T6 Political Flashcards
1
Q
The Rise of Tony Blair and New Labour (1994 - 1997)
A
- John Smith, the Labour leader (1992 - 1994) and successor to Neil Kinnock suddenly died of a heart attack in 1994, after less than two years in the post.
- He was to be succeeded by Tony Blair and ‘New Labour’.
2
Q
The Blair-Brown Pact
A
- Blair and Brown had both entered parliament in 1983.
- They shared an office and were both modernisers in the Labour Party.
- At the time of John Smith’s death, Brown would have been regarded as the more experienced of the two.
- It was agreed at a dinner at the Granita restaurant in Islington that Blair would stand as leader and work in close partnership with Brown who would act as strategist and policy expert.
- Afterwards, it was widely believed that Blair had agreed to step down at some point in the future to allow Brown to have his turn as leader.
- The question of when exactly Brown would take over later would cause tensions between ‘Blairites’ and ‘Brownites’ within the Labour government.
- Despite the efforts of the spin doctors to project a united image, the strain in this central relationship between number 10 and number 11 Downing Street was impossible to disguise.
3
Q
New Labour
A
- Under Blair’s leadership, the Labour Party moved further to the centre-ground of British politics.
- Under Blair, ‘social equality’ was downplayed in favour of ‘social justice’, a concept that both Liberals and moderate One-Nation Conservatives could readily support.
- Using the label (or slogan) ‘New Labour’, the party now abandoned socialism with its attacks on capitalism in favour of the Thatcherite free market.
- Labour also moved onto Conservative ground, by taking up the issue of law and order.
- Additionally, it became warmer towards Britain’s European membership.
- Beyond policy, Labour became more sophisticated in its use of media, the very ‘marketing’ activity treated with such hostility by an earlier generation of politicians.
- The concept of ‘New Labour’ was a practical response to the preceeding years of continuous Conservative governments and to the long-term pattern of Labour’s electoral decline.
- The Labour Party had not secured a clear-cut electoral victory since the 1966 General Election under Harold Wilson.
- The architects of New Labour became convinced that the Labour Party would never win a general election again until they could attract the votes of aspirational ‘Middle England’.
- Blair insisted that a Labour general election victory was his purpose and that he did not enjoy being the powerless leader of the opposition.
- His belief, shared by Gordan Brown, Peter Mandelson and Alistair Campbell, was that the Labour Party must modernise if it were to survive and prosper as a political party.
- Under Neil Kinnock, much of the toxic baggage of the 1983 disastrous manifesto (‘the longest suicide note in history’) and the actions of Militant during the 1980s had been abandoned.
- This process was further consolidated under John Smith’s leadership, but Blair and those who thought like him were frustrated at Smith’s caution and believed that modernisation needed to go much further and faster.
- In particular, they held Smith ‘Shadow Budget’ as being partly responsible for the Labour Party losing the 1992 General Election.
- This is because it re-enforced the image of the Labour Party being the ‘tax-and-spend’ party, not to be trusted with the nation’s economy.
- Thus, the New Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown’s, favourite economic catchphrase was ‘prudence’ meaning being extremely careful with money.
4
Q
The New Labour Image
A
- Image and branding were central to the New Labour project.
- A line had to be drawn with Labour’s socialist past and trade-union roots.
- Old Labour now represented everything that was bad according to Blair: ‘the destructive influence of the trade unions, the dominance of the block vote at party conferences, the hard left and Militant and the pettiness of the party-political activist’.
- New Labour would create a New Britain – modern, youthful, progressive and dynamic.
- Out of this vision emerged the now much-derided New Labour catch-phrase ‘Cool Britannia’.
- Under Blair, Downing Street receptions were as likely to be populated by pop stars, sporting heroes and celebrity personalities, as by foreign ambassadors and captains of industry.
5
Q
Abandoning Clause IV
A
- Even more symbolic was Blair’s abandoning of Clause IV of the Labour Party constitution.
- This was the constitutional clause that had committed the Labour Party to nationalising the ‘commanding heights’ of major British industries. Blair saw abandoning Clause IV as important, to demonstrate to the electorate just how far the Labour Party had changed and modernised.
- In the words of one party official, ‘It was a classic rebranding exercise. Announce that you are new and different, then demonstrably show that you are new and different by a very high-profile act.’
6
Q
Rupert Murdock’s Support
A
- New Labour realised that controlling its image required getting the support of Rupert Murdock, the Media Baron and his right-wing owned press.
- Indeed, it held the Conservative-dominated press partly responsible for Labour’s exclusion from power since 1979.
- Memories of The Sun’s remorseless attack on Neil Kinnock in 1992 were deeply ingrained on New Labour minds, even if the newspaper’s claim that it was ‘The Sun wot won it’, was an exaggeration.
- Strikingly, Blair accepted an invitation from Rupert Murdock to speak to senior executives of News Corporation at a gathering off the coast of Queensland, Australia, in July 1995.
- This secured The Sun’s support for Blair and New Labour in the 1997 General Election.
7
Q
Blair Embraces Thatcherism
A
- In 2002, twelve years after Margaret Thatcher left office, she was asked at a dinner what was her greatest achievement. Thatcher replied: ‘Tony Blair and New Labour’.
- New Labour was a response to and part-acceptance of the Thatcherite Revolution.
- At times Blair’s admiration for Margaret Thatcher was undisguised and not just for being a strong leader who moulded her party in her own image.
- In 1996 Blair told an American newspaper that a future Labour government would fail if it were seen ‘dismantling Thatcherism’.
- Blair, following Thatcher’s lead, embraced the primacy of the free market, low direct taxation, control of inflation, privatisation, acceptance of the globalised economy, and restricted trade union power.
- After taking office, Blair soon invited Margaret Thatcher to visit 10 Downing Street.
- She reportedly declared that her Thatcherite legacy was safe in his hands.
- While the historian Anthony Seldon argues that in Blair, ‘rather than in any of the Tory Leaders who succeeded her, she found her truest heir’.
8
Q
Blair’s background, personality and leadership style
A
- Blair was not a traditional Labour politician.
- He came from a wealthy family who were Conservative supporters, and attended the expensive Fettes private school before Oxford University.
- Blair did join the Labour Party until after he had graduated from Oxford.
- Blair did not feel very attached to the traditional left-wing ideological policies of Labour, which contributed to his desire to modernise the party in order to compete for the middle and upper class vote.
- Blair was young, energetic and charismatic.
- Blair performed well in Parliament and well delivering speeches at party conferences, but was equally comfortable in media appearances, even on non-political programmes.
- Blair took care to foster an image as a normal person despite his privileged upbringing, often dressing casually, emphasising his support of his local football team.
- The phrase ‘call me Tony’ used on This Morning can be used to reference this approach
- Blair and his spin doctors (eg. Alistair Campbell) were careful to maintain positive relationships with media figureheads like Rupert Murdoch in order to best control how Labour government policies were reported in the press and on TV.
- Blair’s personality and media relations combined to give him incredibly high approval ratings in his early months as PM.
- This peaked in the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death when Blair and Campbell came up with the phrase ‘the people’s princess’, which tapped into people’s grief more effectively than the royal family’s reserved response
9
Q
The New Labour Programme (1994 - 1997)
A
- Socialism Abandoned: Labour MPs and candidates were to avoid using the term ‘socialist’ in their public statements so as not to frighten the electorate. New Labour would accept that class-based politics were no longer relevant and would no longer present its polices in terms of class struggle. This meant an acceptance of the new consensus established by Thatcherism.
- Abolishing Clause IV: Nationalisation (public ownership) of the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy would no longer be a party objective, signalled by the abolition of clause IV of the Labour Party’s constitution. This meant an acceptance of Thatcher’s privatisation policies.
- Embracing Capitalism: The City and the business world represented by the CBI were to be embraced by reassuring them with the promise that capitalism would be safe in New Labour hands. This meant an acceptance of Thatcher’s deregulation policies.
- Weakening Trade Union Power: The legal weakening and restriction of trade unions would be continued. This meant an acceptance of Thatcher’s anti-trade-union policies.
10
Q
The Political Centre-Ground
A
- These policies were intended primarily to appeal to middle-class Britain where the bulk of the electorate was to be found.
- By avoiding both the extremism of the Left and Right by accepting progressive ideas.
- New Labour hoped to win over floating voters in the centre-ground of politics.
- It was a recognition that the old working class, which historically had been the main support base of the Labour Party, had greatly shrunk with the decline of traditional large-scale heavy industries in Britain with deindustrialisation.
- It was also an implicit acceptance that Thatcherism had created a new consensus by making radical changes that could not be undone.
11
Q
Reaction of the Left to New Labour
A
- The New Labour approach naturally upset the socialist Left of the party that could trace their wing back to the Bevanites.
- They characterised New Labour as being a sell-out of the Labour Party, by the Right of the Labour Party that could trace their wing back to the Gaitskellites, to Thatcherism.
- They were concerned that the Labour Party was abandoning its socialist working-class and trade union roots.
- They argued that New Labour lacked a distinct, radical ideology.
- Instead, it was presenting itself to the middle-classes as wanting to do the same as Thatcherite Conservatives, only more efficiently and without the sleazy scandals.
12
Q
Response of the Right to New Labour
A
- The response of the Right of the Labour Party, which supported the New Labour project, was to point out that the world had changed.
- Thatcherism and deindustrialisation had transformed Britain.
- Loyalty to old Labour socialist values and refusal to modify policy had simply made the party unelectable for 18 long years.
- The argument was convincingly won with the New Labour 1997 General Election landslide.
13
Q
New Labour ‘Spin’ (1997 - 2007)
A
- Tony Blair’s style of government was well illustrated by his use of ‘spin doctors’.
- The term was borrowed from the USA in the late 1990s to describe special advisers employed by politicians to present their policies – in the media and towards the electorate – in the best light possible.
- At its best, political ‘spin’ was essentially a form of public relations; at its worst it was only telling part-of-the-truth partially or simply just telling outright lies.
14
Q
New Labour Spin Doctors
A
- Blair relied on a team of special advisors, most prominent of whom were Alistair Campbell and Peter Mandelson, to handle the media and to help him judge the public mood, so that he could adjust his rhetoric and government policy accordingly.
- The practice was not new.
- Margaret Thatcher, for example, had employed a well-organised press team, led by Bernard Ingham.
- What was different about New Labour’s spin doctors, was the large degree of unelected influence, that they appeared to have had.
- They influenced and shaped not only New Labour’s media image and messaging, but appear to have also influenced New Labour government policies.
15
Q
Alistair Campbell
A
- Alistair Campbell was Blair’s special advisor and chief spokesman from 1994 to 2003.
- Although he held no official government position, he was so influential in presenting Blair and his policies to the public that some newspapers described him as the ‘real Deputy Prime Minister’.
16
Q
Peter Mandelson
A
- Peter Mandelson was Blair’s highly successful 1997 election-campaign manager.
- He became Trade Minister in 1998, but resigned in the same year and then became the Northern Ireland Minister in 1999, but resigned in 2001.
- In both cases his resignations had been brought about by allegations that he had been involved in irregular financial dealings.
- This did not, however, prevent him being appointed Britain’s European Trade Commissioner in 2004.
17
Q
New Labour’s Spin Words
A
- ‘Third Way’: A New Labour term meaning avoiding the extremes of right-wing Conservative and hard left-wing old Labour policies and instead choosing a moderate middle course.
- ‘Cool Britannia’: An already existing journalistic terms appropriated by New Labour to describe how fashionable and in touch it was as a new political movement.
- ‘Inclusiveness’: Referring to a society where nobody was left out, where there would be no ‘social exclusion’.
- ‘Stakeholder Society’: This had two meaning. In a practical sense, it meant ordinary people having state protected investments and pensions. While, in an abstract sense, it meant ordinary people feeling that they belonged collectively to wider society.
- ‘Forces of Conservatism’: This was a blanket term, first used by Blair in a speech in 1999, to condemn anything that held back or went against his idea of progress.
18
Q
The Third Way
A
- ‘The Third Way’ was a New Labour term meaning avoiding the extremes of right-wing Conservative and hard left-wing old Labour policies and instead choosing a moderate middle course.
- In a 1998 New Labour pamphlet on the Third Way Blair defined the four values essential for a ‘just society’ as ‘equal worth, opportunity for all, responsibility and community’.
- The important point is that New Labour sought to build on, rather than simply continue, Thatcherism.
- Blair’s approach perhaps owed more than he ever admitted to John Major. It had been Major’s ambition to project ‘Thatcherism with a human face’.
- The notion of the Third Way was not new and had been popularised by Professor Anthony Giddens of the London School of Economics.
- Both Blair and Brown were fascinated by American politics, with Blair deeply impressed by President Bill Clinton’s skill in repositioning the Democratic Party during his successful 1992 bid for the Whitehouse.
- A supposed common ideological commitment to The Third Way underpinned a close friendship between the two men and if Clinton had ‘invented’ the ‘New Democrats’, a corresponding rebranding of Blair’s ‘New Labour’ naturally followed.
- Many critics, however, argued that the Third Way was never a coherent ideology and simply an empty New Labour ‘catch-phrase’ or ‘buzzword’ used by spin doctors with no real meaning.
- Indeed, Third Way language was largely dropped after New Labour’s first term in office.
- In August 2001, Robin Cook who had been New Labour’s Foreign Secretary pondered, ‘Whatever happened to the Third Way?’
19
Q
Reasons for the Conservative 1997 General Election defeat
A
- The Conservatives had been in power for 18 years and the public wanted a change.
- Throughout the period 1990 to 1997 the Conservative government had a very small majority, which had the restricting effect of its ability to pass controversial legislation [laws] and forcing it into making deals with the minority parties like the Ulster Unionist Party.
- John Major was weak because of his uninspiring leadership, grey personality (mocked relentlessly by Spitting Image).
- The cumulative destructive effect, following Major’s infamous ‘Back-to-Basics’ speech, was a long series of sexual and financial scandals involving Conservative government ministers and MPs.
- The government’s forced withdrawal from the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) on ‘Black Wednesday’ undermined the Conservatives’ reputation for financial competence and management of the economy.
- The public’s distaste for the unseemly squabbles and splits within the Conservative Party over the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty.
- There were years of continuous divisions within Major’s cabinet between Eurosceptics and proEuropeans.
- John Major’s inability to win total loyalty by his party (demonstrated in the 1995 ‘put-up-or-shutup’ Conservative leadership contest) undermined his authority.
20
Q
Reasons for the Labour 1997 General Election Victory:
A
- The recovery in strength and confidence of Tony Blair’s New Labour, which presented a far more youthful and livelier image to that of the tired Conservative Party.
- There was the discipline of New Labour’s media operations with its use of ‘Spin Doctors’ like Alistair Campbell and Peter Mandelson that put a positive ‘spin’ on New Labour’s messaging.
- The switch of The Sun newspaper and other Rupert Murdoch publications away from the Conservatives and endorsement of Tony Blair and his New Labour project was as decisive.
- It was as decisive as it had been in 1992 in influencing the election outcome.
21
Q
The 2001 General Election
A
- In 2001, Labour maintained the massive majority it had gained in 1997, suggesting that the electorate considered the government had performed well over its four years in office.
- In terms of seats it was the status quo, Labour losing only five with the Conservatives down just one.
- There was a fall of 3.7% in Labour’s aggregate vote, but this had minimum effect on its overall strength.
- It is true that there was a leaking of nearly three million voters from Labour, but commentators put this down to general apathy among the electorate which had led to a turnout of 59% compared with 71% in 1997.
- The apathy was largely explained by opinion polls giving the government such a clear lead that neither supporters nor opponents had any incentive to vote since the outcome was a forgone conclusion.
- Blair’s popularity was a major factor in Labour’s success.
- Although William Hague, who had been elected Conservative leader in 1997, was a skilled opponent in the House of Commons, being particularly formidable at Prime Ministers Questions, his quality did not translate into popularity in the country at large.
- The same was true of his part, which found it difficult to catch up to Labour’s lead.
- The Conservatives at this stage lacked a distinct image to make them an alternative in the eyes of voters.
- Although, this is the nature of party politics, they sniped at the government, they found it difficult to score a palpable hit.
- Britain’s finances seemed secure in the hands of Gordan Brown as the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the economy was growing.
- In regard to Northern Ireland, Blair had taken a number of initiatives, like the Good Friday Agreement, leaving little room to attack him.
- In foreign affairs the government’s record was sound and while there was some uncertainty with the dealings with Europe there was even more about the Conservatives attitudes towards Europe due to internal divisions within the Conservative Party.
22
Q
Reasons for Labour’s victory in the 2001 General Election
A
- Blair’s continued popularity with voters.
- Blair laid stress on the improvement in the public services.
- William Hague’s inability to present himself as a better alternative to Blair.
- The perception that the government was handling the economy and foreign affairs effectively.
- Trust in Brown as a prudent Chancellor of the Exchequer.
- The Conservatives ran a poor campaign as they lacked a clear set of targets on which they could attack the government. Their main line was opposition to adopting the Euro, which failed to attract floating voters.
- The opinion polls had concurred in predicting a Labour victory, thus increasing voter apathy to vote.
23
Q
The 2005 General Election
A
- In May 2005 Tony Blair achieved a remarkable first for a Labour Prime Minister; he won his third straight election victory in a row.
- The number of seats achieved by Labour was 57 fewer than the 2001 figure, 356 compared to 413, and its aggregate vote fell by more than 5%.
- The Conservatives gained 32 more seats than four years earlier, while the Liberal Democrats’ total of nearly six million votes, approaching two-thirds of Labour’s total was not reflected in the number of seats they acquired due to the first-past-the-post electoral system.
- Despite losing ground in the election, Blair’s government had retained a comfortable overall majority.
- There was no reason for thinking it could not run another full term if it chose.
24
Q
Reasons for Labour’s victory in 2005 General Election
A
- Although Blair’s involvement in the Iraq war lost him some popularity, he was still regarded by the electorate as the outstanding choice among party leaders.
- Since the Conservatives had supported the government’s decision to go into the 2003 Iraq War, they were unable to gain from the mounting criticism of the war.
- Knowledge of the economic and financial difficulties that were beginning to face Britain had not become sufficiently widespread for it to count as a factor against the government.
- Despite the Conservatives’ maintaining their vote and slightly increasing their total support, they were still not able to make inroads into Labour’s lead.
- The Conservative Party had three different leaders within two years. William Hague had been replaced with Iain Duncan Smith after the 2001 General Election defeat and then in 2003 Iain Duncan Smith, having proved less charismatic in leading the party, was in turn replaced by Michael Howard. All this did not sit well with the public who regarded the Conservatives as a divided party lacking in confidence and unlikely to be able to govern well.
- Backed by a wily team of spin doctors, Blair by 2005 was an experienced political operator who knew how to project his image. Howard was a competent leader but he was no real match for Blair in the presidential-style campaign that the Prime Minister conducted.
- Michael Howard made a bad choice of issues on which to fight the 2005 General Election. His emphasis on immigration and law and order, concerns on which his own record when dealing with them as Home Secretary in John Major’s Conservative government (1990 - 1997) was not impressive, proved something of an embarrassment.
- As early as 1997, a fellow Conservative, Ann Widdecombe, had described Michael Howard as having ‘something of the night about him’.
- He tried to make light of her description, but it proved a handicap thereafter as satirists often depicted Howard as a Vampire.
- He was quite never able to get rid of the sinister image that one of his own side had given him.
25
Q
Devolution: Scotland and Wales
A
- The Conservative government had been deeply unpopular in Scotland during the 1980s and 1990s. Given that the Conservatives had little representation in Scotland, nationalists argued it was unfair that Scotland was controlled by a government in Westminster that they had not voted
for. - The Labour manifesto in 1997 promised to hold referendums, and this took place in 1997.
- The YES vote won a convincing victory – with 74% of the vote with a 60% turnout. This led to the formation of a Scottish Parliament with tax raising powers with considerable devolved powers.
- The referendum in Wales also resulted in a majority in favour of devolution being 51%. However, the narrow nature of the outcome meant that the Welsh Assembly had more limited powers and were not able to raise their own taxes.
26
Q
Impact of Devolution:
A
- Although Blair may have hoped that granting devolved powers might have stopped rise of nationalists in Scotland and Wales calling for complete independence, this was not the case.
- The SNP and Plaid Cymru grew in strength after devolution, leading to the granting of further devolved powers – especially in the case of Scotland.
27
Q
House of Lords Reform
A
- Blair aimed to modernise the House of Lords by eradicating the hereditary peers that were portrayed as undemocratic.
- However, opposition to this led to a messy compromise – with 92 hereditary peers remaining
- A system of appointing life peers was introduced, which did little to make the process more democratic.
28
Q
Electoral Reforms
A
- Before 1997, Blair was interested in modernising the electoral system, and commissioned a report by Roy Jenkins which considered changes.
- However, given Blair secured a huge majority of 179 seats under the First Past the Post system, any thoughts of reform did not seem especially attractive.
- Although Jenkins report recommended replacing First Past the Post with a more proportional electoral system, Blair did not proceed with this constitutional change.
29
Q
Citizen’s Rights
A
- A Freedom of Information Act was passed in 2000 – this gave people the right to request information from public bodies.
- Blair had not anticipated much demand for this, but by 2006 over 100,000 requests were being made each year.
- Blair later described his decision to pass this legislation as ‘foolish’ and ‘naive’ as it might have made politicians and other authorities reluctant to exercise their powers.
- The Human Rights Act of 1998 led to the European Convention of Human Rights being incorporated into British law.
30
Q
Blair’s Domestic Policy (1997 - 2007)
A
- What was particularly observable about Tony Blair’s government was that though it was very different in style and tone from the Thatcher-Major Conservativism that it replaced, but it made no substantive effort to undo what had been done in the previous 18 years.
- Margaret Thatcher’s legacy proved a powerful one. Thatcher had weakened the trade unions, reintroduced the principle of accountability into the public services, and made the nation acknowledge that in economic matters nothing was for nothing.
- Although she was attacked in her time and remains a controversial and divisive political figure, the effectiveness of what she had done convinced those that came after to follow the same path.
- The important point is that New Labour sought to build on, rather than simply continue, Thatcherism. Blair’s approach perhaps owed more than he ever admitted to John Major.
- It had been Major’s ambition to project ‘Thatcherism with a human face’.
31
Q
Blair’s First Government (1997 - 2001)
A
- Speaking in 1997, Blair predicted that he would head ‘one of the great, radical reforming governments in our History.’
- Whether this ambition had been achieved after ten years in power is debatable.
- Certainly, Blair’s first term was a disappointment, not least to himself.
- Fearful of repeating the mistakes of 1992, New Labour’s 1997 manifesto gave an impression of major policy changes, without offering a great detail.
- This also reflected the failure since 1994 to plan out a domestic policy agenda.
- In reality the new government’s major aim was to win a historic second term in office.
- This strategy compelled caution, the avoidance of mistakes and the necessity to establish a reputation for governing competence and responsibility.
- Furthermore, any genuinely bold initiatives would probably fall foul of the pre-election decision of New Labour to commit itself to existing Conservative expenditure plans during the government’s first two years in office.
- Labour had won the 1997 General Election with a manifesto which concentrated on improving public services.
- The 1997 New Labour pledge card identified how they would do this and by 2001 all of these pledges had been met.
- These pledges made in 1997 were not overly ambitious and in many ways the policies that the Labour followed the development of the previous Conservative government.
32
Q
1997 New Labour Pledges
A
- Cut class sizes to 30 or under for 5, 6 and 7year-olds.
- Fast-track punishment for persistent young offenders.
- Cut NHS waiting lists by treating an extra 100,000 patients.
- Get 250,000 under-25 years-olds off benefit and into work.
- No rise in income tax.
33
Q
Blair’s Second & Third Government (2001 – 2007)
A
- At the 2001 General Election the Labour Party promised more investment in health and education that, combined with reform, would improve the quality of these two important public services.
- There would be more teachers, doctors and nurses, but also more accountability to parents and patients, to ensure improving exam results and shorter waiting times for operations.
- A special delivery unit was set up in July 2001 to ensure that reforms were implemented and increasingly targets were used to try and enforce change.
- Blair, however, himself remained disappointed by the slow progress of these reforms and later argued that he should have been prepared to be more radical earlier.
- Tony Blair had famously promised that ‘Education, Education, Education’ would be Labour’s key commitment.
- In education, Blair’s government kept the school leagues tables and school inspections introduced by John Major’s administration.
- Targets were extended and more specialist schools encouraged.
- As Shadow Home Secretary, Blair had famously promised that a Labour government, once back in power, would be ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’.
- This was designed to counter the belief that only the Conservative Party was strong on law and order issues.
- There were measures to reduce social exclusion – one of the causes of crime – but this was paired with longer prison sentences.
- The second term certainly saw great increases in public expenditure on public services.
- Blair, however, still failed to give long-term thought to his domestic policy objectives.
- Too many around him were too focused on praise from the media, at the expense of strategic future planning.
- The perception spread that New Labour was all about political ‘spin’ and presentation rather than genuine substance.
- This was unfair, but helped to erode the government’s grounding in popular support.
- In addition, new factors arose to impede its progress.
- The 9/11 crisis and subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq distracted Blair’s priorities.
- Gordon Brown’s ambitions to succeed Blair to the premiership, as allegedly agreed in the contested Brown-Blair Pact, increasingly translated into an obstructive lack of cooperation between the two men and respective followers.
34
Q
Foot-and-Mouth Disease (1999)
A
- Blair’s government also had to face some crises particularly involving rural society.
- The Blair administration was put on the back foot by an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in 1999.
- It had little idea how to deal with it effectively and decided on the wholescale slaughter of livestock (approximately 6.5 million cows) and the closing off much of the countryside.
- This led to considerable hardship for farmers and the rural travel industry while many suggested there were far more effective ways of dealing with the crisis such as mass vaccination.
35
Q
Fuel Crisis (2000)
A
- Rising fuel prices led to a blockade of fuel depots by farmers and lorry drivers in 2000 who made an alliance against what they considered to be excessive taxes on petrol.
- As they blockaded petrol refineries, the country came to a standstill.
- Within a few days there were serious shortages of food, people could not get to work and hospitals were threatened with closure.
- It might have been that neither the protestors nor the government had realised the full impact their protests would have – but a settlement was reached whereby duties [tax] on petrol would no longer be automatically increased.
36
Q
The Countryside Alliance March (2002)
A
- Foot and Mouth disease hit farmers of cattle and sheep leading to a cull, which was an early slaughter to prevent the spread of the disease, of ten million animals.
- People in the countryside more generally felt that the Labour Party was too urban and did not understand their rural issues.
- This came to a head when he Labour Government tried to ban fox hunting with dogs.
- There was a long battle with the House of Lords over the issue and a pressure group, called The Countryside Alliance organised a march at which nearly half a million people attended in 2002 before the ban was finally passed in 2004.
37
Q
Conservative Opposition Weakness to New Labour (1997 - 2007)
A
- After the election defeat in 1997 John Major immediately resigned as Conservative leader.
- The scale of the election defeat in 1997 produced a crisis in the Conservative Party, even though this was not apparent to everyone immediately.
- The divisions of Major’s premiership remained, particularly on Europe, and the wound of Thatcher’s fall was still unhealed with bitter recriminations against those who had ‘betrayed Maggie’ continuing.
- But the crisis in the Conservative Party also became increasingly focused on the future direction of the Conservative Party.
- To some the Labour Party’s acceptance of many of Thatcher’s reforms, such as privatisation, meant that the Conservative Party could wait for the electorate to come to their senses and realise that the Conservatives were the ‘natural party of government; other recognised that the 1997 election, like the 1979 election, was a turning point, and that the Conservative Party, like
the Labour Party in the 1980s, would have to change to be electable again.
38
Q
William Hague’s Conservative Party Leadership (1997 – 2001)
A
- The Conservative Party after the 1997 election was only half the size of the party that had chosen John Major in 1990.
- The party was more Eurosceptic and Thatcherite than it had been previously; one estimate is that 145 of the remaining 165 Conservative MPs were Eurosceptic and the party had lost some of its big hitters on the Pro-European wing such as Chris Pattern.
- Major’s immediate resignation announcement meant that a new leader would be elected quickly.
- Michael Heseltine had suffered some ill health during the election campaign and decided not to stand in the leadership contest.
- It is unlikely he would have been successful in any case, being both pro-European and having not been forgiven for challenging Thatcher in 1990.
- Ken Clarke was well regarded by the electorate, both for his success as Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1992 and 1997, and because, with his professed love of Jazz, cigars, and whiskey, he was seen as being down to earth.
- But Ken Clarke was pro-European and was one of Thatcher’s cabinet members who had advised her to resign in 1990.
- The most obvious candidate from the Right, and the more Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party was Michael Portillo, but he had surprising lost his seat during the 1997 election.
- The candidates from the Right of the party were therefore Michael Howard, John Redwood Peter Lilley, and William Hague.
- The leadership campaign was dominated by the ‘anyone but Clarke’ attitude of many Conservative MPs.
- Instead, the new leader was Williams Hague, a 36-year-old with limited political experience.
- He believed that he could represent a fresh start, but won largely because he had fewer enemies than his rivals and because he was Mrs Thatcher’s preferred choice.
- Thatcher was quoted as saying: ‘Vote for William Hague to follow the same kind of government I did’.
- After 1997 the Labour Party enjoyed an extended honeymoon with the electorate, but it was not simply due to the popularity of Tony Blair and New Labour that the Conservatives remained far behind in the polls.
- Even when William Hague had largely unified the party on Europe by ruling out entry into the single currency ‘in the foreseeable future’, the Conservatives remained unpopular.
- Some in the party started to identify that the Conservative Party needed to change both its policies and its image. They argued that the Conservative Party was seen as uncaring, intolerant, old-fashioned and obsessed with Europe. But this proved to be extremely controversial.
- In 1999 Peter Lilley, previously an arch Thatcherite, delivered a speech which seemed to criticise some elements of Thatcherism.
- Peter Lilley warned that though the public had accepted Thatcher’s economic reforms as necessary to tackle the issues Britain faced in the 1980s, they were suspicious of further such reform.
- The public were cautious about further privatisation as Major had found out when the possibility of the Royal Mail being privatised was discussed.
- The electorate were even more resistant to more private involvement in public services such as education and health, preferring them to be run and delivered by the State.
- They had voted for the Labour Party in 1997 partly because they thought that Labour would better protect these public services; and they tended to believe that the Conservatives wanted a smaller State for ideological reasons, rather than because it would provide better public services.
- The speech caused uproar as it was interpreted as a repudiation of Thatcherism.
- Hague was forced to reiterate his support for Thatcher.
- The Conservative Party was starting to divide between those who believed that the Conservative Party needed to change and those who did not.
- The Conservative Party failed to make any progress in the polls.
- Hague felt his leadership was even more threatened after 1999 when Portillo was elected back into Parliament in a by-election.
- To some on the right Portillo was the man who should have become leader in 1997 and Hague felt obliged to appoint him as shadow chancellor.
- After the Conservatives went down to another crushing defeat in 2001 election, Hague resigned the Conservative leadership immediately.
39
Q
Iain Duncan Smith Conservative Party Leadership (2001 – 2003)
A
- After Hague’s resignation in 2001, the strongest candidates for the Conservative leadership were Kenneth Clarke and Michael Portillo.
- Clarke had remained popular with the broader electorate but was still viewed with suspicion by many Conservatives because of his European views, particularly after appearing with Tony Blair at a pro-European event in 1999.
- Michael Portillo, still a strong Eurosceptic, had reinvented himself as a social liberal and promised to make the party more modern and inclusive but this made him unpopular with many traditional Conservatives.
- Under the new rules for the leadership introduced by William Hague, the party members chose Iain Duncan Smith over Kenneth Clarke in the final round.
- Under the new Conservative leadership rules, MPs would vote in a succession of ballots until only two candidates remained.
- The vote would then go to the party membership.
- The aim of this was to prevent a situation such as when Thatcher lost office in 1990 against the wishes on many party activists.
- Critics of the system argued that the nature of party members – the average age was 64 – meant that they might not elect someone who had the support of MPs and/or would be attractive to the wider electorate.
- Iain Duncan Smith won in 2001 because of negative voting against Clarke and Portillo.
- It appeared as if the Conservative Rockers had defeated the Mods.
- Iain Duncan Smith, however, had little personal charisma and was no match for Tony Blair.
- The Conservatives remained behind in the opinion polls and within a few months of his emergence as leader, some Conservative MPs were plotting to get rid of him.
- Iain Duncan Smith made some efforts to introduce Compassionate Conservatism; visiting the deprived Easterhouse estate in Glasgow convinced him that the Conservative Party had to do more to tackle poverty.
- Compassionate Conservatism is a political philosophy characterised by an awareness of the social implications of economic policy.
- It was promoted by Republicans in the USA in the 2000s and tends to support strong families and reformed welfare systems as ways of mitigating poverty.
- It had influenced Conservatives in the UK both from the socially conservative wing, such as Iain Duncan Smith, and from the socially liberal wing, such as George Osborne.
- But Iain Duncan Smith was also aggressively Eurosceptic and reponed the Conservatives divisions over Europe.
- Under his leadership the Conservative Party remained socially conservative – voting against both the repeal of Section 28 and against allowing unmarried couples to adopt.
- These issues demonstrated the divisions within the party as modernisers such as David Cameron and George Osborne refused to follow the party line.
- And as Iain Duncan Smith had been such a key architect of the rebellions that John Major had faced over the Maastricht Treaty, he now found it difficult to demand loyalty from his backbenchers as leader.
- Iain Duncan Smith also supported British entry into the 2003 Iraq War.
- This was heavily criticised by some, including Kenneth Clarke, as it made it difficult for the Conservatives to criticise the Labour government for this unpopular decision, especially when the war dragged on; instead, the Liberal Democrats emerged as the anti-war party to challenge Labour.
- Finally, amid press speculation about the salary he paid his wife to act as his secretary, Iain Duncan Smith faced a vote of no confidence in his leadership.
- Despite the fact that subsequently no wrongdoing was found, the damage was done; Iain Duncan Smith was ousted from power and Michael Howard was installed as the new Conservative leader unopposed.
40
Q
Michael Howard’s Conservative Party Leadership (2003 – 2005)
A
- When Michael Howard took over the Conservative Party leadership he did so as a unifying figure, having support from both the Conservative Mods and Rockers.
- This had less to do with Michael Howard himself and was more the result of the party’s realisation about the state it was in; one MP said ‘many of us who hate everything Michael Howard stands for politically will back him because we are so tired of being embarrassed.’
- However, like William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Howard struggled to compete with Tony Blair in the opinion polls.
- Much of the work Iain Duncan Smith had done on social justice was abandoned and the Conservatives remained distrusted on key policy areas such as health and education.
- Michael Howard, however, did bring stability to the party.
- And despite the fact that he was on the right of the party and was socially conservative, Michael Howard promote Conservative modernisers to his shadow cabinet.
- After the election defeat in 2005 David Cameron became shadow education secretary and George Osborne as shadow chancellor.
- Michael Howard made clear that his preference for his successor was to be a moderniser.
41
Q
David Cameron’s Conservative Party Leadership (2005 – 2007)
A
- In the Conservative leadership contest, held in the autumn of 2005, David Cameron defeated David Davis, the right-wing candidate, partly due to an impressive note-free speech at the Conservative Party conference.
- As leader David Cameron set about detoxifying, or modernising, the Conservative Party.
- David Cameron and his fellow modernisers understand that it was essential to reach out beyond the narrow ‘core’ support the Conservatives to make the party more tolerant and inclusive, no longer hostile to all kinds of social groups including ethnic minorities, gay people, single mothers and young people.
- To do this, David Cameron highlighted policy areas and positions which were traditionally not Conservative ones.
- He promised that a Conservative government would take seriously the issue of climate change; he visited the Arctic himself and cycled to Westminster.
- He was in favour of gay rights and wanted to increase overseas aid.
- He praised the way the NHS had cared for his disabled son and promised that a future Conservative government would protect it.
- Though still Eurosceptic, the Conservative Party started to talk less about the European Union.
- Instead, David Cameron’s shadow chancellor, George Osborne, promised to maintain Labour levels of spending on public services, effectively ruling out tax cuts.
- The Conservative Party would be more centrists, tolerant and outward looking.
- The Labour Party found it more difficult to attack David Cameron than his predecessors.
- This was partly because the Labour Party’s popularity was in decline by this time.
- But it was also because the Conservative Party had started to look electable again.
- For the first time since the 1997 general election, the Conservatives seemed to offer a credible alternative to New Labour.
