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Tatton constituency | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Turnout | 76.1% ( 4.7%) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Tatton in the 1997 general election was one of the UK's highest-profile constituencies. It was the fourth safest Conservative seat in the country, where an independent candidate, Martin Bell managed to take the seat from the sitting Conservative MP, Neil Hamilton.
The Conservative majority at the 1992 general election had been almost 16,000 votes. In 1997, Tatton was the fourth safest Conservative seat in Britain.
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | Neil Hamilton | 31,658 | 55.1 | +0.5 | |
| Labour | Jonathan Kelly | 15,798 | 27.5 | +5.9 | |
| Liberal Democrats | Catherine Hancox | 9,597 | 16.7 | ―6.9 | |
| Feudal Party | Michael Gibson | 410 | 0.7 | +0.2 | |
| Majority | 15,860 | 27.6 | ―3.4 | ||
| Turnout | 57,463 | 80.8 | +4.0 | ||
| Conservative hold | Swing | ―2.7 | |||
The sitting MP, Neil Hamilton was implicated in the Cash for Questions for accepting money from Mohamed Al-Fayed. Hamilton was under investigation by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner as part of the cash for questions enquiry and some party members thought he should stand down after the collapse of his case against The Guardian. [3] Disquiet in the local association became public, but the majority gave him the benefit of the doubt.[ citation needed ] [4] Hamilton resisted the pressure from senior Conservatives and Conservative Central Office to stand down. Jeremy Paxman states that Conservative Central Office "begged him not to stand, but in a gesture of overweening arrogance, he refused to go quietly." [5]
On 8 April 1997, Hamilton was chosen as the Conservative candidate for Tatton (182 for, 35 against, 100 abstained). The Observer commissioned ICM polls in the constituencies of the three Conservative candidates tainted by scandal and seeking re-election: Hamilton, Allan Stewart and Piers Merchant. Both Stewart and Merchant were found to have support consistent with their party's standing, but in Tatton "there was massive hostility to Hamilton". [6]
On 7 April 1997, twenty-four days before that year's British general election, Martin Bell, the BBC war correspondent, announced that he was leaving the BBC to stand as an independent candidate in the Tatton constituency in Cheshire. Labour and the Liberal Democrats withdrew their candidates in Bell's favour in a plan masterminded by Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's press secretary. [7] [8] The two parties supported his "anti-corruption" campaign.
On 1 May 1997, Bell defeated Hamilton being elected as an MP with a majority of 11,077 votes [9] – overturning a notional Conservative majority of over 22,000 in the 4th safest Conservative seat in the UK – and thus became the first successful independent parliamentary candidate since 1951. [10] There was a swing of 48%. Hamilton came second.
Although Hamilton vowed to return to parliament, this defeat marked the end of his political career in the Conservative Party. In March 1999, George Osborne was selected by the Tatton Conservative Association to be their candidate for the following general election.
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Independent | Martin Bell | 29,354 | 60.2 | New | |
| Conservative | Neil Hamilton | 18,277 | 37.5 | ―17.6 | |
| Ind. Conservative | Sam Hill | 295 | 0.6 | New | |
| Ind. Conservative | Simon Kinsey | 184 | 0.4 | New | |
| Miss Moneypenny's Glamorous One Party | Burnel Penhaul | 128 | 0.3 | New | |
| Albion Party | John Muir | 126 | 0.3 | New | |
| Natural Law | Michael Kennedy | 123 | 0.3 | New | |
| Lord Biro versus the Scallywag Tories | David Bishop | 116 | 0.2 | New | |
| Ind. Conservative | Ralph Nicholas | 113 | 0.2 | New | |
| Juice Party | Julian Price | 73 | 0.1 | New | |
| Majority | 11,077 | 22.7 | N/A | ||
| Turnout | 48,792 | 76.1 | ―4.7 | ||
| Independent gain from Conservative | Swing | 38.7 | |||
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 418 seats.
Mostyn Neil Hamilton is a British politician and former barrister who was leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2020 to 2024. He was the Conservative member of parliament (MP) for Tatton from 1983 to 1997 and a UKIP Member of the Senedd (MS) for Mid and West Wales from 2016 to 2021.
Martin Bell, is a British UNICEF Ambassador, a former broadcast war reporter and former independent politician who became the Member of Parliament (MP) for Tatton from 1997 to 2001. He is sometimes known as "the man in the white suit".
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