The blair ascendancy

Following his defeat in 1992, Neil Kinnock stepped down as Labour leader. The man who succeeded Kinnock as Labour leader - John Smith - could not have been less like him, apart from sharing a Celtic heritage, although in the case of Smith this was Scots rather than Welsh. Smith was described by the then BBC’s Political Editor, Andrew Marr, as ‘Placid, secure, self-certain a Gaitskell-supporting moderate’. However, Smith did not subscribe to the Mandelson/Gould school of thought that the party needed to change still more radically if it was ever to be electable. Indeed, Smith was thought to share the sentiments of those in the party leadership who, following the 1992 defeat, felt that there had been ‘too much glitz and not enough substance’. And who believed that, following the Party’s progress at the polls from 1983 to 1987 and then 1992, ‘one more heave’ was all that was required in order to get Labour into power.