The Election of 2010

·      The election that saw Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, removed from office, ending the New Labour era.

·      David Cameron's Conservatives increased their share of the seats, benefiting from four years of efforts at modernisation under their new leader.

·      The Conservatives did not gain an independent majority, so had to form a coalition — the first since 1945 — with the Liberal Democrats. Against predictions, the coalition survived a full term.

·      Cameron won a slender Conservative majority in the 2015 election.

Turnout: 65.1%     Size of majority: None following the election; the Conservative—Liberal

Democrat coalition that was formed afterwards had a majority of 77

None of the three main party leaders had previously led a general election campaign, a situation which had not occurred since the 1979 election. During the campaign, the three main party leaders engaged in a series of televised debates, the first such debates in a UK general election campaign. The Liberal Democrats achieved a breakthrough in opinion polls after the first debate, in which their leader Nick Clegg was widely seen as the strongest performer.  This became known as 'Cleggmania'.  

Nonetheless, on polling day their share of the vote increased by only 1% over the previous general election, and they suffered a net loss of five seats. This was still the Liberal Democrats' largest popular vote since the party's creation in 1988, and they found themselves in a pivotal role in the formation of the new government. The share of votes for parties other than Labour or the Conservatives was 35%, the largest since the 1918 general election. In terms of votes it was the most "three-cornered" election since 1923, and in terms of seats since 1929. The Green Party of England and Wales won its first ever seat in the House of Commons, and the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland also gained its first elected member

Gordon Brown, while in his Prime Ministerial Car on 28 April, privately described a 65-year-old woman and lifelong Labour voter, Gillian Duffy, from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, a Labour-Liberal Democrat marginal seat, as a "bigoted woman".Brown's remarks were recorded by a Sky News microphone he was still wearing, and widely broadcast.

‘Bigotgate’ – Why is it an example of the difficulties of campaigning in the age of 24/7 News Media?

Why did Labour lose?

After 2003 Labour experienced a severe decline in its public standing, not least because of public unease with Blair’s role in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. In October 2004 Blair announced that he would seek a third term as prime minister but would not stand for a fourth term. The likeliest successor was Brown, Blair’s chancellor of the Exchequer since 1997. 

Brown and Labour initially got a bounce in the public opinion polls. Several incidents—within 48 hours of his taking office, two car bombs were placed in London, and a third vehicle was driven into Glasgow Airport; June floods brought a swift response from Brown in the shape of support for local councils and on flood defenses; and an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease was quickly contained—rallied support for the government and enhanced Brown’s reputation but overshadowed his attempts to present himself as a man with fresh ideas for the future. No longer trailing the Conservatives in the polls, Labour took the lead, tempting Brown to call a snap election in order to secure his own mandate, but a dramatic shift back to the Conservatives in September 2007 quelled such speculation. Brown’s flirtation with calling an election ended with an eventual decision that there would be no such election before 2009, crystallizing the sentiment among many that Brown dithered in making decisions. By December 2007 the Conservatives held a lead of about 13 percent in the polls—their largest lead since 1989. 

rown’s claim to competent economic stewardship—in 1997 he had promised that the days of economic “boom and bust” were over—was undermined in 2008. His poll ratings suffered from a sharp decline in consumer confidence brought on, in large measure, from a steep drop in housing prices and an increase in inflation. There were murmurings of an internal leadership to challenge for the next election. But in September 2008 a global economic crisis brought a firm and steady response from Brown, for which the prime minister was widely praised. Labour’s standing recovered slightly, effectively forestalling any potential challenge to Brown. He rallied the party faithful at the party conference in Manchester in September 2008 with an exceptionally effective speech, the most memorable line of which was “This is no time for a novice.” The statement was ostensibly directed at David Cameron, the Conservatives’ relatively young and inexperienced leader. 

Still, Labour continued to trail the Conservatives, and on June 4, 2009, the party suffered a dismal national election result, securing only 15.7 percent of the vote across the British mainland in elections to the European Parliament. Immediately thereafter James Purnell, the secretary of state for work and pensions, resigned from Brown’s cabinet. In his resignation letter, Purnell wrote: “I now believe your continued leadership makes a Conservative victory more, not less likely.…I am therefore calling on you to stand aside to give our Party a fighting chance of winning.” Brown’s allies worked furiously to ensure that no other minister followed Purnell’s example. None did, but Brown’s authority was visibly weakened.

Labour’s morale took a further hit in September 2009 when, just hours after Brown delivered his main speech to the party’s annual conference, The Sun—the country’s biggest-selling daily newspaper—announced that it was switching support from Labour to the Conservatives. To most observers, a Labour loss in 2010 appeared inevitable, and potential leadership challengers began positioning themselves for the postelection fight that would likely follow. Party insiders hoped that the fratricide that had followed Labour’s 1979 loss and led to 18 years in opposition would be avoided.

A poll in December 2009 showed Labour trailing the Conservatives by only nine points and gave the party some hope that it might pull off a dramatic comeback victory, much as John Major did in 1992, or at least force a hung Parliament, which had last occurred in the February 1974 election. Still, Brown’s woes continued into 2010; on January 6, in yet another effort to dump him as party leader before the election, former Labour cabinet ministers Patricia Hewitt and Geoffrey Hoon called on Labour MPs to hold a secret ballot for the Labour leadership. Their attempt ultimately was unsuccessful, but it again underscored the precarious position of Brown and the unease within the party as Labour faced the prospect of losing a general election.

Why did the Conservatives (win) or at least do better?

2005 the Conservatives elected a new young, charismatic leader, Cameron quickly captured the imagination of party members. He defeated David Davis in the leadership election by 68–32 percent in the ballot of party members and became party leader on December 6. Cameron immediately signaled a shift away from the right and toward more centrist policies, including greater emphases on improving public services, redistributing wealth to Britain’s poor, and combating global poverty. His leadership brought a fresh Conservative face to the voters, though he was attacked by Labour for his aristocratic pedigree (he came from a wealthy family and went to Eton and Oxford). Cameron sought to shed his party’s right-wing image, which had dented its popularity for the previous 10 years. In contrast to his three predecessors, he emphasized that cutting taxes would not be a priority for the next Conservative government; economic stability and strong public services would come first. He also sought to put his party at the heart of the debates about civil liberties and climate change—causes previously more associated with politicians to the left of centre. At his party’s annual conference in October 2006, Cameron told Conservative activists, “In these past 10 months we have moved back to the ground on which this Party’s success has always been built: the centre ground of British politics.” 

Cameron’s energetic, moderate, and youthful appearance appealed to many voters. In 2006, for the first time in 14 years, the Conservatives established a sustained opinion-poll lead over Labour, averaging 5–7 percent. The Conservatives’ lead over Labour remained over the subsequent years, though Gordon Brown’s election as prime minister brought a brief resurgence for Labour. Still, as a general election drew near, an air of inevitability of a Conservative victory began to pervade the political atmosphere.