It haunts us still, Banquo’s ghost at Labour’s table, putting us off our supper two decades and four elections after the April morning when John Major defeated Neil Kinnock in one of democratic politics’ most shocking turnarounds.
While bored journalists and depressed activists might try and persuade themselves otherwise, the outcome of all but a handful of elections are all but written in stone long before a door is knocked on in anger. The reason why 1992 casts a long shadow because is it was a genuine shock, for combatants and commentators alike.
It shouldn’t have been. 1992 wasn’t a shocking come-from-behind triumph for a Conservative project that had long before run out of road – it was an entirely routine defeat for an unregenerate Labour party still mired in the failed old politics of the 1970s and 1980s. The Conservative turnaround didn’t happen after the Sheffield rally or John Smith’s shadow budget. Only outdated polling methodologies masked the fact that 1992 was a rerun of 1983 and 1987, as meaningless midterm victories in local elections that mattered little gave way to serious, crushing defeats in the contests that mattered.
Twenty years on, there are more myths around the 1992 election than there are the Crucifixion. The 1992 election is remembered as a close thing, one Labour could have won if it had been a little bit more comfortable with money or the campaign machine had been a bit more slick. The reality is that 1992 was a landslide defeat, in which Labour was never really at the races. John Major got more votes than Clement Attlee, Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair did in their great triumphs, and in terms of the number of votes, delivered a thumping on a par with that handed out to Michael Foot and Gordon Brown. Winning required nothing less than a complete revolution in not just how Labour operated but also how it thought. Labour wasn’t ‘almost there’ in 1992; the party had a long way yet to go.
And yet, the 1992 election has an importance beyond that of the defeats of 1983 and 1987, even if the party wasn’t any closer to being a credible party of government than it was at any point after the winter of discontent. Why? Because Labour thought it was, genuinely believing, as Paul Richards puts it, that Labour had successfully shown that it was ‘comfortable with markets and globalisation, committed to Nato and nuclear deterrence, and in the mainstream of European politics’. Only the fringe believed that Labour could win in 1983 or 1987; the party as a whole thought that it was on the verge in 1992. 1992 is an object lesson: that the average British voter is significantly to the right even of where the average Labour thinker believes them to be. Labour believed that it had spent the years between 1987 and 1992 marching confidently out of its comfort zone and into the promised land; the country saw that Labour had yet to change.
What lesson can Labour draw from the 1992 defeat today? It’s that real change isn’t just new policies or presentation or organisation, but a complete change and modernisation of our culture, our attitudes, and our identity. That’s not about a slick rebrand, but a fundamental change. Whether that be in how we select MPs or elect the leader, or how we organise the economy, there has be to a complete re-examination of how Labour operates. Piecemeal change, conducted at a pace that pays too much courtesy to our shibboleths, won’t be enough to convince people that Labour has changed. The lesson of 1992 is that it can be seductively easy to believe that comfortable ‘reform’ can be enough to convince voters back into the fold. But for defeated parties, necessary change is always painful. Parties which avoid making those changes will be punished in the battles that really matter. That’s the lesson of 1992 just as clearly as it was 20 years ago.
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Stephen Bush is a member of Progress, works as a journalist, and writes at adangerousnotion.wordpress.com
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Kinnock was my MP, we went home thinking my god how can he become leader, seems a lot of people thought the same, his attacks on miners in a mining area did not go down well at all. and I suspect his attacks in area where the miners strikes were still fresh in people minds did not work for poor old Neil.
he formulated new labour, at a time when the people were looking for another Thatcher, they got one in Blair, now of course we are told New labour is dead long live Newer labour with a leader who is Kinnock
A very perceptive article. I don’t want it to be true (because I don’t want us to change in many respects other than being in government rather than in opposition) but your analysis of 92 is spot on. And you are right – there are too many shibboleths. I would still challenge a claim (which you aren’t making but which could be loosely based on your analysis) that we have to change purely because the majority of the electorate thinks we have to change though. But of course, I’m essentially an old labour loser (or ‘fringe’ person) so what do I know?
A simplistic account of the 1992 election, transparently pushing the agenda of the Blairite rump (“continuity New Labour”) who haven’t come to terms with the crisis of capitalism since 2007.
The 1992 election result can be largely explained by 3 factors: millions of middle-class, middle-aged voters in middle-England liked and trusted John Major (and actively disliked and distrusted Neil Kinnock); the first-past-the-post system helps the Tories when the votes of the progressive left-leaning majority are split between 2 parties (Labour and the Lib-Dems); back in pre-internet era the right-wing press (especially The Sun) had real power and influence over public opinion.
There is no evidence that I am aware of which would indicate that a majority (51%) of the UK population are instinctively opposed to social democratic values.