1983 United Kingdom general election in the context of "Michael Howard"

Witney is a county constituency in Oxfordshire represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first-past-the-post system of election, and was created for the 1983 general election.

Historically a safe Conservative Party seat for the most part of its existence, it has been represented since 2024 by Charles Maynard of the Liberal Democrats. From 2001 to 2016, the constituency was represented by David Cameron, who was the prime minister from 2010 until his resignation in 2016, and the Leader of the Conservative Party (2005–2016).

The 1906 United Kingdom general election was held from 12 January to 8 February 1906. The Liberals under Henry Campbell-Bannerman won a landslide victory against a bewildered Conservative Party, in which its leader, Arthur Balfour, lost his seat; the party won the lowest number of seats it ever had in its history, a nadir unsurpassed until 2024. This particular landslide is now ranked alongside the 1924, 1931, 1945, 1983, 1997, 2001, and 2024 general elections as one of the largest landslide election victories.

The Labour Representation Committee was far more successful than at the 1900 general election and after the election would be renamed the Labour Party with 29 MPs and Keir Hardie as leader. The Irish Parliamentary Party, led by John Redmond, achieved its seats with a relatively low number of votes, as 73 candidates stood unopposed. This election was a landslide defeat for the Conservative Party and their Liberal Unionist allies, with the primary reason given by historians being the party's weakness after its split over the issue of free trade (Joseph Chamberlain had resigned from government in September 1903 in order to campaign for Tariff Reform, which would allow "preferential tariffs"). Many working-class people at the time saw this as a threat to the price of food, hence the debate was nicknamed "Big Loaf, Little Loaf". The Liberals' landslide victory of 125 seats over all other parties led to the passing of social legislation known as the Liberal reforms.

James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx (11 March 1916 – c. 23 May 1995), was a British politician who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, from 1964 to 1970 and from 1974 to 1976. He was Leader of the Labour Party from 1963 to 1976, Leader of the Opposition twice from 1963 to 1964 and again from 1970 to 1974, and a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1945 to 1983. Wilson is the only Labour leader to have formed governments following four general elections.

Born in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, to a politically active lower middle-class family, Wilson studied philosophy, politics and economics at Jesus College, Oxford. He was later an Economic History lecturer at New College, Oxford, and a research fellow at University College, Oxford. Elected to Parliament in 1945, Wilson was appointed to the Attlee government as a Parliamentary secretary; he became Secretary for Overseas Trade in 1947, and was elevated to the Cabinet shortly thereafter as President of the Board of Trade. Following Labour's defeat at the 1955 election, Wilson joined the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Chancellor, and was moved to the role of Shadow Foreign Secretary in 1961. When Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell died in January 1963, Wilson won the leadership election to replace him, becoming Leader of the Opposition.

Charles Peter Kennedy (25 November 1959 – 1 June 2015) was a British politician who served as Leader of the Liberal Democrats from 1999 to 2006, and was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Ross, Skye and Lochaber from 1983 to 2015.

Kennedy was elected to the House of Commons in 1983 as a member of the Social Democratic Party, and after the SDP–Liberal Alliance merged into the Liberal Democrats, became the party's president. Following the resignation of Paddy Ashdown in August 1999, Kennedy became the party's leader. He led the party in the 2001 and 2005 general elections, increasing its number of seats in the House of Commons to their highest level since 1923, led his party's opposition to the Iraq War, and broadly positioned the party to the left of New Labour. A charismatic and affable speaker in public, he appeared extensively on television during his leadership.

James Gordon Brown (born 20 February 1951) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010. Previously, he was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1997 to 2007 under Tony Blair. Brown was Member of Parliament (MP) for Dunfermline East from 1983 to 2005 and for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath from 2005 to 2015. He has served as United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education since 2012, and he was appointed as World Health Organization Ambassador for Global Health Financing in 2021.

A doctoral graduate, Brown studied history at the University of Edinburgh. He spent his early career as a lecturer at a further education college and as a television journalist. Brown was elected to the House of Commons at the 1983 general election as the MP for Dunfermline East. He was appointed to Neil Kinnock's shadow cabinet in 1989 and was named Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer by John Smith in 1992. Following Labour's victory in the 1997 general election, Brown was appointed as chancellor, becoming the longest-serving in modern history. Brown's time as chancellor was marked by major reform of Britain's monetary and fiscal policy architecture, transferring interest rate setting to the Bank of England, extending the powers of the Treasury to cover much domestic policy, and transferring banking supervision to the Financial Services Authority. Brown presided over the longest period of economic growth in British history. He outlined five economic tests, which resisted the UK adopting the euro. Controversial moves included the abolition of advance corporation tax (ACT) relief in his first budget, the sale of UK gold reserves from 1999 to 2002, and the removal in his final budget of the 10% starting rate of income tax that he had introduced in the 1999 budget.

New Labour is the political philosophy that dominated the history of the British Labour Party from 1994 to 2010 under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The term originated in a conference slogan first used by the party in 1994, later seen in a draft manifesto which was published in 1996 and titled New Labour, New Life for Britain. It was presented as the brand of a newly reformed party that had altered the old Clause IV (which stressed nationalisation) and instead endorsed market economics. The branding was extensively used while the party was in government between 1997 and 2010. New Labour was influenced by the political thinking of Anthony Crosland and the leadership of Blair and Brown as well as Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell's media campaigning. The political philosophy of New Labour was influenced by the party's development of Anthony Giddens' Third Way which attempted to provide a synthesis between capitalism and socialism. The party emphasised the importance of social justice, rather than equality, emphasising the need for equal opportunity and believed in the use of markets to deliver economic efficiency and social justice.

The New Labour brand was developed to regain trust from the electorate and to portray a departure from the party's traditional socialist policies, thereby communicating the party's modernisation to the public. However, it was criticised for its breaking of election promises and of loosening its links to the trade unions. Calls for modernisation had become prominent following Labour's heavy defeat in the 1983 general election, with the new Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, who came from the party's soft left Tribune Group of Labour MPs, calling for a review of policies that led to the party's defeat, and for improvements to the party's public image to be made by Peter Mandelson, a former television producer. Following the leaderships of Neil Kinnock and John Smith, the party under Tony Blair attempted to widen its electoral appeal under the New Labour tagline and by the 1997 general election it had made significant gains in the middle class; resulting in a landslide victory. Labour maintained this wider support at the 2001 general election and won a third consecutive victory in the 2005 general election for the first time ever in the history of the Labour Party. However, the party's majority was significantly reduced from four years earlier.

Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock (born 28 March 1942) is a Welsh politician who was Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1970 to 1995, first for Bedwellty and then for Islwyn. He was Vice-President of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004. Kinnock was positioned on the soft left of the Labour Party.

Born and raised in South Wales, Kinnock was first elected to the House of Commons in the 1970 general election. He became the Labour Party's shadow education minister after the Conservatives won power in the 1979 general election. After the party under Michael Foot suffered a landslide defeat to Margaret Thatcher in the 1983 election, Kinnock was elected Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition. During his tenure as leader, Kinnock proceeded to fight the party's left wing, especially the Militant tendency, and he opposed NUM leader Arthur Scargill's methods in the 1984–1985 miners' strike. He led the party during most of the Thatcher government, which included its third successive election defeat when Thatcher won the 1987 general election. Although Thatcher had won another landslide, Labour regained sufficient seats for Kinnock to remain Leader of the Opposition following the election.

The SDP–Liberal Alliance was a centrist and social liberal political and electoral alliance in the United Kingdom.

Formed by the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Liberal Party, the SDP–Liberal Alliance was established in 1981, contesting the 1982 United Kingdom local elections, 1983 United Kingdom local elections, 1983 general election, 1984 United Kingdom local elections, 1984 European election, 1985 United Kingdom local elections, 1986 United Kingdom local elections, 1987 United Kingdom local elections and 1987 general election.