The Years of Opposition

Abstract

The years between 1979 and 1997 were turbulent ones for the Labour Party; it went through four leaders, four post-election inquests, a full-scale Policy Review and several reviews of policy, and innumerable bouts of introspection some resulting in significant constitutional reforms. By 1997, the Party was commonly referred to as ‘New Labour’, was the Party of choice of The Sun newspaper, and had a leader elected to parliament as recently as 1983. This chapter attempts to provide an overview of the politics of the Labour Party and its approach to economic policy-making in the period from 1979 to 1997. This will provide a framework within which to locate the debates on aspects of Labour’s economic strategy considered in subsequent chapters.