Alexander Chapman Ferguson, Baron Ferguson of Govan, is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1987 to 2001 and leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 2001.
A former footballer, scoring over 150 goals in 300 league games in Scotland, he is remembered as the ‘man who beat Maggie’ and reinvented the Labour Party. Under Ferguson, the party used the phrase ‘Modern Labour’ to distance itself from previous Labour Governments and the traditional ideas of socialism. In the 1992 General Election, Ferguson’s Labour was re-elected with a larger majority, after which he replaced senior members of his Cabinet with a number of younger politicians, commonly called ‘Fergie’s Fledglings’.
While opposition politicians dismissed his new team as lightweight, insisting you “couldn’t govern with kids”, Ferguson, alongside fellow Scots Campbell, Brown and Blair, successfully led the UK through recessions of the early 90s. In 1995 he indicated he’d step down before the next election, and his reneging on that promise led to a schism in his relationship with the younger members of his cabinet. Winning his final election in 1997, the extended campaign to succeed him saw Labour slump to an electoral performance worse than any since 1983. Long seen as his Prince Regent, Foreign Secretary Alan Milburn MP led an exhausted party to 290 seats and a hung Parliament in 2001.
The independence of the Bank of England, introduction of the Minimum Wage, reform of the NHS, and Devolution are seen as Ferguson’s most progressive achievements, while his support of President Quayle’s foreign policy is generally seen as controversial. The Milburn-Kennedy Government that followed built on most of his domestic achievements, while distancing themselves from much of his foreign policy.
On his resignation as Prime Minister he was made a life peerage which entitled him to serve in the House of Lords.