ABSTRACT
We end with a review of the performance and role of the media in what was arguably the most important party political event in Britain since the victory of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 – the 1997 general election, which brought eighteen years of Conservative government to an end and replaced it with Tony Blair’s New Labour administration. Then, as in all British election campaigns since at least 1959, practitioners of journalism and political communication combined to construct a ‘media election’.
