The View from 30 Years Ago
The Labour Party of 1992 had been out of government for 13 years, suffered irreconcilable internal division, hamstrung its leftist flank, and lost a very winnable election.
The Labour party of today has endured three successive Conservative prime ministers over 12 years in opposition. The country has been scarred, first by austerity, then the aggressive discourse of Brexit, and now by the Conservative government’s handling of the pandemic and allegations of misconduct that have left an enfeebled Tory government.
Thirty-years-ago, Labour faced a similarly hobbled Conservative Party. The Tory heyday under Thatcher was in the rear-view mirror. The Conservative government’s record since 1987 had been weak and a recession had battered its image as the party of economic savviness. A groundswell of change threatened to engulf the country as it headed into the 1992 election.
In Neil Kinnock, Labour had a modernising leader that saw the safety of the political centre and the alienation of the left as a route to power. He ousted the left’s Militant Tendency faction from the party and reformed the Party Conference and the National Executive to curb the influence of local parties (and the Labour left) in policy setting. Policies popular among the left flank—including unilateral nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from Europe, and nationalisation—were dropped and Kinnock adopted a set of party values that prioritised equality over public ownership.
Kinnock’s approach will feel familiar to Starmer-watchers today. But, then, as now, Labour remained on the political periphery. Polls suggested a hung parliament was imminent, with Labour likely getting the chance to form a coalition. However, while Labour improved its vote share from the previous election, it only managed 35.2 percent of the vote in 1992 and handed the Conservatives another majority under a Major government.
There was a sense Labour had missed its chance. It had a mountain to climb. It would need the biggest vote swing of any post-war election to emerge victorious at the next election and the British public had just sent a clear message: Labour weren’t ready to be trusted with the keys to Number 10.