United Kingdom general election, 1997

1992 election

1997 election

2001 election

The UK general election, 1997 was held on 1 May 1997. The election brought the first change in UK Government for 18 years. The Labour Party led by Tony Blair defeated the incumbent Conservative Party by a huge margin (with 66% of the seats in the House of Commons), causing a major change to the political landscape of the United Kingdom. Northern England, Scotland and Wales became Labour heartlands once again, Labour ousted the Conservatives in the Midlands, Yorkshire, London and East Anglia in terms of votes. The Liberal Democrats made big gains in Western England and the Conservatives were relegated to South West and South East England.

Overall picture

The election was described as a Labour "landslide" by the media, owing to the margin of their victory. Labour won their largest parliamentary majority (179) to date, and the Liberal Democrats more than doubled their number of seats. It was a disaster for the governing Conservative Party. They lost all seats outside England, and several prominent members of the party were not re-elected, including:
*Michael Portillo - Secretary of State for Defence
*Malcolm Rifkind - Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
*Ian Lang - Secretary of State for Trade and Industry
*Michael Forsyth - Secretary of State for Scotland.
*William Waldegrave - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
*Tony Newton - Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons
*Roger Freeman - Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
*Marcus Fox - chairman of the 1922 committee
*Norman Lamont - Former Chancellor of the Exchequer and prominent Eurosceptic
*David Mellor - Former Secretary of State for National Heritage

The Referendum Party, which sought a referendum on Britain's relationship with the European Union, came fourth in terms of votes, although it did not win any seats. It won over 800,000 votes, and may have taken some votes from the Conservatives. The next six parties stood only in either Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales; in order, they were the Scottish National Party, the Ulster Unionist Party, the Social Democratic and Labour Party, Plaid Cymru, Sinn Féin, and the Democratic Unionist Party.

An independent, Martin Bell, won the Tatton seat, where incumbent Conservative MP Neil Hamilton was facing charges of having taken cash for questions, but was determined to stand nonetheless. The Labour and Liberal Democrat candidates withdrew in order for Bell to contest the seat.

The result declared for the constituency of Winchester showed a margin of victory of just 2 votes for the Liberal Democrats. The defeated Conservative candidate challenged the result on the grounds that errors by election officials (failures to stamp certain votes) had changed the result, forcing a by-election on 20 November which was won by the Liberal Democrats with a much larger majority, causing much recrimination in the Conservative Party about the decision to challenge the original result.

Results

Tony Blair, Labour leader

John Major, Conservative leader

Paddy Ashdown, Lib Dem leader

BBC Election '97 Titles

The election was fought under new boundaries, with an additional 8 seats across the UK. Changes listed here are from the notional 1992 result had it been fought on those boundaries. These notional results were used by all media organisations at the time.

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