British general election 2001
The 2001 British General Election of June 7, 2001 was also referred to by the media as a "silent landslide". After the Labor Party won a landslide victory in the 1997 election , it was able to repeat its victory in 2001 and maintain its large lead. Tony Blair was the first Labor Prime Minister to be re-elected after a full term. The Labor majority shrank only marginally from 179 to 167 seats.
This choice was marked by great stability. 620 of the 641 seats in England , Wales and Scotland stayed with the same party as in 1997. The Conservative Party only managed to gain one seat net and only marginally improve its catastrophic 1997 result. The Liberal Democrats gained six seats and with a total of 52 seats were better than they had been since the 1920s when they were last in government.
The election was originally scheduled for May 3rd. But due to the foot-and-mouth disease , which hit the UK hard at the time, Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered a month's postponement. The election met with little interest from the population. The turnout was just 59%, the lowest since 1918. Labor had such a comfortable lead in opinion polls that some bookmakers paid out the winnings for bets on a Labor election victory before election day.
In Northern Ireland the election was far more exciting. The parties who opposed the Good Friday Agreement won . The moderate parties UUP and SDLP lost seats to the extreme parties DUP and Sinn Féin . The UK Unionist Party lost its only seat.
Election results
| Political party | be right | Mandates | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| number | % | +/- | number | +/- | ||
| Labor Party | 10,724,953 | 40.7 | −2.5 | 412 | −6 | |
| Conservative party | 8,357,615 | 31.7 | +1.0 | 166 | +1 | |
| Liberal Democrats | 4,814,321 | 18.3 | +1.5 | 52 | +6 | |
| Scottish National Party | 464.314 | 1.8 | −0.2 | 5 | −1 | |
| UK Independence Party | 390,563 | 1.5 | +1.2 | - | - | |
| Ulster Unionist Party | 216,839 | 0.8 | - | 6th | −4 | |
| Plaid Cymru | 195,893 | 0.7 | + 0.2 | 4th | - | |
| Democratic Unionist Party | 181,999 | 0.7 | +0.4 | 5 | +3 | |
| Sinn Féin | 175.933 | 0.7 | +0.3 | 4th | +2 | |
| Social Democratic and Labor Party | 169.865 | 0.6 | - | 3 | - | |
| Green Party of England and Wales | 166,477 | 0.6 | +0.4 | - | - | |
| Independent | 97.070 | 0.4 | - | 1 | - | |
| Scottish Socialist Party | 72,516 | 0.3 | - | - | - | |
| Socialist Alliance | 57,553 | 0.2 | - | - | - | |
| Socialist Labor Party | 57,288 | 0.2 | - | - | - | |
| British National Party | 47.129 | 0.2 | +0.1 | - | - | |
| Alliance Party of Northern Ireland | 28,999 | 0.1 | −0.1 | - | - | |
| Independent Kidderminster Hospital and Health Concern | 28,487 | 0.1 | +0.1 | 1 | +1 | |
| Liberal party | 13,685 | 0.1 | - | - | - | |
| UK Unionist Party | 13,509 | 0.1 | +0.1 | - | −1 | |
| Others | 93,196 | 0.2 | - | - | - | |
| total | 26,368,204 | 100.0 | 659 | |||
| Eligible voters | 44,403,238 | |||||
| voter turnout | 59.4% | |||||
| Source: UK Parliament | ||||||
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b General Election results, 7 June 2001 UK Parliament , PDF document (English)
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