Letter: Liberal landslide of  1906 may be a better parallel than 1997

Comparisons are inevitably being drawn between the expected result of the upcoming British general election and the Labour landslide of 1997 (“Tory ads warn of ‘massive majority’ for Starmer as electoral campaign falters”, Report, June 11).

But the Liberal landslide of 1906 may in fact be a more apt comparison. In round numbers, the Conservatives then lost 250 of their 400 seats (compared to 180 in 1997) and the Liberals gained over 200 seats to Tony Blair’s 150. There are a few other parallels between 1906 and today. At the previous “khaki” election in 1900, the Conservatives rode a wave of patriotic fervour at the height of the Boer war, which perhaps has some echoes of the “Get Brexit done” mantra of 2019.

Both then and today, the election comes a few years after the death of a revered and long-reigning monarch who defined an era, a loss which has accentuated a sense of national uncertainty. Then as now the Tories were weakened by a perceived national humiliation — in the early 1900s, the inadequacies exposed by the Boer war and now the short-lived Truss premiership and financial crisis of 2022.

While Conservative divisions over free trade and imperial preference in the early 1900s may seem a world away, they reflected clashing views of Britain’s proper role in the world, which perhaps has some similarities with Conservative ideological battles today over whether to mimic or even co-opt Nigel Farage.

The Liberal governments from 1906 went on to introduce some momentous changes, effectively establishing the welfare state and neutering the blocking power of the House of Lords. It remains to be seen if Labour will do the same if it wins a similar or even bigger majority.

Bill Smyth
Bagshot, Surrey, UK