Will July 4th 2024 prove to be a landmark General Election?

It’s that time again. Sometime on the night of July 4^th, we will learn the outcome of this year’s General Election. But will this turn out to be one of the great landmark elections of history? In truth, whatever the result, we’re unlikely to be able to judge the full extent of its historical import until some time afterwards.

There have been 32 General Elections held since 1900. Of that number, between three and five have come to be regarded as truly landmark contests.

Although there is now no one left alive to remember it, the General Election of 1906 was undoubtedly a bit of a doozy. The Liberals led by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (widely known as  “C.B”) won a massive victory achieving a majority of 132. The Tories were shattered, perhaps even more so than in 1997. The outgoing Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour lost his seat as a result of the relentless Liberal onslaught. C.B himself didn’t last long and in fact died shortly after resigning the premiership due to ill health just two years later. But the Liberal government proved a radical one introducing old age pensions, laying the foundations of the welfare state and ultimately leading Britain into the First World War. The new Labour Party also made a strong showing for the first time in 1906. This would prove a portent of things to come. The Liberals would never win a General Election on their own again.

Very old readers (aged eighty-five or above) may still remember the ‘Khaki election’ of 1945. Indeed, if you are over a hundred, you may have even voted in it. it was the last General Election to be held in July before 2024 (although the results didn’t come through until August) with voting occurring after the World War II victory over Germany, but before the surrender of Japan. Many voters were serving in the armed forces and stationed overseas. The astonishing thing was that for all his wartime popularity, Winston Churchill was decisively rejected by the UK electorate in favour of a Labour Party who won a majority in parliament for the first time under the uncharismatic Clement Attlee. Labour, in fact, won a huge majority of 146. A new order was established: either the Tories or Labour have won every election since. Labour did much the Tories would not have done, nationalising vast swathes of UK industry and creating the welfare state and the NHS. No government of either party seriously challenged the post-war consensus until 1979.

Was the 1964 contest really a landmark election? Some would argue “no” as the fundamentals didn’t really change. But it probably seemed like a big shift at the time with the wily and witty pipe-smoking Yorkshireman, Harold Wilson scoring a narrow win for Labour after “13 years of misrule” as he would have phrased it by Tory toffs. It was the first election to be fought out largely on TV.

Margaret Thatcher’s first victory in May 1979 was undeniably a landmark election heralding not just the arrival of Britain’s first woman Prime Minister but also a new kind of Britain; one ultimately characterised by privatisation, enterprise culture, high unemployment, greatly diminished trade union power and the Poll Tax.

Tony Blair’s triumphant victory for New Labour in 1997 was probably the most recent General Election to result in an outcome which signified seismic change. The New Labour majority was a whopping 179: greater than that achieved by any party since 1945. Although some argued New Labour offered little more than warmed-up Thatcherism, it is difficult to imagine Thatcher ever offering up such changes as the minimum wage, devolution or the Good Friday Agreement.

As for 2024, all indicators currently seem to suggest a change of government, possibly as a result of a very large Labour win in July. However, such a result can only really be judged to have been truly pivotal if we see embarking on a clear and decisive new direction in the years ahead. In short, we will just have to wait and see.

Book review: British General Election campaigns, 1830-2019

The story of the General Election of 2024 or 2025 is still largely unwritten. Even the date of it is still unknown although we do know it can be no later than January 2025. Are the opinion polls right in predicting a victory for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party or will Rishi Sunak pull off an unexpected Conservative victory? Will the result be a landslide as it was for New Labour in 1997 and 2001 or a Hung Parliament as occurred in 2010 and 2017? Will the SNP vote collapse? Will Reform UK split the Tory vote? Will the Liberal Democrats make a comeback? Only time will tell.

This book takes us through the last fifty British General Elections starting just before the Great Reform Act of 1832 to Boris Johnson shattering the Labour “Red Wall” in December 2019. Each election is covered in an essay by a different author. Michael Crick covers Edward Heath’s unexpected 1970 victory, Peter Snow discusses Margaret Thatcher’s post-Falklands 1983 landslide and so on.

As we generally have never had fixed term parliaments, sometimes elections have become frequent, especially when things are unstable. In 1910 and 1974, there were two General Elections within the space of a year. There were five during the politically turbulent 1830s and four apiece during the uncertainties of the 1920s, 1970s and 2010s. On the other hand, Prime Ministers also went to the country four times during the 1950s, a period usually remembered as being relatively placid. And there were no elections at all between 1935 and 1945 as a result of the Second World War. The 1945 contest saw many thirty-year-olds, having survived six years of war, getting the opportunity to vote in a national elections for the very first time.

Turnout has varied, peaking at 86.8% in January 1910 (at the height of the furore over David Lloyd George’s “People’s Budget”) but reaching a low of 53.4% in 1847. No election has enjoyed a turnout of more than 80% since the Churchill comeback election of 1951. No election has received a 70% turnout since the year of Tony Blair’s first great landslide in 1997. None of the General Elections held in the 20th century ever saw turnout ever drop below 70%. Thus far all six of the elections held in the 21st century have done so. Only 59.4% turned out to ensure Tony Blair beat William Hague in 2001. 68.8% voted in the election which saw Theresa May beat Jeremy Corbyn in 2017.

No party has ever won a majority of votes cast in any of these General Elections except for the Conservatives in 1886 (51.4%),1900 (50.2%) 1931 (55%) and the Liberals (previously known as the Whigs) in eleven elections between 1832 and 1880, a period during which they dominated a political environment in which there was only one other political party. Seats wise, the Tories peaked, winning 412 seats in the 1924 vote which defeated the first ever Labour government but won the least seats (157) in the year of the 1906 Liberal landslide. The Liberals, in contrast, won the most MPs they ever won in the first ever election in which statistics are available: 441 in 1832. They won just six MPs three times during the lows of the 1950s and achieved that number again in 1970. The newly formed Labour Party, meanwhile, won just two seats in the first election of the 20th century (1900) before hitting their highest ever figure of 419 in the very last one (1997).

In the first 22 of these 50 General Elections, no women were allowed to vote at all.

Statistics aside, some elections have had very surprising outcomes: few predicted Attlee’s Labour landslide in 1945, Ted Heath’s win in 1970, Harold Wilson’s return in early 1974 or John Major’s victory in 1992. Few observers expected Cameron to win a majority in 2015 or that Theresa May would lose it again in 2017.

In the TV age, some politicians have thrived under the glare of the cameras, see Harold Macmillan, Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair. Some conspicuously haven’t: see Edward Heath, Michael Foot, Gordon Brown or Ed Miliband. The 2010 election remains the only contest to be significantly enlivened by a round of televised leadership debates. At the time, these greatly boosted the profile of Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg. Yet ultimately the brief wave of “Cleggmania” seemed to yield his party no electoral advantage whatsoever.

Some campaigns have seen our leaders laid low: Churchill’s “Gestapo” speech. Thatcher’s wobbly Thursday. The Prescott punch. Gordon Brown’s “bigoted woman.” Some have threatened to be blown off course by random unexpected factors: the Zinoviev Letter. Enoch Powell’s last minute defection. The War of Jennifer’s Ear. The Foot and Mouth outbreak. The Icelandic volcanic ash cloud.

Some elections end up being defined by memorable slogans: Safety First. Let Us Face The Future Together. Labour Isn’t Working. Get Brexit Done.

What will define the coming contest? We will soon find out. In the meantime, this volume offers plenty of fresh insights into the battles of the past.

Book review: British General Election campaigns, 1830-2019: The 50 General Election campaigns that shaped our modern politics. Edited by Iain Dale. Published by Biteback. March 26th 2024.