For over a decade, New Labour were in control of the UK -the later 90s and into the new millennium saw Labour rise from relative political obscurity to win the election with a landslide victory. After so many years under Tory party rule, Britain was about to be changed. To discover how this came about, you have to go back to the 1980s…
The 1983 labour party suffered a huge defeat to Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government. In Britain at the time, the 70s were a recent memory and the strikes and economic issues of the time were certainly not something that had been forgotten. It was in this year that the future two Labour Prime ministers joined the party as MPs – Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
Neil Kinnock then became leader, and among other changes, he adapted the new logo of the red rose and hired Peter Mandelson to take charge of the election campaign. Despite the defeat of Labour once again in the 1987 election, Peter Mandelson had spotted potential in Blair and Brown.
Through the early nineties, the Labour party sought to change its old image, particularly that of being the party that would raise taxes in order to appeal to the voters. Once Blair won the leadership campaign, he then also had the assistance of Alastair Campbell https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/contributor/alastair-campbell/ who at the time was a journalist working for the Daily Mirror.
With all of these changes in place and with the public increasingly dissatisfied with the Tory government, Labour won the 1997 election with a huge majority.