The election was the first held under the new leadership election rules that had been introduced in 1993, which included an element of one member, one vote. The poll for leader was held simultaneously with a deputy leadership vote.
It has been widely speculated that Shadow ChancellorGordon Brown did not stand due to a pact agreed with Blair at the Granita restaurant in Islington, North London. Shortly after John Smith's death, Roy Hattersley telephoned Blair and urged him to stand for the Party leadership. Blair informed Hattersley that he was worried about "hurting Gordon" to which Hattersley replied that he should tell Gordon Brown that there had been "a lot of people in the past who had wanted to be leader of the Labour Party and have come to terms with the fact that they weren't going to be" and that Brown would have to be part of a line that "goes back a very long way".[1]
However, in a MORI poll conducted shortly after Smith's death among all Labour supporters, Blair took 32 per cent, Prescott 21 per cent, Beckett and Brown 12 per cent each, and Cook 7 per cent, suggesting that Brown had little chance of winning anyway.[2]
The "electoral college" system that had been introduced meant that the votes of members of affiliated groups (mostly trades unions), the members of constituency parties, and Labour MPs were all weighted equally.
Tony Blair won, and led the party to its first general election victory for twenty-three years at the 1997 general election. Prescott won the deputy leadership poll, and went on to become Deputy Prime Minister during Blair's premiership. Beckett would also serve both in the Shadow Cabinet and then the Cabinet throughout Blair's term as leader, eventually becoming the last of the three Foreign Secretaries of the Blair ministries.
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