With a Labour victory looking increasingly probable, John Major’s pitch to voters in 1997 was simple. Britain had come a long way, the then prime minister said in his foreword to his party’s manifesto. “We must be sure that we do not throw away what we have gained, or lose the opportunities we have earned.”
Sound familiar? It should, because it is exactly the same argument Rishi Sunak is deploying as he seeks to defy the opinion polls and win a fifth successive general election victory for the Conservatives.
The timing of July’s snap election was triggered by Sunak’s sense that he could persuade voters it would be unwise to entrust the economy to Labour. In 1997 there was far more evidence that the economy had “turned the corner”, yet that did not prevent Major from leading his party to a landslide defeat. What was more, he left it to the last possible moment – May 1997 – to hold the election rather than go early.
Like Sunak, Major was facing a mood among the public that it was time for a change. Like Sunak, Major had to contend with voter unhappiness about the run-down state of the public sector. Like Sunak, Major also had to contend with egregious examples of sleazy behaviour from his own MPs that tarnished his party’s reputation.
Yet in terms of the economy there is no real comparison. In 2024, the UK has posted one quarter of 0.6% growth, which followed a mini-recession in the second half of 2023. In 1997, the economy had been growing for more than five years and in each quarter of 1997 grew by 1% or more.
That growth was broadly based. Manufacturing output was strong and in early 1997 the balance of payments was in the black. House prices had been through a protracted slump in the early 1990s and had only recently started to recover.
A sustained period of expansion also meant the public finances were a lot healthier than they are today, with debt as a share of national income just under 37% – its current level is close to 100%. Inflation was edging up to about 3% but the public’s last experience of severe cost of living problems had been at the very start of the decade.
Ed Balls, who was Gordon Brown’s special adviser in 1997, says: “The fiscal position today is much tougher and the underlying growth potential of the economy is much weaker. At the time of the 1997 election, real wages were growing and people perceived themselves to be better off, but much to the frustration of John Major and Ken Clarke, that didn’t translate into support for the Conservatives.”