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1984 Election fallout
1984 Election fallout

Unexpectedly, the Labour Party won the general election. There were different degrees of winning though.

Foot’s party ended up the biggest party in the Commons with the most seats. Behind them were the Conservatives in second place with the Social Democrat–Liberal Alliance behind them. Labour didn’t have enough MPs to achieve a working majority in the Commons though. They could only form a minority government with what they had and would need the support of the Alliance to be able to do anything and even then, such a deal between the two parties – or three if one was to look at the Alliance as two separate parties in an electoral agreement rather than as one solid element – would only just be enough. The Alliance was needed by Labour for what was called ‘confidence and supply’. The mathematics didn’t work for a Conservative-Alliance deal due to other, smaller parties present with seats in the Commons.

What had happened to the Conservative lead and the rise of both Labour and the Alliance?

Fingers would afterwards be pointed at Tebbit. The prime minister was never popular on a personal level but he was running as leader of a party of candidates aiming to be MPs. In theory, the voters voted for them, not him. In practice, he was a figure of hate for many. Reacting against him and his government’s policies, the voters gave their votes to others. The Alliance siphoned off some Labour votes but more so Conservative ones giving many seats to Labour, albeit with countless instances of small majorities for the Labour candidates who won their contests. The Conservatives hemorrhaged support nationwide and especially where it counted too in key marginals that the Alliance ran strong in: Labour often slipped through the middle and ended up with the largest number of votes in those key contests. The hatred for Tebbit had been detected by Conservative activists on the ground towards the end of the campaign but it had been far too late to do anything about that; Social Democrat and Liberal activists also picked up those signs and aimed to increase their vote-share by campaigning harder on an anti-Tebbit message. When it came to vote-share, the Alliance came out of the election with seats won not equating in any fair manner to the number of votes they gained. Such was the way of first past the post though.

Labour as the biggest party prepared to form a new government but first they needed the support of the Alliance. Steel’s Liberals were ready to do so in a repeat of the Lab-Lib Pact of the late 70s yet there came instant opposition to the idea from elements of Jenkins’ Social Democrats. They had broken away in reaction to Foot’s leadership of Labour and the insanity witnessed within the party: now they were just expected to join with the Liberals in supporting a Foot-led government as a matter of fact by their so-called allies.

Many Social Democrat MPs – there were fifteen MPs overall among the thirty-six Alliance candidates elected – gave an emphatic no to such an idea.


The election hadn’t been kind to the Social Democrats. They had lost half of their number of seats despite hopes of increasing what they had gone into the general election with. One of the original Gang of Four, Shirley Williams, had lost her seat and so too had many other Labour defectors to the party launched in 1981. Jenkins, David Owen and Bill Rodgers (the others from the Four) retained theirs though. The millions of votes nationwide for the Alliance hadn’t been concentrated where it mattered for the Social Democrat candidates to take enough seats while their Liberal partners had done far better in terms of seats where their candidates capitialised on distaste for Labour and hatred for Tebbit more than the Conservatives.

Almost half of the Social Democrat MPs including Owen refused to enter a confidence and supply agreement with Labour as the Alliance position was to do so causing the Conservatives to be out and the Alliance having a major position of influence in the next government. They didn’t want to be part of what Labour was to bring for the country. Steel and especially one of his MPs Cyril Smith – MP for Rochdale who had long ago called for the Social Democrats to be ‘strangled at birth’ because he saw them as threatening the Liberals – raged against this. They told Jenkins and Rodgers to fix the problem. The numbers didn’t work without the Social Democrats. Foot would talk with the smaller parties such as the Scottish Nationalists and Plaid Cymru to get their votes in the Commons if the whole of the Social Democrats weren’t onside as a whole. In such a rainbow coalition, the voice of the Alliance – whatever members joined in supporting Labour in the Commons – would be diluted rather than effective as a whole.

Liberal chief whip Alan Beith was influential in meeting with Owen and getting him and the ‘rebel’ MPs whose support he had in holding their noses and sticking to the Alliance agreement. Owen was reminded how the public saw the Alliance as a whole rather than two parties in an electoral pact. The calm, reasonable Beith also pointed out the benefits of being in a position to restrain the worst elements of the Labour left. Outside Owen and his supporters were nothing, inside they were important. There were concessions to be won form supporting Labour as well in the form of opening talks on proportional representation and single transferable voting.

Owen and his cohorts saw the way the wind was blowing and back-pedaled.


Tebbit was a believer in parliamentary democracy. The Conservatives had lost the election and there was a new government to be formed from what was once the opposition. The initial dread of a Labour government in Britain, with Foot being led around by the nose by Militant, weren’t going to turn into a reality: there were only five of them elected. He was aware of the content of the Social Democrat position when it came to how they reunited themselves with the belief that they could rein in the worst ideas put forth in the Labour manifesto.

He went to the Palace to see the Queen and step down as prime minister. However, Tebbit didn’t resign as the leader of the Conservatives. Large numbers of his colleagues were aghast at the idea of him remaining yet he had the notion that the Labour–Alliance agreement was sure to fail in the months ahead and there would be another election before the end of the year or early next year. He intended to lead the Conservatives back to power then. So many Labour majorities were wafer-thin and in a new election, those seats would return to the Conservatives en mass. If his party wanted him gone, they would have to force him out and he still had many supporters despite just losing a general election.

Foot went to the Palace and then with the State Opening of Parliament and the Queen’s Speech, Britain had a new government. Labour led a minority government with the Social Democrat–Liberal Alliance as partners in the Commons only for confidence and supply votes.

How would Labour deliver upon its manifesto promises?

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