1992 United Kingdom General Election Alternatory Lore (and beyond)

The 1992 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 9 April 1992, to elect 650 members to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. The election resulted in the third consecutive victory for the Conservative Party since the 1982 United Kingdom general election.

John Major had won the Conservative Party leadership election in January 1991 following the resignation of Margaret Thatcher. During his first term leading up to the 1992 election he oversaw the British involvement in the Gulf War, introduced legislation to replace the unpopular Community Charge with Council Tax, and signed the Maastricht Treaty. Britain had entered a recession at the time of Major's appointment, However he quickly recovered the economy following the Black Monday Crash. The results were mostly regarded as a let-down for the Conservatives who after running a campaign based on Majors continued Thatcherite ideals but fixes of Margaret Thatcher's "mistakes" (Primarily the Community Charge) and also the huge achievements of the Gulf War polling in the weeks and months before predicted a Third Landslide for the Conservative Party.

The Conservative Party received what remains the largest number of votes at a United Kingdom general election in British history, breaking the previous record set by the Labour Party in 1951. Former Conservative Leader and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Former Labour Party leader Michael Foot, former SDP leader David Owen, three former Chancellors of the Exchequer, Denis Healey, Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson, former Home Secretary Merlyn Rees, Francis Maude, Norman Tebbit, Rosie Barnes, Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams and Speaker of the House of Commons Bernard Weatherill left the House of Commons after this election, though Maude and Adams returned at the next election.

Although there was talks of changing the electoral map, they decided to maintain the same electoral setup, which is now the definitive electoral setup for constituencies that had been created since the 1970 General Election.

Overview
The Conservatives had been re-elected in a landslide at the 1987 United Kingdom general election under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, who had led the party back into power in 1982 after a brief period (1979-1982) under the Labour Party, and won a landslide majority in 1982 and 1987, but her popularity and that of her government sharply declined due to internal divisions in the party and the unpopular Community Charge (also known as the 'poll tax'), as well as the fact that Britain was sliding into recession in the run-up to her resignation in December 1990 and final replacement in January 1991.

Labour began to lead the Conservatives in the opinion polls by as much as 20 percentage points. Thatcher resigned following the 1991 Conservative Party leadership election, initiated by Michael Heseltine, and was replaced by her Chancellor of the Exchequer John Major. This was well received by the public; Labour lost some momentum as it reduced the impact of their calls for "Time for a Change".

On 16 January 1991, Operation Desert Storm began the Gulf War, the Major ministry's first foreign affairs crisis. The quick and successful outcome on the conflict led to a boost in opinion polls for Major, Another boost in the polls for Major was his announcement that the unpopular community charge (poll tax) would be replaced with the Council Tax. The Labour opposition made repeated calls for a general election to be held during 1991, but Major resisted these calls. The Major Administration faced another issue that boosted popularity, in the French former colony, now since 1971 has been a integrated part of France, saw a clash between unionist and separatist militias of which the UK was called to send support forces to aid the French. Overall Major demonstrated military management and was trusted to maintain army skill and size and global influence.

The Conservatives maintained strong support in many newspapers, especially The Sun, which ran a series of anti-Labour articles that culminated on election day with a front-page headline which urged "the last person to leave Britain" to "turn out the lights" if Labour won the election.

Campaign
The 49th Parliament of the United Kingdom sat for the last time on Monday 16 March, being dissolved on the same day.

Under the leadership of Neil Kinnock, the Labour Party had undergone further developments and alterations since its 1987 United Kingdom general election defeat. Labour entered the campaign with low confidence but high enthusiasm despite most opinion polls showing another huge Conservative victory of between 370-390 seats, the Labour Party believed they could secure victory if they could spark Eurosceptic Conservative Party MPs to rebel, however the plan failed as the Conservative Party had agreed following the last leadership election that the Europe issue will be lead by the PM entirely until the next leadership election. As a result the campaign backfired and both Neil Kinnock and Roy Hattersley were accused of meddling and sabotaging political rivals.

The parties campaigned on the familiar grounds of taxation and health care. Major became known for delivering his speeches while standing on an upturned soapbox during public meetings. Immigration was also an issue, with Home Secretary Kenneth Baker making a controversial speech stating that, under Labour, the floodgates would be opened for immigrants from developing countries. Some speculated that this was a bid by the Conservatives to shore up its support amongst its white working-class supporters. The Conservatives also pounded the Labour Party over the issue of taxation, producing a memorable poster entitled "Labour's Double-Whammy", showing a boxer wearing gloves marked "tax rises" and "inflation".

An early setback for Labour came in the form of the "War of Jennifer's Ear" controversy, which questioned the truthfulness of a Labour party election broadcast concerning National Health Service (NHS) waiting lists. Overall the Labour Party suffered at the polls and in the end at the ballot box over the series of these issues.

Labour seemingly recovered from the NHS controversy, and opinion polls on 1 April (dubbed "Red Wednesday") showed a small Labour lead. But the lead fell considerably in the following day's polls. Observers blamed the decline on the Labour Party's triumphalist "Sheffield Rally", an enthusiastic American-style political convention at the Sheffield Arena, where Neil Kinnock famously cried out "We're all right!" three times. However, some analysts and participants in the campaign believed it actually had little effect, with the event only receiving widespread attention after the election.

This was the first general election for the newly formed Liberal Democrats, a party formed by the formal merger of the SDP-Liberal Alliance following the 1987 general election. Its formation had not been without its problems, but under the strong leadership of Paddy Ashdown, who proved to be a likeable and candid figure, the party went into the election ready to win votes and seats. They focused on education throughout the campaign, as well as a promise on reforming the voting system.

The Anti-Federalist League campaigned as a joint alliance of Eurosceptic candidates, launched in the year prior it saw a large defection of Conservative Party members. While the Conservative Party agreed to unite over the Europe issue to follow Majors lead, this gave the League a chance of drawing away a lot of right wing Eurosceptic votes. They also damaged Labours count of votes as well, especially in the North. But they alongside the Liberal Democrats had helped to split enough Conservative votes to guarantee a 50 seat increase for the Labour Party.

Minor parties
In Scotland the Scottish National Party (SNP) hoped for a major electoral breakthrough in 1992 and had run a hard independence campaign with "Free by '93" as their slogan, urging voters to back a party which would deliver Scottish independence from the United Kingdom. Although the party increased its total vote by 50% compared to 1987, they only held onto the three seats they had won at the 1987 United Kingdom general election. Sillars quit active politics after the general election with a parting shot at the Scottish electorate as being "ninety-minute patriots", referring to their supporting the Scotland national football team only during match time.

The election also saw a small change in Northern Ireland: the Conservatives organised and stood candidates in the constituent country for the first time since the Ulster Unionist Party had broken with them in 1972 over the Sunningdale Agreement. Although they won no seats, their best result was Laurence Kennedy achieving over 14,000 votes to run second to James Kilfedder in North Down.

Retirees
Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher stepped down at the general election, as did former cabinet minister Norman Tebbit, Labour veteran Denis Healey, former Conservative chancellor Nigel Lawson, Geoffrey Howe, former Labour leader Michael Foot, former SDP leader David Owen, Merlyn Rees, then-Speaker Bernard Weatherill, former Conservative Party chairman Cecil Parkinson, John Wakeham, Nicholas Ridley and Peter Morrison. Alan Clark also retired from Parliament, though he returned in 1997 as MP for Kensington and Chelsea, only to die two years later.

Endorsements
The following newspapers endorsed political parties running in the election in the following ways:

In a move later described in The Observer as appalling to its City readership, the Financial Times endorsed the Labour Party in this general election.

Results
The election turnout was very high on polling day, partly due to the sunny and good weather and also a large determination to vote, especially considering the "shy tory factor". The Conservative Party won the most votes of any election ever before or since making the election one of the most memorable since the Second World War. winning some 14.3 (rounded) million votes, John Majors victory was nothing short of decisive. However many seats up north were reclaimed by Labour primarily due to voter split by the Anti-Federalist League. The Liberal Democrats campaign was mostly regarded a failure loosing 4.9% of the vote and 2 seats down from their previous shared score under the Liberal-SDP Alliance. Many centrists were pulled over to the Conservative vote and therefore impacted the Liberal Democrats greatly. Paddy Ashdown faced harsh criticism from his own party with the Economic Liberals claiming "He'd set up the party for failure right from the get go" and many traditional centrists and Liberal members of the party would continue to rebels onwards.

Despite appearing as a victory of gaining 49 seats, and as Neil Kinnock believed during his Sheffield Rally claiming "were alright" - The Labour Party had faced yet another defeat. This defeat and sparked a revolt in the Labour Party as a new faction called "New Labour" sprung up to challenge the "Soft Left" faction and "Hard Left". The result would ultimately mark Kinnocks attempts to turn the party entirely to the Soft Left faction a failure.

The Conservative Party victory also reinforced Majors ability to command his party factions easily, being a Thatcherite but with some critical One Nation Conservative views and also maintaining support from the Traditionalist faction meant that the party civil war days under the end of Thatcher's second term were over. In Northern Ireland there was mostly no change in results. Despite a hard campaign the centrist non-sectarian Alliance NI Party failed to secure a seat with only 0.2% of the vote.

Paddy Ashdown and his faction the Social Liberals blamed the Lib Dem result on the recently revived and re-formed Liberal Party standing candidates and splitting the vote, but with them only maintain 0.1% of the vote this was evidently was not true. There was also calls for overseas territories and land like the Falkland Islands and South Georgia, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, Bermuda, Malta, Labrador and Newfoundland, Cayman Islands, Anguilla, Nigeria and too Egypt and other territories to gain seats in parliament, it was rejected and they still maintained their devolved assembly administrations.

It was Labour's second general election defeat under leader Neil Kinnock and deputy leader Roy Hattersley. Both resigned soon after the election, and were succeeded by John Smith and Margaret Beckett respectively.

Sitting MPs Dave Nellist, Terry Fields, Ron Brown, John Hughes and Syd Bidwell, who had been expelled or deselected by the Labour Party and stood as independents, were all defeated, although in Nellist's case only very narrowly. Tommy Sheridan, fighting the election from prison, polled 19%.