The 2001 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 7 June 2001, four years after the previous election on 1 May 1997, to elect 659 members to the House of Commons. The governing Labour Party led by Prime Minister Tony Blair was re-elected to serve a second term in government with another landslide victory with a 165-seat majority, returning 412 members of Parliament versus 418 from the previous election, a net loss of six seats, although with a significantly lower turnout than before—59.4%, compared to 71.6% at the previous election.
The Conservative and Unionist Party, commonly the Conservative Party and colloquially known as the Tories, is one of the two main political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Labour Party. The party sits on the centre-right to right-wing of the political spectrum. Following defeat by Labour in the 2024 general election, it is currently the second largest political party by the number of votes cast and number of seats in the House of Commons, followed by the Liberal Democrats. As the second largest party, it has the formal parliamentary role of the Official Opposition. It encompasses various ideological factions including one-nation conservatives, Thatcherites, and traditionalist conservatives. There have been twenty Conservative prime ministers. The party traditionally holds the annual Conservative Party Conference during party conference season, at which senior Conservative figures promote party policy.
The 1997 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 1 May 1997. The governing Conservative Party led by Prime Minister John Major was defeated in a landslide by the opposition Labour Party led by Tony Blair, achieving a 179-seat majority and a total of 419 seats.
The 1979 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 3 May 1979 to elect 635 members to the House of Commons. The election was held following the defeat of the Labour government in a no-confidence motion on 28 March 1979, six months before the Parliament was due for dissolution in October 1979.
The 1987 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 11 June 1987, to elect 650 members to the House of Commons. The election was the third consecutive general election victory for the Conservative Party, who won a majority of 102 seats and second landslide under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, who became the first Prime Minister since the Earl of Liverpool in 1820 to lead a party into three successive electoral victories.
New Labour is the political philosophy that dominated the history of the British Labour Party from the mid-late 1990s to 2010 under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The term originated in a conference slogan first used by the party in 1994, later seen in a draft manifesto which was published in 1996 and titled New Labour, New Life for Britain. It was presented as the brand of a newly reformed party that had altered the old Clause IV and instead endorsed market economics. The branding was extensively used while the party was in government between 1997 and 2010. New Labour was influenced by the political thinking of Anthony Crosland and the leadership of Blair and Brown as well as Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell's media campaigning. The political philosophy of New Labour was influenced by the party's development of Anthony Giddens' Third Way which attempted to provide a synthesis between capitalism and socialism. The party emphasised the importance of social justice, rather than equality, emphasising the need for equal opportunity and believed in the use of markets to deliver economic efficiency and social justice.
The 1966 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 31 March 1966. The result was a landslide victory for the Labour Party led by Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
The 1959 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 8 October 1959. It marked a third consecutive victory for the ruling Conservative Party, now led by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. For the second time in a row, the Conservatives increased their overall majority in Parliament, this time to a landslide majority of 100 seats, having gained 20 seats for a return of 365. The Labour Party, led by Hugh Gaitskell, lost 19 seats and returned 258. The Liberal Party, led by Jo Grimond, again returned only six MPs to the House of Commons, but managed to increase its overall share of the vote to 5.9%, compared to just 2.7% four years earlier.
The 1935 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 14 November 1935. It resulted in a second landslide victory for the three-party National Government, which was led by Stanley Baldwin of the Conservative Party after the resignation of Ramsay MacDonald due to ill health earlier in the year. It is the most recent British general election to have seen any party or alliance of parties win a majority of the popular vote.
The 1906 United Kingdom general election was held from 12 January to 8 February 1906. The Liberals, led by Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman, won a landslide majority at the election. The Conservatives led by Arthur Balfour, who had been in government until the month before the election, lost more than half their seats, including party leader Balfour's own seat in Manchester East, leaving the party with its fewest recorded seats ever in history until 2024. The election saw a 5.4% swing from the Conservative Party to the Liberal Party, the largest-ever seen at the time. This has resulted in the 1906 general election being dubbed the "Liberal landslide", and is now ranked alongside the 1924, 1931, 1945, 1983, 1997, 2001, and 2024 general elections as one of the largest landslide election victories.
In British politics, a Lib–Lab pact is a working arrangement between the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party.
The 2005 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 5 May 2005, to elect 646 members to the House of Commons. The governing Labour Party led by Prime Minister Tony Blair won its third consecutive victory, with Blair becoming the second Labour leader after Harold Wilson to form three majority governments. However, its majority fell to 66 seats; the majority it won four years earlier had been of 167 seats. The UK media interpreted the results as an indicator of a breakdown in trust in the government, and especially in Blair.
The modern political history of the United Kingdom (1979–present) began when Margaret Thatcher gained power in 1979, giving rise to 18 years of Conservative government. Victory in the Falklands War (1982) and the government's strong opposition to trade unions helped lead the Conservative Party to another three terms in government. Thatcher initially pursued monetarist policies and went on to privatise many of Britain's nationalised companies such as British Telecom, British Gas Corporation, British Airways and British Steel Corporation. She kept the National Health Service. The controversial "poll tax" to fund local government was unpopular, and the Conservatives removed Thatcher as prime minister in 1990, although Michael Heseltine, the minister who did much to undermine her, did not personally benefit from her being ousted.
"The longest suicide note in history" is an epithet originally used by United Kingdom Labour MP Gerald Kaufman to describe his party's 1983 general election manifesto, which emphasised socialist policies in a more profound manner than previous such documents—and which Kaufman felt would ensure that the Labour Party would fail to win the election.
The British Labour Party grew out of the trade union movement of the late 19th century and surpassed the Liberal Party as the main opposition to the Conservatives in the early 1920s. In the 1930s and 1940s, it stressed national planning, using nationalisation of industry as a tool, in line with Clause IV of the original constitution of the Labour Party which called for the "common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service".
The leader of the Labour Party is the highest position within the United Kingdom's Labour Party. The current holder of the position is Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer, who was elected to the position on 4 April 2020, following his victory in the party's leadership election.
The Labour Party is a political party in the United Kingdom that sits on the centre-left of the political spectrum. The party has been described as an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists. It is one of two dominant political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Conservative Party. The party has been led by Keir Starmer since 2020, who became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in July 2024. Since the 2024 general election, the Labour Party has been the governing party of the United Kingdom and the largest political party in the House of Commons, followed by the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats. As of 2024, there have been seven Labour prime ministers and fourteen Labour ministries. The party traditionally holds the annual Labour Party Conference during party conference season, at which debates and voting take place, and senior Labour figures promote party policy.
The events surrounding the formation of the United Kingdom's government in 2010 took place between 7 May and 12 May 2010, following the 2010 general election, which failed to produce an overall majority for either of the country's two main political parties. The election, held on 6 May, resulted in the first hung parliament in the UK in 36 years, sparking a series of negotiations which would form the first coalition government since the Second World War.
The 2015 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 7 May 2015 to elect 650 members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons. The Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister David Cameron, won an unexpected majority victory of ten seats; they had been leading a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. It was the last general election to be held before the UK voted to leave the European Union (EU) in June 2016.
The 2024 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 4 July 2024, to elect 650 members of Parliament to the House of Commons, the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The opposition Labour Party, led by Keir Starmer, defeated the governing Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, in a landslide victory.
