1992 election-Tories did you feel invincible at the time?

[nodealbrexiteer]

This may have been discussed elsewhere but this is mainly aimed at Conservative supporters here. Did you feel after the 1992 triumph having being achieved in a recession that you could go on and on?


I don't suppose anyone was seriously thinking about the type of result that did materialise next time.

[AdminSTB]

I am perhaps too young to give a first hand recollection, as I suspect most of us are, but the answer is surely no. Remember, the overall majority was reduced considerably to 21 and the party had lost many figures permanently such as Chris Patten, Lynda Chalker, Colin Moynihan, William Shelton etc.

[hengo]

Certainly not. I hadn’t expected to win, and actually didn’t really want to. I speak as a usual Conservative supporter, not a committed member. There are times when a government is worn out and needs to regroup and reflect. The government that followed was predictably weak - one of the worst I can remember ,certainly among Conservative administrations. It would have been far better for the party to have lost that election, and probably the country.

[Deleted]

Given the backlash over Britain being ejected from the exchange rate mechanism that couldn't have lasted long

[AdminSTB]

I remember my elder brothers predicting Bush would win in America in November that year, having seen what happened here in April.

[hengo]

Things would have been very different. You can be reasonably sure that Kinnock administration would have lasted for only one Parliament ( and probably not a full one u less he’d had a big majority). Not sure who would have replaced Major- Clarke ? Heseltine?

[pl]

I think 1992 has to be my strangest election night memory. I was on holiday in Majorca with my parents. I wanted to watch the satellite TV election night coverage, so we went to the hotel bar. It was packed with a lot of very anxious white van men. The huge majority of whom were Conservatives.

The only fly in the ointment was that there was a German karaoke session going on in another area of the bar at a very high volume. After several attempts to get them to turn down the volume, one bloke (ex-army with a solid command of German profanities) went over and pulled out a load of the AV leads from the karaoke machine. He then threw them into the pool.

Let's just say, my overwhelming memory of the night was nervousness at the start, and by breakfast there was a feeling of relief amongst the Conservative voters. I remember it as more like bullet dodged than triumphalism.

[Pete Whitehead]

As others have said, it was largely expected that we would lose our majority up to and including the exit poll so the sense the following morning was one of relief but also that we had a stay of execution and given the arithmetic we would likely lose next time when Labour might have a more popular leader than Kinnock. The kind of triumphalist feeling described was certainly how one felt following the 1987 election

[pragmaticidealist]

Wasn't around at the time (and not a Tory either), but Ipsos-Mori did a poll on who people expected to win, and IIRC it showed slightly more people expecting the Tories to at least be the largest party.

[Pete Whitehead]

Jun 7, 2020 13:28:02 GMT pragmaticidealist said:

Wasn't around at the time (and not a Tory either), but Ipsos-Mori did a poll on who people expected to win, and IIRC it showed slightly more people expecting the Tories to at least be the largest party.

That may have been the expectation of many including myself, but as now being the largest party is going to be no good if you can't find parliamentary allies then the likelihood would have been that with anything fewer than about 315 Conservative seats we would have likely seen a Labour/Lib Dem coalition or minority Labour government with confidence and supply. This was in fact a more frightening prospect to me than an outright Labour win at the time because of the likelihood that the electoral system would be rigged as a condition of Lib Dem support (and also the greater Lib Dem fanaticism for European integration).

[carlton43]

Jun 7, 2020 11:14:51 GMT nodealbrexiteer said:

This may have been discussed elsewhere but this is mainly aimed at Conservative supporters here. Did you feel after the 1992 triumph having being achieved in a recession that you could go on and on?


I don't suppose anyone was seriously thinking about the type of result that did materialise next time.

I remember it well and had no such feelings.

For me it was an election to lose as part of a much needed purge of wets, social democrats, social liberals and the the anti-Thatcher Heathite and Majorite factions of Europhilia. It was a considerable disappointment in some ways.  It sealed our fate for 1997.

Labour let us down as well as themselves in gross hubris of assuming victory 2-weeks before the event.  I was living in Bassetlaw and told my Labour friends we were going to win and that it was their fault and would be worse for us than them.  They laughed at me right up to just after midnight on Election Day! 

They were inconsolable in a manner I found quite amazing, and would not be reassured my assurances that their win would be all the greater by being postponed, and that we were the ones who should be crying .  And so it proved.  I still can't believe how long the Blair honeymoon lasted!  And I was truly amazed at our lack of success at picking up seats in 2001 and 2005.  Still amazes me.

But no, I felt no sense of invincibility, never have.  Got closest to it in 1983 when we swept into so much that had always looked impossible.  But even that does not compare with 2019 and some of our victories there!  It is all ephemeral.  It will change.  We should be alright for 2024 though.

[tonyhill]

I was around at the time, and although not a Tory I picked up their unexpected victory a week or two out. At our 'thank you' party afterwards one of my good friends was talking to me gloomily about our prospects because Major was such a good managerialist. I laughed derisively. I do think that Major is a nice man though, and that he has never had the credit he deserves for his moves towards bringing peace to Northern Ireland.

[Deleted]

Jun 7, 2020 12:15:41 GMT AdminSTB said:

I remember my elder brothers predicting Bush would win in America in November that year, having seen what happened here in April.

Interesting you say that. In 2016, I had a gut feeling Trump would win as soon as Leave won on June 24th.

As for 1992, George H.W. Bush and John Major couldn't have been from more different backgrounds. Bush's father was a Senator.

[Harry Hayfield]

My grandmother, who used to do public speaking events to WI groups in the Midlands from the mid 80's to the early 2000's, actually spoke to a WI group on Election Night 1992 and she said that she was convinced the Conservatives would win the election because of the attitude the group had to Neil Kinnock calling him "Not British" and "John Major needs a mandate"

[nodealbrexiteer]

I remember being gloomy as a non Tory but feeling cheered up later that the majority was smaller, reading about the pro Labour bias in the electoral system and of course the events from Black Wednesday with the massive Tory poll deficit, council, European and by election results. Then there was the realisation they were in deep trouble.

Carlton43 don't forget the Conservative gain at Bath!

[gwynthegriff]

Jun 7, 2020 18:51:40 GMT Harry Hayfield said:

My grandmother, who used to do public speaking events to WI groups in the Midlands from the mid 80's to the early 2000's, actually spoke to a WI group on Election Night 1992 and she said that she was convinced the Conservatives would win the election because of the attitude the group had to Neil Kinnock calling him "Not British" and "John Major needs a mandate"

I'm no fan of Kinnock, but how on earth did they conclude he was "not British" ?

[manchesterman]

Jun 7, 2020 19:15:47 GMT gwynthegriff said:

Jun 7, 2020 18:51:40 GMT Harry Hayfield said:

My grandmother, who used to do public speaking events to WI groups in the Midlands from the mid 80's to the early 2000's, actually spoke to a WI group on Election Night 1992 and she said that she was convinced the Conservatives would win the election because of the attitude the group had to Neil Kinnock calling him "Not British" and "John Major needs a mandate"

I'm no fan of Kinnock, but how on earth did they conclude he was "not British" ?

I dont think they meant in terms of his birth certificate , it's code for "a goddamn commie"

[johnloony]

I was not a Conservative supporter at that time. In most of the year or two before the election, I thought that I was going to vote Labour in the general election. But a few months beforehand, I was undecided. Throughout the election campaign, I was still undecided, but I thought that I was probably going to vote Liberal Democrat rather than Labour. (I would have voted Green, if there was a Green party candidate in Croydon Central, but there wasn't.) In the end, I voted Liberal Democrat, and I only made up my mind for certain that I would vote Liberal Democrat rather than Labour on the morning of the election day itself.

It wasn't until years later that it even occurred to me to realise that I was the sort of swing voter who was being scared away from voting labour in the latter stages of the campaign, and that I was the key swing voter who caused Kinnock to lose the election.

It was fun to watch the Conservative government majority gradually disappearing over the next five years, and the government getting into depths of despair and chaos. The general feeling of corruption, incompetence and despair in the mid 1990s was far more intense and extreme than even the worst moments of Theresa May's government during the Brexit negotiations.

[greenchristian]

Jun 7, 2020 19:15:47 GMT gwynthegriff said:

Jun 7, 2020 18:51:40 GMT Harry Hayfield said:

My grandmother, who used to do public speaking events to WI groups in the Midlands from the mid 80's to the early 2000's, actually spoke to a WI group on Election Night 1992 and she said that she was convinced the Conservatives would win the election because of the attitude the group had to Neil Kinnock calling him "Not British" and "John Major needs a mandate"

I'm no fan of Kinnock, but how on earth did they conclude he was "not British" ?

You mean the Welsh aren't foreigners?

[🏴‍☠️ Neath West 🏴‍☠️]

Jun 8, 2020 11:22:05 GMT johnloony said:

I was not a Conservative supporter at that time. In most of the year or two before the election, I thought that I was going to vote Labour in the general election. But a few months beforehand, I was undecided. Throughout the election campaign, I was still undecided, but I thought that I was probably going to vote Liberal Democrat rather than Labour. (I would have voted Green, if there was a Green party candidate in Croydon Central, but there wasn't.) In the end, I voted Liberal Democrat, and I only made up my mind for certain that I would vote Liberal Democrat rather than Labour on the morning of the election day itself.

I thought you were an OMRLP voter back then?