The British general election of 7 June 2001

On Thursday 7 June 2001, elections were held for all seats in the Westminster Parliament and also for local elections in the United Kingdom. In the local elections, for 34 county councils and 11 unitary authorities, the Conservatives gained slightly, taking control of five new councils, at the expense of three Liberal Democrat and two Labour-controlled councils. The 2001 general election was very different from the general election in 1997. In 1997 New Labour won the election campaign with a landslide (Hart 1997). John Major's tired and highly unpopular Conservative government was decisively rejected. Tony Blair's supposedly new ideological direction of the Third Way was popularised in an intensely professional campaign based on the patriotic symbol of the red rose. The most significant factors in 2001 were the extremely low turnout and the substantial replication of the 1997 result despite the very different campaign. Blair's victory again secured him one of the largest majorities on record, as well as being the first time that a Labour leader had been re-elected after governing for the full parliamentary term.