On this day in 1997, a new Labour Prime Minister took office.
The Labour Party has won the general election in a landslide victory, leaving the Conservatives in tatters after 18 years in power, with Scotland and Wales left devoid of Tory representation.
Labour now has a formidable 419 seats (including the speaker) – the largest the party has ever taken. The Conservatives took just 165, their worst performance since 1906.
Everything was set to change. Remember the ethical foreign policy, for example? Remember all that stuff about no sleaze that so beset the outgoing Tory administration?
I sat through the night after having been out knocking up during the day. I watched as the counts came in and by the early hours it was clear that the new Labour government had a massive majority; a mandate for government. I, like many, was euphoric. I had waited for eighteen years for this day.
It all turned to ashes, didn’t it?
I will never vote for, nor support, this rancorous shower ever again. I deeply regret that I ever did. I do hope that they get their well deserved kicking this week at the local elections.
I remember it well. I too had been up all night, so I took my daughter up to school in the morning, and I recall that everyone I met had a huge grin on their face. Those grins have long since disappeared – except on Tony’s face of course.
My only regret is that Scotland’s elections aren’t till next year. But do you really think that the Labour Party will be able to make Blair the scapegoat, and thus avoid the blame they so richly deserve for their cowardly failure to act earlier?
If it’s going to happen, I suspect now is the time. A drubbing tomorrow will concentrate the minds of those MPs with small majorities.
I guess all we can do is wait and see. 😐
I too was one of the naive fools who sat up through the night, and was even dancing in front of the TV to “Things can only get better”.
I still cringe when I think about it…………..
I want to see these authoritarian jokers out of power asap. Almost anyone else will do, except the BNP for obvious reasons.
My brother was thinking of voting for the BNP in the local elections, as a ‘protest vote’. I have done my utmost to talk him out of this idiocy, and explain what a truly moronic approach it would be. I hope he takes it onboard. The worrying thing about this is that he’s not a racist (I was discussing this with him as I gave him a lift to a friend’s house, who happens to be black), but just a member of the utterly hacked-off part of the electorate who want to do something to scare the clowns who govern us.
There will always be alternatives to the BNP for a protest vote – even spoiling the paper is better than that.
I can empathise in part with James from Sheffield’s brother but the BNP is not the way to go. I have a burning hatred, not just for New Labour but generally for what’s happening to this country. Our freedoms being steadily eroded day by day, not just ID Cards but people afraid to say this or do that lest offence be caused. I can understand why people are choosing or thinking about voting BNP though I would never consider it, I’d rather spoil my ballot paper than vote for these wretches. Across the road from my cousin, a house became vacant. He went to the council and asked if he would be given the chance to go for it (as he had been on the council waiting list for a house for a number of years) and was told that he didn’t have enough points and besides it was a 3-bedroomed house and as it’s just him, his partner and 2 kids, he’d probably be offered a 2-bedroomed instead. A little while later, he discovered that net curtains had been put up and in it was a man (a single man, no family) from Eastern Europe who’d been in the country just a few months. It’s not the man’s fault as in his situation I would doubtless have accepted myself. It is however the fault of government and quotas. Tensions in my cousin’s area are beginning to bubble over and there’s a lot of racist graffiti about the place. If it were one rule for all then fair enough but it doesn’t seem to be and unfortunately now many people are starting to think the unthinkable. Those who speak out against what they see as injustice are quickly rounded on and branded racists or troublemakers and this is unhelpful too as it stifles debate and further fuels resentments. This country is in grave danger if politicians and parties choose to sweep pressing issues under the rug. I loathe the BNP, they’re a wicked party but if they do secure seats then it might just be what the main parties need to sit up and take notice. I hope it doesn’t come to that but I fear that it might. Not good at all.
PS I too was overjoyed when Tony Blair became PM and yes I too remember that song “Things Can Only Get Better” as he paraded through the streets, shaking hands and beaming. A friend of the family who died just weeks after was sooooo happy it wasn’t to be believed. He was a lifelong Socialist, as was my Dad who died shortly after also. They would both be mortified if they saw the state of the country and the state of the Labour party.