Why the Tories Lost in the 1997 General Election

Why the Tories Lost in the 1997 General Election

The 1997 election was not like any other election in post war

history. Usually a government will start its term strongly and finish

it strongly while having a rough period in its middle years. However

for the Conservatives it got worse from the day sterling dropped out

of the ERM all the way back in 1992.

The result of the ’97 election was immediately hailed by most

political analysts as a labour landslide victory. Seeing as they now

had 418 (a gain of 147 on 1992) seats in the House of Commons this is

hardly surprising but what was failed to be noticed was that they only

received 44.4% of the vote within Great Britain and yet gained 643% of

the seats in the Lower House. The Conservatives have felt annoyed as

they received only 13.1% less votes than Labour at 31.3% but they only

got 165 seats in the Commons (making a loss of 171 seats from ’92).

The main feature of this election was the fact that constant hostility

to the Conservatives played a major part in getting them thrown out of

office. In marginal constituencies the Conservatives had managed to

gain a fair majority of them in 1992 but in the 1997 an election

person had enough of them and in many of these seats there was on

average a 12% swing against the Tories. Conservative MP’s who managed

to survive the tactical voting in these were still heavily voted

against. Teresa Gorman suffered a huge 17.6% swing against her in

Billericay (the 8th largest anti-Tory swing in the country); even Sir

Edward Heath suffered a 14% swing against him. The biggest swings

were seen in the Southeast of England, which were long time

Conservative strongholds. In London 10 out of 41 Conservative seats

were seen to suffer a 17% swing against the Tories. Michael Portillo,

who had been seen by many Tories as a future leader of the party lost

his seat with a swing of 17.