“You’re the chairman of a fertiliser firm,” the famously pugnacious broadcaster asked Parkinson. “How deep is the mess you’re in?” Twenty-seven years later, as the Conservative party comes to terms with another landslide defeat, it’s worth applying the same question to the present day. How does this result compare with previous devastating losses – not only those suffered by the Tories themselves, but also those experienced by the other major parties? And what can history teach us about the tools that politicians use to dig themselves out of the dung heap and set themselves back on the road to power?
First, let us look at how 2024 compares with historical low points experienced by the Conservatives. The Tories won 121 seats on the basis of a 24 per cent vote share. That’s better than the more drastic predictions made during the campaign: some thought that the Liberal Democrats might even replace the Conservatives as the official opposition. But even measured against previous Tory disasters, the picture is stark.
In 1906, Arthur Balfour’s Conservatives were smashed by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s resurgent Liberals, and were reduced to 156 seats. But this was on the basis of a 43.4 per cent share of the vote – a figure out of reach for Rishi Sunak’s party.
In 1945, Winston Churchill suffered a shock humiliation at the hands of Clement Attlee’s Labour party, securing only 36.2 per cent of votes cast. This translated into 189 seats – a huge drop from the previous election 10 years earlier, yet still enough to put up a credible parliamentary fight against the massed ranks of socialist MPs. In 1997, John Major’s party won only 30.7 per cent and 165 seats, with barely any improvement on either measure in the result under William Hague four years later. This shows that there is no automatic guarantee that the Tories will benefit significantly from ‘the swing of the pendulum’ come 2029.
この記事は BBC History UK の September 2024 版に掲載されています。
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この記事は BBC History UK の September 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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