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European Journal of Political Research 40: 437–446, 2001.© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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JUSTIN FISHERDepartment of Government, Brunel University, UK

Table 1. Cabinet composition on 1 January 2000

A. Party composition of Blair I

Date of investiture: 2 May 1997

No. Party Number and percentage Number and percentage

of parliamentary seats of cabinet posts

6 Labour 418 (63.4%)1 22 (100%)

B. Cabinet members of Blair IPrime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury and Minister for the Civil Service: Tony Blair (1953

male)First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Transport, the Environment & the Regions, and

Deputy Prime Minister: John Prescott (1938 male)Lord Chancellor: Lord Irvine of Lairg (1940 male)Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs: Robin Cook (1946 male)Chancellor of the Exchequer: Gordon Brown (1951 male)Secretary of State for Home Affairs: Jack Straw (1946 male)Secretary of State for Trade & Industry and President of the Board of Trade: Stephen Byers

(1953 male)Secretary of State for Defence: Geoff Hoon (1953 male)Leader of the House of Lords and Minister for Women: Baroness Jay of Paddington (1939

female)President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons: Margaret Beckett (1943

female)Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries & Food: Nick Brown (1950 male)Secretary of State for Wales: Paul Murphy (1948 male)Secretary of State for Social Security: Alistair Darling (1953 male)Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster & Minister for the Cabinet Office: Marjorie (‘Mo’)

Mowlam (1949 female)Secretary of State for Scotland: John Reid (1947 male)Secretary of State for Northern Ireland: Peter Mandelson (1953 male)Secretary of State for Education and Employment: David Blunkett (1947 male)

1Excluding the Speaker of the House of Commons, Betty Boothroyd; though returned as aLabour MP, the Speaker is generally a non-voting MP who is expected to chair sessions ina non-partisan fashion. Boothroyd retired in 2000 and was replaced by another Labour MP,Michael Martin.

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Table 2. Changes in the composition of the House of Lords (upper House) – seats

Party 5.11.93 3.11.94 8.11.95 1.11.96 4.02.98 04.01.99 05.06.00 02.04.01

Conservative 481 479 476 482 496 476 232 225

Labour 116 114 109 118 158 175 199 197

Liberal 58 54 52 58 68 69 63 62

Democrat

Cross-benchers 278 287 289 326 323 317 164 163

Other 107 109 111 100 103 128 33 32

Total 1040 1043 1037 1084 1148 1165 691 679

These figures exclude those members not receiving a Writ of Summons and who are thereforenot entitled to sit in the House of Lords, and those on official Leave of Absence.Source: House of Lords Information Office.

Table 3. Summary of local election results May 2000 (England)

Candidates Seats won % Share of vote

Metropolitan Boroughs (36)

Turnout 26.0%

Conservative 810 203 31.4

Labour 883 458 38.4

Liberal Democrat 758 202 24.4

Other 441 21 5.8

Shire District Councils (89)

Turnout 32.2%


Labour 1362 357 25.4


Other 473 139 6.9

Unitary Authorities (27)

Turnout 28.5%


Labour 757 302 31.9


Other 184 44 5.5

Overall summary

Turnout 30.0%


Labour 3002 1117 32.4


Other 1098 204 6.1

Source: British Elections & Parties Review Vol. 11.

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Table 4. Election for London Mayor (May 2000) (Turnout 33.7%)

Name Party 1st Pref % 2nd Pref % Final %

Ken Livingstone Independent 667,877 39.0 178,809 12.6 776,427 57.9

Steve Norriss Conservative 464,434 27.1 188,041 13.2 564,137 42.1

Frank Dobson Labour 223,884 13.1 228,095 16.0

Susan Kramer Liberal Democrat 203,452 11.9 404,815 28.5

Ram Gidoomal Christian Peoples Alliance 42,060 2.4 56,489 4.0

Darren Johnson Green 38,121 2.2 19,2764 13.6

Michael Newland British National Party 33,569 2.0 45,337 3.2

Damien Hockney UK Independence Party 16,234 1.0 43,672 3.1

Geoffrey Ben-Nathan Pro-Motorist Small Shop 9,956 0.6 23,021 1.6

Aswin Kumar Tanna Independent 9,015 0.5 41,766 2.9

Geoffrey Clements Natural Law Party 5,470 0.3 18,185 1.3

Source: House of Commons Library Research Paper 01/37.

Table 5. Greater London Assembly Election (May 2000) Turnout: 31.2% (Constituency)32.6% (List)

Party Constituency % Constituency List % List Total

votes seats votes seats seats

Conservative 526,707 33.2 8 481,053 29.0 1 9

Labour 501,296 31.6 6 502,874 30.3 3 9

Liberal Democrat 299,998 18.9 245,555 14.8 4 4

Green 162,457 10.2 183,910 11.1 3 3

London Socialist Alliance 46,530 2.9 27,073 1.6

Christian People’s Alliance 55,192 3.3

British National Party 47,670 2.9

UK Independence Party 34,054 2.1

Others 49,082 3.1 82,249 5.0

Sources: House of Commons Library Research Paper 01/37, British Elections & PartiesReview, Vol. 11.

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Table 6. Parliamentary By-election Summary 2000 (Compared with 1997 General Election)

Constituency Previous By-election Turnout Con Lab Lib Dem SNP/PC

Incumbent Winner change

Ceredigion Plaid Cymru Plaid Cymru −27.9 +1.6 −9.9 +6.5 +1.2

Romsey Conservative Liberal Democrat −21.0 −4.0 −14.9 +21.2

Tottenham Labour Labour −31.5 +0.3 −15.8 +8.3

Antrim South1 Ulster Democratic −14.8

Unionist Party Unionist Party

Glasgow Labour Labour −25.4 −0.7 −9.7 +0.9 +3.7

Anniesland

Preston Labour Labour −36.5 +3.1 −15.1 +1.5

West Bromwich Speaker Labour −26.8

West2 (Labour)

Falkirk West Labour Labour −36.5 −3.8 −15.8 −1.9 +16.5

1Northern Ireland seat. Not contested by mainland parties.2Formally the seat of The Speaker.Source: British Elections & Parties Review Vol. 11.

The local elections of 4 May 2000

As reported in the 1999 yearbook, British local government can appearcomplex and unwieldy. It is certainly not structured uniformly across eitherBritain or England. The most straightforward description of British local gov-ernment is that it is of two types. The first consists of single tier, multi-purposeauthorities (London Boroughs, six other Metropolitan Boroughs and forty-six non-metropolitan Unitary Authorities in England, thirty-six in Wales andthirty-two Unitary Councils in Scotland). The second consists of a two-tiersystem, with power divided between thirty-four County (upper-tier) and 238Shire District (lower-tier) councils. The electoral cycles of different author-ities vary considerably. Suffice to say that in England, there are generallyannual elections for at least a proportion of the councils in the MetropolitanBoroughs, Shire District Councils and Unitary Authorities. In 2000, therewere only local elections in England, the results of which are summarisedin Table 3. Labour performed badly, although it should be noted that thisparticular cycle of elections was likely to favour the Conservatives to someextent. Overall, Labour lost an estimated 601 local council seats on a voteshare of 32.4 percent The Conservatives were the main beneficiaries, makinga net estimated gain of 610 seats and gaining 37.2 percent of the vote. TheLiberal Democrats’ position was largely unchanged, though they managed togain 24.3 percent of the vote. Turnout continued to be low.

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Greater London Authority Elections – 4 May 2000

Following the referendum result of 1998, the Greater London Authority wasestablished, creating an upper-tier of strategic government for London. Thisconsists of a directly elected mayor and an assembly of 25 elected members.Given the size of London, the mayoral election has one of the largest directelectorates in Western Europe – smaller only than the presidents of Franceand Portugal. Thus in addition to the formal powers, it is potentially a verysignificant symbolic position.

Both major parties had significant problems selecting candidates. As doc-umented in the 1999 yearbook, the original Conservative candidate, JeffreyArcher, was forced to stand down. Steven Norris, former Transport Minis-ter in the Major administration, eventually replaced him. Labour’s selectionprocess was even more fraught. Labour MP Ken Livingstone, former leaderof the previous London-wide government (the Greater London Council – ab-olished 1986) declared early on that he wanted to be a candidate. However,despite his apparent popularity with voters, Livingstone was not favouredby the Labour hierarchy. The party employed an electoral college (whichincludes votes from various wings of the party) as used for leadership elec-tions, to select candidates. Significantly, not all trade unions balloted theirmembers prior to the electoral college. The result was that the leadership’sfavoured candidate, Frank Dobson, won the nomination despite Livingstonehaving won a majority of individual members’ votes. Livingstone’s support-ers argued that only members should have voted, since this was an electionfor a candidate rather than a leader. The end result proved to be the worstof all worlds for Labour – Livingstone announced that he would run as anIndependent candidate, thereby automatically relinquishing the Labour whipand his party membership.

In the event, Livingstone won the mayoral election, though he neededthe second ballots in the Alternative Vote system to secure victory. Labour’scandidate, Frank Dobson, came a poor third on the first ballot (see Table4). The mayoral election rather overshadowed the elections for the GreaterLondon Assembly. The Conservatives again performed well, winning eightof the fourteen constituency seats and a further one seat in the list section ofthe Additional Member system. This made them the joint largest party in theAssembly (alongside Labour) (see Table 5). Both the Liberal Democrats andthe Greens won seats in the list section, but what was also notable was therelatively strong showing of the minor parties. Whilst the UK IndependenceParty had won European seats in 1999, it was out-polled in London by boththe new Christian People’s Alliance and the far-right British National Party.

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By-elections

There were a large number of parliamentary by-elections in 2000 (see Table6), caused, in all but two cases, by the deaths of sitting members. ThoughLabour’s vote share fell in all elections it contested, it did not lose any ofits seats (a record it has maintained since 1997). That said, three of thosevictories were also notable for the impressive showing by far-left parties whoamassed sufficient votes to exceed the threshold to save their deposits. Mostnotable among the results was the election in Romsey, where the LiberalDemocrats overcame an 8,585 Conservative majority. In the context of theConservatives’ otherwise generally impressive electoral performances, thiswas a severe blow and indicated that national Conservative recovery still hadsome distance left to run.

Issues in national politics

The government’s programme of institutional change continued. As dis-cussed, strategic government for London was re-established, with the pro-spect of this providing a blueprint for reform in other major cities. Alternativeelectoral systems were also used. The mayor was elected by the AlternativeVote, whilst the Assembly, as with elections to the new national institutionsin Scotland and Wales, was elected by the Additional Member System (withthe same constituency/list ratio as Scotland, 56:44).

In January, the Wakeham Commission, charged with devising reform forthe House of Lords, published its report. 132 proposals were announced,among them the proposal that there should be a 550 member upper cham-ber, most of whom would be independently appointed and would reflect voteshares at the general election. There was also a stipulation that 30 percentof the initial chamber should be women and that ethnic minorities should be‘fairly’ represented. The report drew a fairly hostile repose, and as yet, showslittle sign of being implemented.

In November, the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act waspassed. Enacting virtually all of the recommendations from the 1998 Com-mittee on Standards in Public Report (with the exception of tax relief ondonations), the act changed the landscape of party and election regulation.The act included the creation of an electoral commission, greater transpar-ency in party finance, national election expenditure limits, regulation of ‘thirdparties’ and new rules for the conduct of referendums. Set within the traditionof British non-regulation of party finance, this was a truly radical act, despitethe continuing resistance to comprehensive state funding of parties. The actcame into force the following February. Finally, the European Convention

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on Human Rights was incorporated into British law in October. The Act hadbeen in force in Scotland since devolution. It gave UK citizens the right totake the state and its agencies to court to enforce basic human rights.

Both the Labour and Conservative Parties suffered from some party dis-cord. For Labour, Peter Kilfoyle resigned as Defence Minister (January) overLabour’s alleged lack of attention to its traditional voters. He later joinedformer minister Mark Fisher in claiming that there was widespread disillu-sionment with the government and with Tony Blair in particular (June). Thiscriticism was echoed by former general secretary of the party Tom Sawyer,who added that party members felt undervalued and isolated by the lead-ership. In the following month, a previously generous Labour donor, KenFollett, wrote in a national newspaper that Blair was ‘unmanly, tragic andimmoral’.

More formal dissent took place in parliament and at the Labour con-ference. In April, 41 Labour MPs voted against the government’s pensionincrease, which was seen as being too low. The row rumbled on until theparty’s conference in September, when delegates voted by a margin of threeto two to restore the link between earnings and pensions. This ran counter togovernment policy and the government immediately rejected this defeat. Nev-ertheless, the vote crowned Blair’s most difficult party conference as leader. InMay, 45 MPs rebelled against plans to part-privatise the National Air TrafficService. Despite defeats in the House of Lords, the government was finallysuccessful in part-privatising air traffic control in November. Labour did,however, respond to some of its internal critics. Following the difficulties overcandidate selection for the devolved institutions and the London mayor, theNational Executive Committee (NEC) agreed that trade unions must ballottheir members before deciding which candidates to support in the electoralcollege (September).

Finally, Labour found itself with two new leaders in Wales and Scotland.In February, Alun Michael resigned as leader of the Welsh Labour party (andFirst Secretary of the National Assembly of Wales) after a vote of no con-fidence in the Assembly. Michael had been elected in similarly controversialcircumstances as the Labour mayoral candidate. Rhodri Morgan, his originalrival for the post, who was elected unopposed, replaced him. The ScottishFirst Minister, Donald Dewar, died in October, following a fall. Known as’the Father of the Nation’ following his long commitment to devolution, hewas succeeded by Henry McLeish, who was separately elected as both leaderof the Scottish Labour Party and First Minister.

The Conservatives also suffered some difficulties. In August, the newlyappointed vice- chairman, Steven Norris, attacked his party for being out oftouch and unrepresentative, whilst Ivan Massow, a prominent gay Conservat-

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ive and friend of William Hague defected to Labour. He claimed that Haguehad shown himself to be ‘prejudiced and ignorant’. At the party’s conferencein October, shadow Home Secretary Ann Widdecombe announced plans tointroduced fixed penalties for possession of drugs, no matter how small thequantity. The policy was widely criticised and preceded admissions by a num-ber of Shadow Cabinet members that they had smoked cannabis. In the lightof this, William Hague was forced into abandoning the policy. Earlier in theyear (February), Hague brought Michael Portillo, whom many believed wasa future rival for the party leadership, into the Shadow Cabinet. Portillo wasappointed Shadow Chancellor, whilst former leadership candidate, John Red-wood, was sacked as Environment spokesman. Portillo almost immediatelyannounced two changes to Conservative economic policy – the abandoning ofopposition to the independence of the Bank of England and to the minimumwage. The Conservatives had campaigned strongly against the latter in theprevious election.

The Liberal Democrats continued to perform solidly in elections. In localelections their position remained relatively unchanged, whilst in London,their mayoral candidate – Susan Kramer – was a conspicuous success. Notpreviously well known, she was only narrowly beaten into fourth place by theLabour’s Frank Dobson and won more second preference votes than any othercandidate (see Table 4). The party’s growing importance was further illus-trated in the Welsh Assembly, when in October it agreed a coalition deal withLabour (as in Scotland). As a consequence, the Liberal Democrats gainedtwo seats in the new nine-member Welsh executive and the party’s leader inWales, Mike German, became the Deputy First Secretary. This demonstratedmore than ever that notions of Liberal Democrat power were being realisedand that coalitions with Labour were feasible. Yet at national level, the rela-tionship between the two parties was less close. Charles Kennedy, frustratedby Labour’s effective sidelining of electoral reform, began to distance theLiberal Democrats from Labour. Kennedy himself continued to be popular, ifrather less prominent than his predecessor. Significantly though, few ratedhim as the best person to be Prime Minister – even fewer than WilliamHague. By way of contrast, Paddy Ashdown had been more popular, and wasconsidered more capable than John Major prior to the 1997 election.

Beyond the parties, five key issues dominated British politics. First, wasthe unlikely prominence of the Millennium Dome. Initially proposed by theConservative government, the project was enthusiastically taken up by La-bour. It opened on 1st January and criticism soon emerged both as to itscontent and more significantly, that visitor numbers were below those expec-ted. By February, the situation was deemed so serious that the chief executivewas replaced by Pierre-Yves Gerbeau – a man credited with having revital-

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ised the fortunes of EuroDisney. Despite his energetic efforts, visitor numbersremained well below what in hindsight were unrealistic visitor targets. In thesummer, the Dome received an additional $29 million from National Lotterymoney and by September, it was forced to apply for a further $47 million,just to maintain it until its scheduled closure in December. A National AuditOffice report in November claimed that the Dome was risky, mismanaged andfinancially weak before it had opened. Inevitably, the government attractedmuch criticism for the relative failure of the Dome, although it should benoted that visitor numbers were only really disappointing in the context ofthe initial projections.

The issue of asylum-seekers gained extra prominence. In April, both theConservative and Labour parties were reported to the Commission for RacialEquality over their handling of the asylum seekers debate. This followedclaims in the Conservative local election manifesto that racketeers were‘flooding this country with bogus asylum seekers’. Labour too was criticised.Bill Morris, leader of the Transport and General Workers Union claimed thegovernment’s policies on asylum seekers were ‘utterly insane’. The issuerumbled on throughout the year.

When the Labour government was elected in 1997, it pledged to maintainConservative spending plans for two years. In 2000 however, the governmentbegan to release the purse strings a little. In the Chancellor’s April budget,education received an additional $1 billion of funding, an extra $285 millionwas allocated to fight crime and most significantly a five year cash commit-ment was made which would see health spending rise by more than a third.In July, a 10-year $180 billion plan was announced to ease road congestionand boost public transport – including $60 billion for railways, $59 billionfor roads and $59 billion for local transport schemes. It was envisaged thatjust under a quarter of the funding would come from private investment. InOctober, it was announced that childcare spending would more than doubleover the next three years, targeted at deprived areas. The Conservative Partypledged to match Labour’s spending commitments on education and health,whilst pledging to cut taxes by $8 billion.

The principal and most unexpected issue, however, was the fuel protestsin September. Lorry drivers and farmers, protesting about the level of dutyon fuel, blockaded oil refineries across the country. The consequences werefelt very rapidly and within days 90 percent of Britain’s petrol stations hadno fuel. The NHS was put on ‘Red Alert’, whilst emergency powers wereintroduced to control the distribution of fuel to designated petrol stations tosupply emergency and essential services. The protests caught most by sur-prise, but significantly they lead to a 10 point fall in Labour’s poll ratings andfor a brief period the Conservatives were marginally in front. This was the

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first time that the Conservatives had led in the opinion polls since September1992 and although Labour’s large poll lead recovered within two months,it suggested that for the first time that the government was vulnerable. Fuelprotesters threatened further action if their demands were not met, but in theend, protests collapsed after Gordon Brown froze fuel duty until 2002 in hisNovember budget.

Finally, February saw the suspension of the Northern Ireland Assemblyafter only nine weeks due to the lack of progress on arms decommission-ing. This suspension prompted the IRA to announce that it would no longerco-operate on the issue. By May, the IRA had declared that it was ready to de-commission following new proposals from the British and Irish governmentsto break the deadlock. Following this announcement, the Ulster UnionistCouncil voted by a slim majority (52.3 percent) to support a resumption ofthe Northern Ireland Assembly and devolved power was restored on 30thMay. The fragility of the support within the Ulster Unionist party was furtherillustrated in March. Incumbent leader and First Minster of the AssemblyDavid Trimble was challenged for the leadership of his party by the ReverendMartin Smyth, an opponent of the Good Friday agreement. Trimble won, witha relatively narrow 57 percent of the vote.

Sources and further information

Morgan, B. & Connelly, J. (2001), UK Elections Statistics: 1945–2000: House of CommonsResearch Paper 01/37. London: House of Commons Library.

Tonge, J., Bennie, L., Denver, D. & Harrisoon, L. (eds) (2001), British Elections and PartiesReview, Vol. 11. London: Frank Cass.

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