For anyone on the left in Britain, the 1992 election strikes fear into their heart. Over twenty years on, the shock still hasn't worn off. The Conservative party, despite trailing in the polls, leadership turmoil, a severe recession and thirteen years in government, had pulled off another election victory. To make matters worse, John Major had the largest popular mandate ever recorded, with over 14 million votes to his name. For Labour, this was worse than bad. It was crushing. They would now be out of office until 1996 at least, making for seventeen or even eighteen years in the wilderness. Neil Kinnock, leader since 1983, resigned. He had done more than anyone to transform Labour from battered entity in 1983 into a party capable of taking power. But it apparently wasn't enough.
The smart money in the ensuing leadership election was on John Smith, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, becoming the new Labour leader. He had been seen as a viable, maybe even a better, alternative to Kinnock since the late eighties, and now his hour looked like it had come. But there was another candidate lurking in the wings. Bryan Gould, the Shadow Environment Secretary. The MP for Dagenham since 1983, and before that an MP in Southampton, Bryan Gould was a favourite of the old 'soft left,' and indeed benefited from the secret support of Kinnock. But Smith still looked the sure bet. That is, until Kinnock, still liked in the party despite taking it to two landslide defeats, went public with this support. The whole contest was thrown into disarray, and Gould unexpectedly, but decisively, emerged as the winner.
After his convincing win, the first thing Gould had to do was build a strong Shadow Cabinet. He was aided in this by the decision of John Smith to return to the backbenches, rather than provide an alternative leader for dissent to build around. His tragic death in 1994 after a heart attack ended speculation of a Gouldite-Smithite split which could have dogged any new government. With a good head for economics, Gould was able to take the fight to John Major's government. Sterling's dramatic exit from the ERM in September 1992 was an early coup, as Gould was opposed to membership. In fact, his mild Euroscepticism was a huge bonus in the years ahead, as he was able to take the lead on making common cause with the Tory's European Rebels to hinder Major's attempt to ratify the Maastricht Treaty. His strong Shadow Cabinet also helped enormously. Gould put Frank Dobson at the Treasury, whose sharp wit made mincemeat of Norman Lamont and led to electric battles with Ken Clarke across the despatch box. Robin Cook was moved into the foreign affairs brief, where he put Major's government under incredible pressure over the sale of arms to Iraq and the Bosnia fiasco. Meanwhile, Jack Straw shadowed home affairs, the only example where Gould enabled Labour to come at the Tories from the right. The two chief modernisers, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, were given middle ranking roles, enough to put them in the limelight, but not enough to enable them to drive through some of the fundamental changes they wanted.
When John Major finally went to the polls on May 1st 1997, Gould was in a good position to be the first Labour leader to oust a sitting Tory Prime Minister since Harold Wislon in 1974. However, even he later admitted to being shocked at the result. Labour took a crushing 401 seats to Major's 182; with the Liberal Democrats seizing 46 seats and the others mopping up the remaining 30 seats. The majority of 143 was the same as Mrs Thatcher had in 1983, and was just short of that achieved by Clement Attlee in 1945. Speaking at the victory rally in Festival Hall, the new Prime Minister promised:
The expectation of this Labour government is, that it will restrict the growth of untrammelled economic power. It will ensure that political power is equally shared – that the democratic process is maintained in good shape and that human and civil rights are protected. It will allow less powerful people to organise themselves so that their collective strength can protect them against the economic force of powerful individuals and groupings. It will guarantee the basic decencies of life to all in society, irrespective of their power or lack of it in the market-place, so that their life-chances are not arbitrarily restricted. It will develop the cohesion of society so that communities as well as individuals have a role to play and enjoy a stake in its success.
Bryan Gould didn't waste a moment. On the very first day, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Frank Dobson, gave the Bank of England the independence to set interest rates, providing they also focused on keeping a brake on the excess of the City of London. Dobson was also quick to raise taxes on higher rate earners, to fund spending on schools and healthcare. Better to get it over with, years before the next election. Michael Meacher at the Health Department put a halt to the NHS internal market, and began to pump money into the system to reverse years of underinvestment. Meanwhile, Blair, now Education Secretary, slashed primary school class sizes and began to oversee a vast building programme. However, tinkering with the curriculum was met coolly by teachers, and Gould refused to accept Blair's case for the introduction of tuition fees to fund university education; the money instead came from an extra penny on income tax, an idea the Liberal Democrats were cross to see stolen from under them. A windfall tax on the utility companies which Major and Thatcher had privatised helped to reduce unemployment, while John Prescott's renationalisation of British Rail was achieved by simply waiting for the privatised franchises to expire. Gordon Brown began a programme to support British business, promoting "British jobs for British workers" and helping to restore much of the manufacturing capacity which had been gutted under Thatcher. Mo Mowlan won glowing praise for helping Gould to force through a peace deal for Northern Ireland, achieved on St Andrews Day in 2000, whilst devolution in Scotland and Wales were also carried through. Abroad, Robin Cook was the face for an "ethical foreign policy," causing his standing to rise even further as Britain took a key role in Kosovo, Sierra Leone and the aerial bombardment of Iraq, although he and Gould visibly clashed over the issue of Europe, where Gould refused to allow Britain to join the Euro. Given how that turned out, we should be grateful.
But with fifteen years hindsight, it is easy to remember only the big things. Virtually forgotten now is the huge row over the Millennium celebrations, culminating in the cancellation of a bizarre project inherited from the Conservatives which would have seen a giant tent erected on reclaimed land in the London Docklands. The extra money was split between putting on a decent fireworks display on the Thames and increased investment in public services. And not all of the term was rosy; the foot and mouth crisis caused a huge dent in the government's popularity, as did the fuel protests of 2000 and the apparent waste of the higher tax takings, while the move to ban fox hunting stalled amidst terrible clashes with rural England. And the government's own natural supporters weren't all impressed, with the TUC lobbying for the return of more trade union powers, calls sensibly ignored.
Yet despite these crises, and a strong challenge in Parliament from new Conservative leader, Ken Clarke, there was little public appetite for a return for the Tories, enabling Gould to win the 2001 election with a majority of 97. Very quickly, the old world was changed forever after September 11th. The re-elected Prime Minister threw Britain's support behind the US in the aftermath of the attacks, and sent British troops to Afghanistan. However, as the Iraq Crisis of 2002 dragged on, it became clear that Gould would not be the Prime Minister to deal with it. By revealing that he intended to retire by 65, he sparked immediate calls in the Labour party for him to leave now and give his successor time to settle in before an election in 2005 or 2006. Many were worried by the threat posed by the new Tory leader William Hague, and they figured Labour needed a popular and effective leader to take the fight to the Tories. Surprisingly, that figure was not the heir-apparent, embattled Education Secretary Tony Blair, but rather a Scottish left-winger who combined a command of detail with a strong party background. Robin Cook will be remembered best as the Prime Minister who refused to back "Dubya's" war in Iraq, and who helped steer Britain through the economic storm of the Great Recession, although even he could never have foreseen that introducing proportional representation would lead to the creation of a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition in 2009. And as much as he'd never give to admit it, David Cameron's fate at the 2013 election is also a legacy of Bryan Gould's remarkable period in office, as his hopes for recovery are pinned on the manufacturing industries and social support structures built during the Gould years.
P.S. Gould Cabinet, 1997
Prime Minister- Bryan Gould
Chancellor of the Exchequer- Frank Dobson
Foreign Secretary- Robin Cook
Home Secretary- Jack Straw
Defence Secretary- George Robertson
Education and Employment Secretary- Tony Blair
Health Secretary- Michael Meacher
Trade and Industry Secretary- Gordon Brown
Social Security Secretary- David Blunkett
Transport Secretary- John Prescott
Environment Secretary- David Clark
International Development Secretary- Clare Short
Families and Equality Secretary- Harriet Harman
Arts, Media and Sport Secretary- Chris Smith
Scottish Secretary- Donald Dewar
Welsh Secretary- Alun Michael
Northern Irish Secretary- Mo Mowlam
Chief Secretary to the Treasury- Alistair Darling
Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Minister- Gavin Strang
Minister Without Portfolio- Jack Cunningham
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Deputy Prime Minister- Margaret Beckett
Leader of the House of Commons- Ann Taylor
Leader of the House of Lords- Lord Richard
Lord Chancellor- Lord Irvine
Attorney General- John Morris
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This post has been a long time in the making, and I've rewritten it several times. Credit should be given to:
- Alwyn Turner, whose excellent blog can be found at http://alwynwturner.blogspot.co.uk, for suggesting this counterfactual. Otherwise, you'd probably have just read all about John Smith and his time at No 10.
- My friend Tom, whose interest and knowledge of modern Britain, it's politics and the Labour party helped get me going on this (I would have named you Tom, but now you're a trainee civil servant I'm not sure I'm allowed to!).
- John Smith: A Life by Mark Stuart (London, Politico, 2005); the chapters on the 1992 Labour leadership were especially useful in finding out how this scenario could actually have come about.
- Bryan Gould's website, which can be found at http://www.bryangould.net. The 'victory speech' was an edited version of an article found there from 2006/07, and all the rest of the articles leave you wondering what a really radical Prime Minister could have pulled off in 1997-2001, or indeed during 2007-2010.
