Unlike 1997, Labour has failed to finish off the Tories

Although Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government has been in office less than a month, similarities between this year’s election and Tony Blair’s 1997 victory end with the size of Starmer’s House of Commons majority – just 13 seats shy of Blair’s in 1997. Just four days into Blair’s government, Gordon Brown stunned the country with his announcement that he was going to make the Bank of England independent. Two of Brown’s four Conservative predecessors as Chancellor, Nigel Lawson and Norman Lamont, had used their resignation speeches to advocate Bank independence. The other two, John Major and Kenneth Clarke, had been strongly opposed. Brown came into the Treasury with a fully worked out plan for Bank independence.

Not only had Labour won a huge election victory, not only was it all about ‘Cool Britannia’: Labour stormed the commanding heights of economic policy. They were the economic modernisers now. It made the defeated Tories look not merely irrelevant but like out-of-date fossils from a bygone age.