After the 1992 General Election many political commentators thought that the electoral prospects of the Labour
There are many reasons why Labour were unsuccessful in the bid for political power in 1992, and many more reasons why they were then successful on such a large scale in 1997 and 2001. Between 1979 and 1992 they did not win a single election, this could be said to have been due to class de-alignment throughout this time, due to the de-industrialisation of the country. Whereas before 1979 a large majority of people were working class and worked in the industrial or secondary sector; traditionally these people were Labour supporters and were the ‘core voters’ that made up Labour supporters. ... This large shift in employment meant that there was now a case of class de-alignment in the Labour Party, in that their core voters were no longer working class, or that there would be many more Conservative voters. ... This leads us on to the 1992 election, where Labour were expected to regain power. The opinion polls showed them as regularly being ahead in public opinion and this led people, and the media, to believe the election was basically already won for Labour, however this was not the case. The results of the election came out and Conservative had 42.8% of the vote to Labour’s 35.2%, showing that (despite Labour having a significant increase in share to previous years) Conservative had lost merely a fraction of their vote from 1987. There are many different theories for why Labour lost an election they were almost guaranteed to win; firstly the Media. The media on a whole is supposed to be unbiased but the press do not share this drawback as they are privately owned, and the press had a great influence on this election, along with the more recent ones. Neil Kinnock, then leader of the Labour Party, said in his resignation speech that “the Conservative supporting press had enabled the Conservatives to win yet again” and this links neatly in with the Tory supporting paper The Sun claiming “It was The Sun wot won it”.