Labour's win was dependent in part on the decline in voting
turnout, and that much of that decline can be attributed to disaffected
Conservative voters, is tentative and will need to be substantiated with
detailed election survey data not available to those who engage in instant
analysis. But the actual voting figures do lend weight to the Conservative
non-voting factor, and, if this is supported by the much more sophisticated
survey data analyses to come, then it will tell us there is little evidence
that any kind of partisan realignment has occurred in Britain.
Moreover, if large numbers of 1992 Conservative voters stayed at home
in 1997 because they were disaffected by their own party but could not
bring themselves to vote for any other party, then there is no reason
to assume that they will necessarily stay at home again in 2002. That
will all depend on the ability of the Conservative Party to put its house
in order over the next five years. Initially, that effort will focus on
the selection of a new party leader to replace John Major (see below),
and then, presumably, on some settlement of the Europe issue within the
party.
Women Members
One consequence of the massive defeat of the Conservative Party is that
the new British Parliament will contain a record number of female MPs.
Out of the 120 women members of the new House, 101 will be on the Labour
benches. This almost doubles the number of women in the previous Parliament.
Apart from the unexpectedly large loss of Conservative seats, the increased
number of successful women candidates has a lot to do with the Labour
Party's policy of encouraging the selection of women candidates in winnable
seats, including a short flirtation with women-only short lists in seats
where the sitting Labour member was not standing for re-election.(9) It
is expected that the significant increase in the number of female members
ought at least to have some effect on the conduct of debate in the House
of Commons, although it should be noted that, even as a consequence of
the gains made on 1 May, women will constitute only 18.1% of the membership
of the House. (Research Note: Women in the UK General Election 1997).
Table 3. Women Members of House of Commons 1997
Labour Conservative Liberal SNP Speaker Total
Democrat
101 13 3 2 1 120
Labour's stunning electoral success in 1997 was the culmination of a
ten-year effort to make the party electorally acceptable after the turbulent
and damaging period following the election defeat in 1979. Under the leadership
of Mr. Michael Foot and the influence of the radical left, Labour reached
its nadir in the General Election of 1983 when it polled less than 8.5
million votes and saw its share of the vote fall to 27.6%, only two percentage
points above the combined vote of the Liberal and Social Democratic Party
Alliance. A third successive election defeat in 1987 and the fear that
Labour was heading for political oblivion prompted Michael Foot's successor,
Neil Kinnock, to initiate a wide-ranging policy review which resulted
in the document Meet the Challenge, Make the Change, adopted by
the party conference in 1989. The party's new policy statement marked
the beginning of the process of 'modernisation' of the British Labour
Party, of which Tony Blair has been the principal beneficiary. The shift
in policy was designed to broaden the electoral appeal of the Labour Party
and shed the electoral burden of its left-wing ideology and unpopular
policies. For that, Mr. Blair owes a great deal to Neil Kinnock.(10)
The process of modernisation has not been without its problems. The
shift to a pragmatic and market-oriented approach, and the renunciation
of the tenets of socialism as embodied in Clause IV of the party's constitution,(11)
leaves a number of major questions to be answered, particularly questions
relating to what new Labour sees as the appropriate role for the state
now that the commitment to public ownership has finally been jettisoned.
The shift to the centre (or to the right, as many disgruntled Labour backbenchers
see it) was clearly an electoral necessity after the experience of the
1980s, although there are many party activists who have not fully accepted
what seems to be Mr. Blair's position that the party must not only campaign
from the centre but must also govern from the centre when it wins power
at Westminster.
The Labour Manifesto
Few of these questions were resolved during the 1997 election campaign.
The presentation of policy details was deliberately muted as part of Labour's
election strategy; but it remained inconspicuous also because of the Conservative
Party's internal troubles, which never left the front page during the
course of the campaign. Labour's approach was to emphasise the change
that had taken place within the party and not to engage with the specifics
of policy for fear of upsetting any target-group of voters. The language
of the party's election manifesto and Tony Blair's election speeches was
almost Kennedyesque. It sounded good, it heralded change and new direction,
it tried to satisfy all sides of politics, it was built around point and
counterpoint, and eschewed specifics and details, and asked to be held
accountable for promises.
Perhaps one ought not to overemphasise the significance of the election
manifesto. A lot of effort now goes into the production of a slick, glossy,
and heavily illustrated prospectus which is not particularly easy to obtain
and which very few people actually read. Party manifestos send signals
to other elite groups, particularly journalists and opinion leaders, who
distil and convey the essence of what the party stands for through the
mass media. Much depends on the extent to which the media itself is interested
in specific issues of policy; and, in general, it would be fair to say
that the media was more preoccupied with the internal divisions and feuding
within the Conservative Party than with trying to unravel the general
policy commitments made in the Labour manifesto.
 
For those interested in the substance of public policy, the Labour manifesto
was annoyingly vague. The lack of specifics made it hard to form a firm
view of what Labour would do once it was in office. Take, for example,
one of the principal policy initiatives foreshadowed in the manifesto,
the commitment to establish a national minimum wage. All that the manifesto
tells voters is that there should be a statutory minimum wage(12). It
says nothing about the level at which the minimum wage should be set,
it says nothing about the coverage of the minimum wage, and it hedges
its commitment with the proviso that the minimum wage ought to be decided
on the basis of "the economic circumstances of the time." Obviously,
for a new Labour Party that wants to convince British business that there
is nothing to fear, generalities and qualifications on an issue like this
makes sound electoral sense.
To take another example, the same level of generality can be seen in
the manifesto statement on broadcasting policy. As in Australia, questions
about media ownership, media diversity, and the extent of media regulation
are high on the British policy agenda. But, again, new Labour speaks only
in generalities. It commits itself to a thriving, diverse media industry,
it recognises that the regulatory framework "should reflect the realities
of a far more open and competitive economy," but its only promise
is that Labour will "balance sensible rules, fair regulation and
national competition, so maintaining quality and diversity for the benefit
of viewers".(13) It is perhaps not surprising that The Sun
newspaper rushed to endorse Mr. Blair on the first day of the election
campaign.
A Cautious Approach
Those on the left of the Labour Party will continue to be frustrated
by the generality of Labour's policy statements. If the leadership was
determined to shed the image of a collectivist, interventionist, high
public-spending party, then the manifesto commitment to dealing with the
problem of homelessness in Britain is a perfect example of the 'modernisation'
process at work. It offers a three point response to the homelessness
problem that doesn't actually commit the Blair government to doing anything.
It says it "will place a new duty on local authorities to
protect those who are homeless," it says it will use "the phased
release of capital receipts from council house sales to increase the stock
of housing for rent" (another local government responsibility), and
it claims that the "welfare-to-work" policy will make the young
unemployed financially independent and thus able to afford housing (essentially
the responsibility of British industry and business).(14)
The politics of Labour's policy appeal are obvious in the context of
'modernisation" and Tony Blair's leadership. But, while the manifesto
is cautious, limited and vague in order not to offend any potential new
Labour support, it is not true to say that the party offered no policy
direction at all during the election campaign. There are any number of
policy issues where the manifesto clearly points the way (e.g. welfare
reform, education, the health service, taxation, and labour relations),
without being specific on details. Much of what is in the 1997 manifesto
will be fleshed out in the course of the next few years. The generalised
commitment in the manifesto to reform the Bank of England "to ensure
that decision-making on monetary policy is...free from short-term political
manipulation"(15) is one such example where the broad generalisation
has already been turned into something more substantial. In his first
days in office, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that he
was giving the Bank of England freedom to set interest rates without interference
from the Treasury.
Two further points need to be made about Labour's policy direction.
Firstly, although the manifesto and the party's policy appeal has been
depicted as cautious, centrist, and limited, there are elements of that
programme that are relatively radical, particularly the proposals for
reforming government. The commitment to abolish the right of hereditary
peers "to sit and vote in the House of Lords"(16) may not be
quite the same as abolishing hereditary peerages, or abolishing the House
of Lords altogether, but it is an attack on the British establishment.
The radical element of the proposal must be its consequences for the debate
on the future of the monarchy, irrespective of the manifesto statement
that Labour has "no plans to replace the monarchy"(17). The
Party is also committed to a referendum on proportional representation
(although not necessarily to proportional representation itself), but
the referendum commitment could well lead to the introduction of PR, which
would be the most radical change in British democracy this century. Similarly
proposals for devolution of power to Scottish and Welsh assemblies is
radical in the context of the unity of the United Kingdom.
Secondly, some on the left have claimed that the modernised new Labour
Party has embraced Thatcherism. The 1997 manifesto shows that not to be
the case. Whilst there has been much controversy of the party's tolerance
of most of Mrs. Thatcher's trade union reform and its decision to stick
to the former Conservative Government's planned spending allocations for
the first two years of office, that doesn't make the manifesto Thatcherite.
Proposals for solving policy problems "in partnership with industry"
would definitely not fit Thatcherism. The minimum wage commitment is un-Thatcherite.
The promise to intervene and regulate the privatised water industry(18)
would be anathema to Margaret Thatcher. Labour's environmental policy
would not comply with the fundamentals of Thatcherism, and its proposals
on reform of government - essentially concerned with expanding democracy
in central and local government, devolving power to Scotland and Wales,
and increasing the rights of citizens - would make Mrs. Thatcher shudder.
New Labour may be far more centrist than many Labour traditionalists
desire, but to say that modernisation has meant the adoption of Thatcherism
is a gross exaggeration. If Thatcherism is to make an impact on the Labour
Party, then it is most likely to be seen, not in the substance of public
policy, but rather in the leadership style of Mr. Blair. On that score,
there may well be many similarities with Margaret Thatcher. Mr. Blair
has given every indication that he is comfortable with the centralisation
of power in Downing Street and a highly controlled and disciplined approach
to government modelled on the highly disciplined and controlled approach
that was used to win the election. In this respect, his appointment of
the thoroughly unpopular Mr. Peter Mandelson as Minister without Portfolio
in the Cabinet Office, charged with ensuring that Labour policy is implemented,
could be a risk. Mandelson's position is the closest that British Government
has come to having a 'White House Chief-of-Staff' and Mandelson has, so
far, demonstrated all the characteristics of the worst aspects of the
American model. Peter Mandelson could well become the John Sununu of British
politics.(19)
The outcome of the 1997 General Election has the propensity to threaten
the internal stability of both major political parties.
The Labour Party and Restless Backbenchers
The experience of being in government with an extraordinarily large
number of backbenchers in Parliament will be a supreme test of Labour
Party 'modernisation.' The question is whether the restless Labour traditionalists,
who may have accepted the necessity for Labour to campaign from the centre
but do not necessarily accept the necessity of governing from the centre,
will conform to the policy direction set by Mr. Blair. At the first meeting
of the Parliamentary Labour Party following the election victory, Mr.
Blair made it clear in his address to new MPs that they were there in
such large numbers because the party ran as new Labour 'and they had better
remember it'.(20)
But large numbers of backbenchers without hope of ever being appointed
to a government office are prone to independence and rebellion. The prospect
of getting a ministry (even becoming a junior minister) acts as a major
incentive for ambitious backbenchers not to upset the party leadership
and to maintain party discipline but, no matter how well Labour backbenchers
behave in this coming Parliament, there are simply not enough government
jobs to satisfy all of them. Indeed, Mr. Blair has not been able to give
posts in his Government to some of those Labour MPs who have been sitting
around since 1979 waiting to experience the joys of power. A large number
of new Labour backbenches will have to get used to staying on the backbenches
and making their political career in Westminster rather than Whitehall.
Early reports suggest that many of the new intake of Labour MPs are
broadly sympathetic to Tony Blair, but there is also a left-of-centre
faction in the party that could be an embarrassment to the party leadership
even if it is not sufficiently strong to create a real political threat.
Indeed, the first indication of trouble came shortly after the new Chancellor
of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, announced his intention to give the Bank
of England independence over setting interest rates. One MP announced
that it was likely that up to 50 Labour backbenchers would oppose the
proposal when the necessary legislation came before the House of Commons.(21)
The large Labour majority in the new Parliament will, of course, allow
Labour backbenchers the freedom to oppose their own leadership without
any fear of bringing the Government down. In that respect, the 179-seat
majority - much more than Mr. Blair anticipated is a problem. On the other
hand, Labour's majority is so large that it would take an extraordinary
number of backbenchers working together to create real pressure on the
leadership. At the present time, it is difficult to imagine that kind
of concerted action taking place.
The Conservative Party and the Leadership Contest
The problems within the Conservative Party are much more acute. John
Major's surprise decision to vacate the leadership as soon as possible
was probably not the best response he could make to an election defeat
brought on in large measure by a bitterly divided party. It means that
the imminent Conservative leadership contest will take place in an atmosphere
of recrimination, faction-fighting and bitter personality conflicts, and
that the leadership struggle will also be fought out before the party
has had any constructive inquest on its election performance.
The Conservative party is already fully engaged in the contest to find
a successor for John Major. At least six names are on the list of starters,
and more may follow. While the outcome will obviously turn on the relative
strengths and weaknesses of the candidates themselves, this is a contest
where the rules of the game will be particularly important and could affect
the result in unexpected and unanticipated ways.
Originally devised in 1965 after widespread dissatisfaction with the
1963 leadership succession, the leadership selection rules establish a
complex process of election which replaced what former Prime Minister
Harold Macmillan liked to call "the customary processes of consultation."
Under the old system, where no-one outside a self-selected inner-circle
could be quite sure who was doing the consulting or who was being consulted,
succession to the party leadership was decided quickly, quietly, and thoroughly
undemocratically.
The new system gave every Conservative member of the House of Commons
one vote in a secret ballot. The procedures have been modified three times
since 1965 and, on the whole, have worked reasonably well both to ensure
a speedy replacement when leaders have lost the confidence of their party
and to protect the incumbent leader against frivolous challenges.
But, in the coming contest, the leadership selection rules could be
a minefield for the Tory party and could provide a vehicle for aggravating
the discord and disunity which contributed so much to the Conservative
debacle at the polls on 1 May. The rules were never designed with the
current situation in mind. The large field of fairly evenly matched contestants
has thrown a giant spanner in the works. With no obvious front-runner
amongst Messrs Clarke, Dorrell, Hague, Howard, Lilley and Redwood, there
is little likelihood that the leadership will be settled on the first
ballot.
To win first time around, the successful candidate must obtain both
an absolute majority of those entitled to vote and a surplus vote over
that of the second placed candidate that amounts to 15 per cent of those
entitled to vote. If all six are still in the race when the first ballot
is held, it is improbable that any one of them could secure an absolute
majority of 83 votes, let alone the additional votes needed to satisfy
the 15 per cent rule.
Never before has the Conservative leadership been contested by more
than three candidates on the first ballot. Under the rules for the second
ballot, the 15 percent surplus requirement is dropped, but the winner
still needs an overall majority of those entitled to vote. If the outcome
of the first ballot is fairly even across the field, then there is no
obvious incentive for any of the first ballot candidates to withdraw from
the race and neither is there any provision in the rules to eliminate
candidates after the first ballot. All six could contest the second ballot.
Furthermore, the rules allow new players to enter the race on the second
ballot and it is possible that an indecisive first ballot, rather than
winnowing the field as it was intended to do, could enlarge it and make
the competition even more uncertain. For example, it would be quite possible
for Michael Heseltine to reverse his early decision to stay out of the
contest and declare his candidacy when he sees that none of the first-round
contestants have overwhelming support. Others, too, might be inclined
to enter the race after they have seen the degree of support for each
of the original starters.
Under the new rules, if the second ballot turns out to be much like
the first-an inconclusive outcome from a large field of candidates-then
a third ballot must be called and contested by the two candidates who
received the highest number of votes on the second ballot. In effect,
this means that the process itself reduces the field of candidates to
just two after the electors have twice shown that they are unable to do
so themselves. Whether or not this would satisfy Conservative MPs and
give the new leader sufficient legitimacy remains to be seen. No previous
Conservative leadership race has gone to a third ballot.
The rules of the game, combined with the present circumstances, do not
augur well for a clean and swift leadership transition. The Conservative
Party desperately needs a speedy and satisfactory outcome as the first
step towards its political recovery, but the present set of rules for
selecting the leader could well perpetuate the deep political antagonisms
and personal animosities that currently exist within the parliamentary
party. No previous Conservative leadership contest has taken place amid
such deep divisions and ill-feeling amongst the candidates.
The effect of the rules might be reduced if there were some influential
senior Tories on hand to tap one or more candidates on the shoulder after
the first ballot and tell them that they had their moment and its is time
to drop out of the race in the interests of the party as a whole. That
is how it happened in the past and that is how Margaret Thatcher was finally
removed from the leadership in 1990.(22) But there are very few senior
Tories left in the parliamentary party after the defeat of 1 May, and
neither is there any certainty that the candidates contesting the leadership
would listen to this kind of appeal even if it were made to them. The
passions amongst the leading candidates run too deep for that.
Sooner or later, the rules for selecting the Conservative party leader
will have to be changed, if only to accommodate the growing pressure from
constituency associations to have some say in the process. It is unlikely
that change can take place before this year's contest, but this year's
contest could be a catalyst for substantial change soon after, particularly
if it turns out to be the disaster that is waiting to happen.
Some leading members of the British Labour Party became interested in
electoral reform during the dark years of the 1980s, when the prospects
for government appeared exceedingly remote and Labour was facing a challenge
to its major-party status from the electoral alliance between the Liberals
and the new Social Democratic Party. While there have been genuine concerns
within the Labour Party about the undemocratic nature of the first-past-the-post
system of electing MPs to the House of Commons, it would not be an exaggeration
to say that there was also a deep-seated worry that Labour might never
be able to form a majority government under the existing electoral system
given the increase in third-party support. Moreover, as one of Labour's
proportional representation (PR) enthusiasts noted when pressing the case
for electoral reform, '[I]n today's political conditions, "the first
past the post" political system makes Conservative governments more
likely'.(23)
In 1990, the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party established
a working party chaired by Professor Raymond Plant to examine voting systems
for the European Parliament, the proposed devolved Assembly for Scotland
and, as an afterthought, the House of Commons.(24) The Plant report appeared
in April of 1993 and, although it considered forms of proportional representation,
it concluded that there was a clear majority amongst its members in favour
of retaining single-member constituencies and a majoritarian rather than
a proportional voting system. However, Plant also recognised that there
was support for some form of change to the first-past-the-post method
and it recommended its own variation of the alternative vote (as used
in elections to the Australian House of Representatives) which it called
the "supplementary vote."(25)
The Plant report did not resolve the differences of opinion over electoral
reform within the Labour Party and its recommendation for the supplementary
voting system failed to win any substantial support within the party at
large. Instead, the party line, developed during the leadership of the
late John Smith, was that a referendum ought to be held on electoral reform.
This was adopted by the 1993 Conference and incorporated into the 1997
election manifesto which said:
We are committed to a referendum on the voting system for the House of
Commons. An independent commission on voting systems will be appointed
early to recommend a proportional alternative to the first-past-the-post
system.(26)
This does not commit the Labour Party to supporting proportional representation,
but merely to holding a referendum to consider various proposals that
might emerge from the independent commission, including maintaining the
present system.
There is a division of opinion within the Labour Party about the merits
of proportional representation. Two of the most articulate advocates on
either side of the debate, Robin Cook (for) and Margaret Beckett (against),
are senior members of Mr. Blair's Cabinet. Tony Blair himself does not
seem to be much of an enthusiast for PR.(27) Irrespective of those divisions,
the new Labour Government faces a dilemma over its position on electoral
reform. It is locked into establishing the independent commission and
holding a referendum, but clearly it is not in the party's electoral interests
to change a system that gave it such a large majority of seats in favour
of a system that may possible mean that its only chance of governing would
be as a partner in a coalition. On the other hand, this is a political
party that is committed to a substantial measure of reform of government
to make it more democratic and more accountable. Resisting the introduction
of proportional representation for the House of Commons would look decidedly
odd in the context of other commitments in this area.
The Liberal Democrats have made the running on proportional representation
and it has clearly been in their electoral interests to do so. They advocate
the introduction of single transferable voting in multi-member constituencies
which would vary in the number of elected members they send to Parliament.(28)
They also envisage reducing the number of constituencies from 659 to 143.
The Liberal Democratic proposal is similar to the system employed for
elections to the Australian Senate.
The Conservative Party is unalterably opposed to proportional representation
and in favour of the existing electoral arrangements.
The lukewarm response within the Labour Party to the recommendations
of the Plant Committee suggests that the 'supplementary vote' proposal
is not going to be sufficient to head off pressure for proportional representation.
Neither is it going to be easy to defend the present simple plurality
system. The traditional defence of the first-past-the-post system is losing
its persuasiveness. Many Labour supporters are reassessing the argument
that the attractiveness of first-past-the-post is that it leads to strong
and stable government. After witnessing the experience of strong and stable
government under Mrs. Thatcher, many on the Labour side of politics are
reassessing the desirability of a system that always exaggerates and distorts
the electoral strength of the winning party.
As the new British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, said after Labour's
electoral defeat in 1992:
I wish we had had proportional representation for the elections of 1983
and 1987. We would not then have had the abuse of power of the past decade
that gave us the poll tax and opted-out hospitals in defiance of the wishes
of the great majority of the British people. He went on to urge Labour
to change the constitutions so that never again can our opponents abuse
the levers of power in the way they have done.(29)
The other main argument commonly used in defence of the present system
is the importance of constituents having a single MP who they know and
can relate to. That certainly seemed to be an important factor in the
deliberations of Professor Plant's committee, and provided a justification
for maintaining a first-past-the-post system in the guise of the 'supplementary
vote' proposal. But it not such a strong argument when set against the
distorting consequences of first-past-the-post and the much more democratic
and fairer proportional representation alternative. Moreover, there has
never been much evidence that the constituent-MP relationship in Britain
is particularly close, or that ordinary voters value it. Few British voters
ever make contact with their MP. In fact, research conducted by three
American academics in the 1980s showed that 44% of British voters reported
having no contact with their MP whatsoever, only 12% had ever met their
MP personally, and less than one-third had ever read about their MP in
a newspaper or magazine.(30) Such evidence doesn't help the argument for
the existing system and neither does the defence of single-member constituencies
establish that the relationship between constituents and elected representatives
would be significantly disadvantaged by the introduction of multi-member
districts.
The new Labour Government has given no indication of who is likely to
make up the membership of the independent commission, nor said anything
about the relationship of the commission's findings to the subsequent
referendum. Neither is it clear whether the Government regards the referendum
result as binding. In any case, there was no mention of electoral reform
in the Queen's Speech on 14th May (see Appendix), nor were any plans announced
for including the referendum on electoral reform in the package of legislation
to go before the current session of Parliament.
The prospect for electoral reform in Britain must still be uncertain.
At this stage, it is unlikely that the Labour Government would want to
encourage the introduction of proportional representation, and neither
could it be very confident about the chances of winning the argument if
it decided to defend the present simple-plurality system or a variant
of it. Its campaign commitment to a referendum is one that many Labour
leaders probably regret now that the party has formed a majority government
and, in view of the fact that the issue of electoral reform was not flagged
in the Queen's Speech, it is probably safe to say that the Blair Government
has put the issue on the back-burner for the time being.
The 1997 General Election brought change to British politics. Inevitably,
after eighteen-years of Conservative government, most of the faces in
the Labour Cabinet are new and fresh. So, too, is the party itself. The
process of 'modernisation' has transformed not only the electoral strength
of Labour, but also the fundamental approach of the party to public policy.
The successful effort by Tony Blair to append unofficially the adjective
"new" to the name of the party is more than just symbolic. It
denotes a different party and, while it is premature to speculate about
what modernisation will actually mean for the Labour Party in government,
it may well not be an exaggeration to say (as some disgruntled traditionalists
in the party would certainly say) that this is a party that has turned
its back on its past. Labour's success at the polls was the outcome of
a rebuilding process which began after the 1987 election by Neil Kinnock
and culminated in a historic victory for Tony Blair.
The defeated Conservatives will have to undergo a similar rebuilding
exercise over the next five years in order to prevent the Labour Party
from consolidating its 1997 gains, much of which came from Conservative
strongholds that were never expected to fall even in a landslide victory.
The Conservative Party is as divided after the election as it was before
polling day and there must be some doubt whether the current leadership
selection exercise is going to help the process of healing and reconstruction.
Moreover, the party has not had much experience of having to rebuild
after a devasting electoral defeat. The last time it was forced to review
its direction quite fundamentally was in 1945 following a similar defeat
at the hands of the Labour Party. That is an experience Conservative leaders
might want to look at again. The outcome was very successful. The period
in opposition from 1945-1951 saw significant policy and organisational
changes that brought the party back to power within six years and kept
it in power for a further thirteen. There are few Conservatives around
today who were witnesses to that rebuilding exercise, but that is the
kind of task the current leaders will have to undertake to restore the
party's electoral prospects. Whether or not the current Conservative Party
in its present state of division and recrimination has the capacity to
examine itself seriously remains to be seen.
The prospects for the Liberal Democrats are also uncertain following
the 1997 election. The increased representation in the House of Commons
will obviously give the party a stronger parliamentary voice than it has
previously had and provides a base for developing a strong Liberal Democrat
"front bench" which it has also lacked in the past. But the
growth of third-party voting in Britain seems to be stalled and the Liberal
Democrats cannot be too pleased that their substantial increase in seats
has occurred along with a decline in its aggregate vote. The profile of
the Liberal Democrats may be aided by a Conservative Party in disarray.
Conceivably, the 46 Liberal Democrats could well compete with the 164
Conservative MPs for the title of de facto opposition to the new Labour
Government.
The outcome of the vote on 1 May may well turn out to be a watershed
in post-war British political history. It was brought about by a generalised
desire for change and it seems to have created a feeling of change amongst
the British people. But, as with any election that turns on the broad
but undefined promise of change, there is, in the short-term, a period
of uncertainty and unpredictability which, in turn, limits what can be
said at this juncture about the meaning of the British General Election
of 1997.
- The electoral statistics for 1997 used in this paper are drawn from
provisional figures provided by the BBC and it is quite possible that
official election returns, when published, may differ slightly. It should
also be noted that the BBC's 'share of the vote' figures for the Labour,
Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Scottish Nationalist and Plaid Cymru
parties are expressed as percentages of the aggregate vote in Great
Britain only. They do not include the votes cast in Northern Ireland.
- There was one exception when The Guardian published an ICM
poll on 23 April which showed that the gap between Labour and Conservative
had closed to five points. No other published poll supported these findings
and the ICM poll should be regarded as an unexplained aberration. The
final ICM poll which appeared in The Guardian on election day
turned out to be closer to the actual share of the vote than the other
major polling companies. The final election estimates for the major
polls (published 1 May) are shown in the table below:
Labour Conservative Liberal Dem.
Gallup (Daily Telegraph) 47% 33% 14%
MORI (The Times) 45% 33% 16%
ICM (The Guardian) 43% 33% 18%
NOP (Reuters) 50% 28% 14%
Harris (The Independent) 48% 31% 15%
Actual Vote 44% 31% 17%
Source: Anthony King, "Tactical Votes Turn Loss Into Rout,"
The Weekly Telegraph, 7 May, 1997.
The polls recovered some of their credibility this year after
the disaster of 1992. As can be seen from the above table, most
of the final polls slightly over-estimated Labour's share of the
vote, but only NOP was outside the accepted margin of error. All
polls were close to the final Conservative share, and all, were
within the margin of error in calculating the Liberal Democratic
vote.
- The polling data is drawn from Martin Linton (ed.), The Election:
A Voters' Guide, London: Fourth Estate, 1997.
- See Ivor Crewe, Anthony Fox & Neil Day (eds), The British Electorate
1963-1992: A Compendium of Data from the British Election Studies,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995: 141. An NOP/BBC exit poll
indicated that 55% of voters in 1997 had decided how to vote before
the campaign began. Just 10% decided on election day itself with a strong
preference for the Liberal Democrats amongst the last-minute deciders.
See Pippa Norris, "Britain Votes, 1997," Parliamentary
Affairs, Vol.50 No.4 (forthcoming), September 1997.
- See Andrew Pierce & Philip Webster, "Expulsion for Sleaze
Sought by Major, The Times, 1st April, 1997, p.1.
- Some newspaper accounts show the Labour Party's total number of seats
as 419, instead of 418. The larger total includes the seat of West Bromwich
West won by the Speaker of the House of Commons, Betty Boothroyd, nominally
a Labour MP. It is traditional for the Speaker to contest the election
as a non-partisan candidate and it is also traditional that the other
main parties do not nominate candidates in the Speaker's constituency,
as was the case this year. Hence, it is technically incorrect to include
her in the Labour total.
- Only eleven of Labour's successful 418 candidates had swings against
them, five to the Scottish Nationalists (in Airdrie, Glasgow Govan,
Motherwell, Ochil, and Renfrewshire West), one to Plaid Cymru (in Rhondda),
and four to the Liberal Democrats (in Blaenau Gwent, Chesterfield, Manchester
Gorton, and Pontypridd). The only successful Labour candidate who experienced
a swing to the Conservatives was Oona King in the safe London seat of
Bethnal Green.
- Richard Rose & Ian McAllister, The Loyalties of Voters,
London Sage, 1990: 30.
- The decision to impose women-only short lists was taken by the Labour
Party Conference in 1993. The decision was successfully challenged because
it breached the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and was consequently
abandoned after only 35 Women candidates were selected.
- For a useful account of the 'modernisation' of the British Labour
Party see Tudor Jones, Remaking the Labour Party: From Gaitskell
to Blair, London, Routledge, 1996.
- Under Mr. Blair's leadership, the Labour Party finally approved a
radical revision of Clause IV (the statement of the aims of the party)
at a special conference on 29th April 1995. See Jones, op.cit.:135-148.
- Labour Party (GB). New Labour Because Britain Deserves Better,
London: Labour Party 1997: 17
- ibid.: 31
- ibid.: 26
- ibid.: 13
- ibid.: 33
- ibid.: 33.
- ibid.: 15.
- John Sununu was President Bush's White House Chief of Staff from 1989-1991.
His controversial role during those years is discussed in John Hart,
The Presidential Branch: From Washington to Clinton (Chatham,
N.J.: Chatham House, 1995), pp. 10-11.
- Philip Webster, "Blair Tells Incoming MPs to Stick to New Labour
Line," The Times, 7th May 1997.
- See Ean Higgins, "Minister Quits As Blair Hits First Hurdle,"
The Australian, 8th May 1997.
- R.K. Aldermann and Neil Carter. "The Ousting of Mrs Thatcher".
Parliamentary Affairs, V.44(2) April 1991: 133-136.
- Giles Radice, Labour's Path to Power: The New Revisionism,
London: Macmillan, 1989: 175.
- For a brief account of the pressure for electoral reform in the Labour
Party and the work of the Plant committee see Robert Blackburn, The
Electoral System in Britain, London, Macmillan, 1995: 387-391.
- The "supplementary vote" involves voters voting twice-once
for their first choice candidate and then for their second choice candidate.
If no candidate gained more than 50% of the vote (which would elect)
then all candidates except the top two would be eliminated. On the second
count, ballots in support of an eliminated candidate would be transferred
to the two remaining candidates if the second preference was for either
of those candidates. Then the candidate with the highest number of votes
would be declared elected.
- Labour Party (GB). New Labour Because Britain Deserves Better, London:
Labour Party, 1997:33.
- In delivering the John Smith Memorial Lecture in February 1996, Mr.
Blair remarked with respect to the electoral system
...it is quite proper for people to ask whether we have the best and
fairest available system of election. Some feel strongly about the
case for reform and point to the Tory governments elected on a minority
of the vote and the fact that smaller parties get squeezed under the
current system. I do not dismiss such arguments. But in truth I have
never been persuaded that under proportional representation we can
avoid a situation where small parties end up wielding disproportionate
power.
See Tony Blair, New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country,
London, Fourth Estate,1996: 319-320.
- See Blackburn, op.cit.: 370.
- Quoted in ibid.: 389.
- Bruce Cain, John Ferejohn and Morris Fiorina, The Personal Vote:
Constituency Service and Electoral Independence, Cambridge, Mass.,
Harvard University Press, 1987: 33.
- As announced in the Queen's Speech on 14 May 1997, the Labour Government
intends to introduce legislation this session which, among other things,
will include bills:
- to abolish subsidies for independent school fees
- to raise educational standards, reduce class sizes and develop a new
role for local education authorities
- to grant the Bank of England operational responsibility for setting
interest rates
- to reform competition law and introduce a statutory right to interest
on late payment of debts
- to provide for a national minimum wage
- to amend the criminal law including reform of the youth justice system
- to ban the possession of private handguns
- to end the internal market in the National Health Service and clarify
powers of the NHS to enter into partnerships with the private sector
- to ban tobacco advertising
- to broaden access to National Lottery benefits
- to incorporate provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights
into UK law
- to provide for a referendum on the Government's proposals for a devolved
Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly (followed by legislation to
implement the devolution proposals if approved in the referendum).
- to provide for a directly elected strategic authority and a directly
elected mayor for London
- to establish regional development agencies in England.
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