Tuesday 10 April 2012

It Was Twenty Years Ago...Yesterday

I didn't get time to blog, but yesterday marked 20 years since the 1992 election when the Tories won their last ever majority. The election itself was notable for many reasons; the War of Jennifer's Ear, the infamous Sun front page and Major campaigning on his soap box. And as the picture above illustrates (shamelessly nicked from political betting) the exit polls got the predictions spectacularly wrong.

1992 also marked the terminal decline of the Tory party as divisions, particularly over Europe, wreaked havoc from which they have never recovered. Diehard party members and supporters departed en masse, donations and subscriptions collapsed between 1992 and 1997. Labour's win in 1997 was less to do with Tories switching sides but that they stayed at home instead.

On a personal note, I remember 1992 well. It was the first election I ever stayed up all night to watch - I missed out being able to vote in it by just 2 months. It also marked the beginning of my journey of eurosceptisim, as the next 18 months left their mark on our country in the form of Maastricht and the ERM crisis.

20 years on and still they can't win an election. Couldn't happen to nicer chaps. Bastards.

7 comments:

  1. I can't imagine they'll ever win another election unless they have a root and branch clearout of all the Ken Clarke wanabees.

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  2. I haven't voted Conservative since Sir James Goldsmith launched his Referendum Party in a bid to save Sterling and our independence from the emerging EUSSR.

    Since then, UKIP, and I will stomp the streets for them until the CON understand that they will never win another election until they pledge to detatch us from the EU.

    I will not vote for a CON Party that is basically a tribute to Blair and completely wedded to the idea of the British people being under the control of a supra-national organisation that they have never voted to join and have never been permitted a say in.

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  3. It was a great pity that Major won in 1992. People were still afraid enough of Labour not to risk it.

    If he had lost, as deserved, in 1992, we would have got Kinnock and mammoth incompetence.

    Those who became the Maastricht rebels might JUST have become the leading Tory faction in opposition, as Kinnock got further and further out of his depth with the EU, tax and spend and everything else.

    That's the wishful thinking of my counterfactual.

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  4. @Twig Indeed you're right, but I believe they actually like the Ken Clarke wannabes

    @DeeDee99 Bizarrely Blair won elections because he pretended to be a Tory and hid the socialist substance part. Cameron can't even do the pretending part.

    Like you I'll never vote for any party that still promotes our membership of the EU.

    @Edward Spalton I don't think it matters who would have won, most of the Maastricht rebels (like Bill Cash) still believed in EU membership.

    The bonus with 1992 was that it destroyed the Tories and rightly so - they couldn't hide behind the facade of fake eurosceptic opposition.

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  5. I did admit it was wishful thinking but, if Labour had been responsible for crashing out of the ERM, silly interest rates destroying businesses and putting mortgagees out of their homes, some of the Conservatives might just have drawn the obvious conclusions and got a bit braver.

    Incidentally, the Dean of Westminster wants to put a memorial to Edward Heath in the Abbey. This has annoyed a great many people. For details see the CIB website www.freebritain.org.uk

    I am told that Dean's Yard is snowed under with letters.

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  6. I did admit it was wishful thinking but, if Labour had been responsible for crashing out of the ERM, silly interest rates destroying businesses and putting mortgagees out of their homes, some of the Conservatives might just have drawn the obvious conclusions and got a bit braver.

    Incidentally, the Dean of Westminster wants to put a memorial to Edward Heath in the Abbey. This has annoyed a great many people. For details see the CIB website www.freebritain.org.uk

    I am told that Dean's Yard is snowed under with letters.

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  7. @Edward Spalton, ah thanks for the link, I didn't know that about the Dean of Westminister. I'll have a look

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