This week we are re-running some of our favourite episodes. Today in Focus will return with new episodes on Tuesday 2 January 2024.
Labour went into the 1997 general election having been in opposition for 18 years. None of the shadow cabinet had any government experience. And yet the party led by Tony Blair was expected to win a majority against a Conservative party that had run out of ideas and was mired in scandals.
In the second of a two-part series looking back at that period, the political correspondent Kiran Stacey hears from the campaign strategist Peter Mandelson, the director of communications Alastair Campbell, the policy chief David Miliband, the MP Harriet Harman and the political adviser Liam Byrne.
Stacey hears how Blair decided the healthiest thing for the long term was to have any fundamental policy rows before the election to enable them to hit the ground running. And to boil all the ideas down to five totemic offers to the country that would fit on a credit-card-sized pledge card. Reaching that point would be a bruising experience for some.
Now, 26 years on from that victory – Labour’s biggest ever – those who helped craft it look ahead to the next campaign that the party faces. What lessons can be learned? And despite the importance of reassuring voters, is it now time to be more radical?
Photograph: PA Archive/PA Images
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