Cool Britannia: Life in the UK when the Labor Party last triumphed over the Tories | Politics News

An unknown book about a boy wizard, Harry Potter, was released from the presses, and its publishers expected to sell only 500 copies. The paparazzi craved exclusive photos of Lady Diana. And everywhere you heard the Spice Girls telling you to spice up your life.

The year was 1997 and it was the last time, until now, that Labor took power from the Conservatives, expelling a Conservative Prime Minister from Downing Street.

Then, as now, the Labor Party gained a overwhelming victoryending more than a decade of Conservative government – ​​18 years in 1997 and 14 years now.

But while it’s tempting to draw parallels between Tony Blair and Keir Starmer, a lot has changed in Britain in the last 27 years.

Blair inherited a healthy economy from his Conservative predecessor, John Major, and began his term in office in a decade of relative stability and prosperity.

Starmer has to face a cost of living crisis, the fallout from Brexit and the COVID pandemic, and at least two major global crises in the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

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“The national mood is very different,” said Adam Boulton, a political commentator and former political editor at Sky News.

“1997 was upbeat, summed up by Labour’s unofficial campaign anthem, Things Can Only Get Better.

“2024 is pessimistic – the song has had a resurgence, but more in the sense of ‘things can’t get worse – they can’.”

Cool Britannia

Tony Blair was elected for the first time in May 1997 – at 43, he was a young prime minister who promised a “new dawn”. The approach of the new millennium has increased the feeling of enthusiasm.

“It seemed as if a new era was beginning,” Blair wrote in his memoir, A Journey, recalling the enthusiasm of a crowd gathered in front of Number 10 the day after he won the vote.

“He passed not just through the crowd, but across the country. He affected everyone, lifting them up, giving them hope, making them believe that all things were possible.”

The economy was growing and inflation was low. The era of Cool Britannia amplified Britain’s soft power: Britpop bands like Oasis and Blur battled for chart dominance, and the Spice Girls were at the height of their girl power.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was published in June, the start of a multibillion-dollar franchise that would grow to include more novels, films and spin-offs.

In theaters, a film about a group of unemployed steelworkers who transform into unlikely male strippers, The Full Monty, warmed hearts in Britain and elsewhere while Pierce Brosnan was busy saving the world as 007.

Titanic would be released in time for the Christmas season in the US (and not until the following year in the UK).

Katrina and the Waves won Eurovision with the song Love Shine A Light – the last British band to do so.

Blair would at the same time catch the wave of Cool Britannia and embody it.

“The nation seemed to share the changing climate,” says Boulton.

“There was really positive enthusiasm for Tony Blair, the young American-style clean-living candidate with his shirt sleeves rolled up,” he adds. “He couldn’t go out in public without being harassed.”

In contrast, “this time, Labor canvassers reported that there was little enthusiasm for the party ‘on the doorstep’ – just a sense that the Conservatives’ time was up”.

In August, Lady Diana’s death in a car crash in Paris traumatized Britain, and Blair, by coining the phrase “the people’s princess”, embodied the national sense of mourning.

Years later, things would also turn sour for Blair, forever.

The country turned against him and his decision to follow then US President George W. Bush into the Iraq war, with a million people taking to the streets of London in 2003, and some in the years that followed. they followed, considering him a war criminal.

Google, Dolly the sheep and GTA

The internet era was in its infancy. The Google.com domain was registered in September, and an IBM computer called Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov. Meanwhile, the cloning of Dolly the sheep shocked the world.

Microsoft was the most valuable company in the world and Steve Jobs returned to Apple, while the release of the original Grand Theft Auto marked the beginning of a gaming franchise.

The Kyoto Protocol, which marks significant global efforts to combat climate change, was signed in December.

In his book The Nineties, American writer Chuck Klosterman writes: “It was the end of the 20th century, but also the end of an era in which we controlled technology more than technology controlled us.”

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‘Boomers, beware!’

After the Baby Boomers and before the Millennials, Generation X roughly comprised people born between 1965 and 1980, and was named after a novel by Canadian author Douglas Coupland in the early 1990s.

Also known as the MTV generation and immortalized in the American film Reality Bites, GenXers are typically defined as apathetic, nihilistic and prone to cynicism and self-deprecation.

“Twenty-somethings are rejecting the work, marriage and values ​​of the baby boomer generation,” Time magazine wrote in 1990.

“They would rather walk in the Himalayas than climb the corporate ladder. They have few heroes, no anthems, no style to call their own.”

In 1997, however, Time revised its assessment to describe a more hopeful and active cohort.

“They are flocking to tech startups, founding small businesses, and even taking up causes – all in their own way. They are rocking the Web, making movies in and out of Hollywood, making money, spending money,” she wrote. .

“Given the label Generation X, they’ve turned the label into a badge of honor. They cite X, X-igent,

“Boomers, watch out! It’s payback time.”

End of the British Empire

Newly elected, Blair witnessed the transfer of Hong Kong, Britain’s last remaining colony, to China, a historic transfer of power that brought an end to the British Empire.

The Berlin Wall had fallen and 9/11 had not yet happened – but the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s were the bloodiest conflict in Europe since the Second World War.

Britain was still part of the EU, and across the Atlantic the White House was occupied by a 50-year-old Democratic president and kindred spirit, Bill Clinton.

Russia, with Boris Yeltsin in the Kremlin and oligarchs at large, was admitted to international meetings, and Blair himself visited Yeltsin in Moscow that year.

No honeymoon for Starmer?

The state of the economy and his own popularity allowed Blair to enjoy a honeymoon period.

“I don’t expect Starmer to be so lucky,” says Boulton. “Bitterness and division have soured British politics this century.

“From day one he will be under attack for the state of schools, for the NHS, for migration, which he inherited.”

But Boulton adds that the Labor Party is better prepared for government this time, pointing to Sir Keir’s chief of staff (the experienced Sue Gray) and his own experience as an administrator during his tenure as Director of the Prosecution Service.

“I foresee a period of great unpopularity for the new Labor government, but Stamer may have the qualities to overcome it,” he says.