![]() ![]() In victory, New Labour had lost nearly three million votes. But Blair’s triumph was hollow: voter turnout had collapsed, falling from 71 to 59 per cent. In 2001 Labour won 15 more seats than Margaret Thatcher had at her peak in 1983. We all bear some responsibility.” The party’s broad coalition has shattered – a fracturing that began 20 years ago, on the night Labour celebrated its historic re-election. ![]() For the former foreign secretary David Miliband, Labour’s 20-year decline is “a failure of politics – it wasn’t inevitable or preordained. (“I do not accept any premise from Nigel Farage,” Starmer says when I put this to him.) But in many of his party’s old heartland seats, it is Farage and Boris Johnson who now have appeal, not Labour. Many Labour voters are repelled by Farage. Nigel Farage puts it bluntly to me: “What you’ve witnessed in slow motion over nearly 20 years is a large section of Labour voters who are absolutely disgusted with the party and are in no rush to go back.” To understand the causes of Labour’s slide other observers are required, including those outside the party. There was, Starmer thinks, a “lack of confidence from 2010 onwards, to defend the last Labour government, and to make the argument that the financial crash wasn’t the fault of the Labour government”.īut there are other failings that are harder for Starmer to highlight, from the party’s ineffectual handling of concerns over immigration to its ill-guided Brexit strategy (in which Starmer, as shadow Brexit secretary, played his part). When I asked Starmer to reflect on the sources of Labour’s decline, he highlighted two moments from its years in power: the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, which Starmer opposed as a QC at the time, and Labour’s failure to defend its economic record after the 2008 financial crash. Science and Technical Research and Development.Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities.Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives.Information and Communications Technology.HR, Training and Organisational Development.Health - Medical and Nursing Management.Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance.In 2019 Boris Johnson won a greater vote share (43.6 per cent) than Blair ever did. The Conservatives, by contrast, have increased their vote share in every election since 1997. The party’s razor-thin Batley and Spen by-election victory in July may have quietened critics, but it cannot mask the fact that Labour today has only 199 MPs, a loss of 213 over 20 years. Two decades on, it is Labour that has lost more than half its seats. The result appeared to confirm, as John Gray put it in 1997, that “Tory Britain is gone for good”. It had won in England, Wales and Scotland. In the wake of its 2001 win, Labour was “broadly hegemonic”, says Douglas Alexander, who coordinated that election for the party. It was re-election, rather than the 1997 landslide, that marked the high point of New Labour. ![]() Throughout its existence, Labour had never been in power for more than six consecutive years. The Conservatives, meanwhile, who lost more than half their seats overnight in 1997, added only one, leaving them on 166. Labour lost just six seats in 2001, returning 412 MPs. Twenty years ago, the Labour Party under Tony Blair cruised to re-election. ![]()
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