Chris Mullin was Labour candidate in the safe Labour seat of Sunderland South while Gyles Brandreth contested the marginal constituency of City of Chester for the Conservatives. Their diaries give an insight into how the 1997 campaign was viewed on…
Despite facing serious legal charges, Neil Hamilton stood as candidate for Tatton. To highlight its hostility to ‘Tory sleaze’ Labour backed the independent Martin Bell who won what was one of the safest Conservative seats in the country.
The Minister of Defence Michael Portillo was just one of many leading Conservative figures to lose their seat to Labour. But Portillo, tipped to be the next leader of his party and a keen disciple of Margaret Thatcher, was a prized victory for the…
Locally Conservative candidates tried various ways of stemming the Labour tide: invoking the threat of EU federalism, Labour’s threat to the economy and its record in local government. None of them worked.
In the run up to the 1997 general election, the Conservative produced an infamous ‘Demon Eyes’ poster which showed Tony Blair as the Devil.
It illustrated their claim that Labour had not changed and that Blair would say anything to win power.…
Labour ran as a pro-EU party. But not everybody was keen on Europe. UKIP contested a general election for the first time in 1997 while the Referendum Party won 811,827 votes for its demand that all Britons be allowed to decide whether the country…
Not everybody in the party agreed with New Labour’s direction. In Islington North Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign material made no reference to Blair or New Labour or even its five Pledges!