Why did Harold Wilson win the 1964 Election

general election in 1957 then things may have favoured labour. However, Suez did not split

Edward Heath led the conservative party through a difficult and revolutionary period in British politics from the years 1965 to 1974, punctuated by the joining of the ECC in 1973, prolonged damaging strikes, high levels of inflation, and many monumental U-turns through the period of his office. The concept of change is most notably seen right from the offset of his leadership as he was the first conservative leader to be elected democratically, by ballot, marking a turning away from the old boy network of Tory prime ministers preceding him. He himself went against tradition, coming from very humble backgrounds, having been through the grammar school

Although the UK Prime Minister is elected separately through Parliamentary elections, unlike the USA President, there is a trend for Prime Ministers to claim popular authority on the basis of electoral victory. Prime Ministers have therefore become the ideological consciences of their

However, Balfour cannot be solely to blame for the decline in popularity from the Conservative party. A key issue in the defeat of the Conservative party was Tariff reform discussed previously, although Balfour cannot be blamed for this issue as it was Chamberlain in favour of the reform and was the one that put it into place, therefore it was his responsibility for the split of the Conservative party, not Balfour's.

This period of Labour rule is often marked down as a poor performance on behalf of the labour party, critically looked upon by many historians. There were many failings under the rule of this government however the circumstances they were placed in caused severe restraints in their options.

To assess the Wilson Government which ran from the years 1964 to 1970 you have to look at what the Labour government promised to achieve if they won the election in 1964. You have to look at what the changes the Wilson government brought forward in their time in office and how the personalities of its politician’s effects decisions made.

By the early twentieth century the Liberal Government was worried that Britain’s military capability and general military power was not as strong and it once was. Therefore, the Government’s concern over national security definitely influenced the decision for the reforms. However, there are three main factors that also need to be taken into account when deciding if concern over national security was the real reason for the reforms: the Social reasons, concerns for Britain’s Empire and the Political motive. The Social reasons played a large part in persuading the Liberals to reform. The detailed reports of Booth and Rowntree, and the evidence which was brought to light, highlighted that nearly a 1/3 of Britain’s population lived in

This essay will examine the impact of the Conservative party during their period in office between 1951 and 1964. The assessments by historians of these thirteen years vary widely as the Conservative rule left behind a mixed feeling about its achievements. We will therefore be discussing to what extent their period in office can be described as “thirteen years wasted”, based on their performances in the political, economic and social sectors.

Another contributing factor at this election may have been performance in office, which in the above statement is not seen as important as personality and image. However, performance in office may have been extremely detrimental for the conservatives in 1997 because of their crisis in 1992. This focuses on the retrospective model, as people saw the Conservatives as incompetent in handling the economy because of Black Wednesday in September 1992. The Conservatives and especially Noramnt Lamont, Chancellor of the Exchequer, were to blame for the crisis that saw the pound forced out of the ERM. This didn’t help at the 1997 general election where they did extremely badly in a huge Labour win.

‘The Labour governments of 1964-1970 were more successful than the Labour governments of 1974-1979.’ How far do you agree?

Whether or not there truly was a ‘post war consensus’ in British politics from 1951 to 1964 is a highly debatable topic of which historians can often appear to be in two minds about; on one hand, Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson infamously described the period as ‘Thirteen years wasted’, whereas historian Robert Blake (a supporter of the Conservatives’, regards it as a ‘Golden age of growth’. The likes of Kevin Jeffrey’s even argue that consensus had even started before the war. Overall, the central issue was the idea of a mixed economy.

The centrepiece of Labour 's programme of constitutional reform was undoubtedly devolution. This was achieved with remarkably few problems. There now seems no likelihood that the new arrangements could be reversed, even by a Conservative administration. The election on 6 May 1999 of a Parliament in Scotland, with extensive powers of primary legislation as well as tax-raising, and an Assembly in Wales, with powers of secondary legislation only, will have a profound impact on governance within the UK. In

During her term of office she reshaped almost every aspect of British politics, reviving the economy, reforming outdated institutions, and reinvigorating the nation's foreign policy. She challenged and did much to overturn the psychology of decline, which had become rooted in Britain since the Second World War, pursuing national recovery with striking energy and determination. In the process, Margaret

It is unfortunate that despite Sir Antony Eden having successfully served as Britain for three decades as a foreign secretary and his subsequent rise to become the British prime minister in 1955 was overshadowed by the 1956 Suez Crisis that saw him tender his resignation after serving approximately 18 months in office. While justifying this action, Eden cited that he was protecting British commercial interests of which the recent nationalization of the Suez Canal by Nasser seemed to threaten. Eden strongly perceived Nasser as a dictator and that his actions could easily be replicated with the actions of Hitler and Mussolini that subsequently ignited World War.

The United Kingdom finished World War I a few years prior to the Great Depression, and was a big factor in the length of the depression. The reason why the U.K’s depression’s length was so long was because of the debt that the European countries had grossed during World War I. This debt that had to be paid, left the Europeans in a sticky situation, as they tried to rebuild their economy to what it once was. The effect of this debt and other economic problems had caused the unemployment rate to accelerate from one million to 2.5 million unemployed UK citizens, some cities even reached rates from as high as 70%. When other countries received the hit from the depression, Britain couldn’t export nearly as much as they used to. This was a chain reaction that caused the world to be effected as a whole, and what caused Britain to get hit so strongly. Great Britain didn’t use their Government revenue expansion very strongly to an extent, however later on did increase the