Wilson’s ‘comfy and complacent’ campaign did play in role in deciding the 1970 election in favour of the Conservatives but it was only a minor one. Much more important was the combination of mistrust by the public over Labour’s ability to control the economy and most importantly; Labour’s complete failure to control the Trade Unions and the fears that this brought with it. Even a Labour minister himself, Richard Crossman admits in Source C that a ‘final warning on the trade figures’ put voters off. Whilst Source A does attack Wilson for his ‘highly personalised campaign’ and his ‘presidential’ style leadership, it goes on to suggest that there is no clear reason for why people changed their minds and voted Tory at the last minute. Despite his ‘too relaxed and assured’ campaign Wilson was not to blame but instead it was a combination of ‘unfavourable trade figures’ and Enoch Powell that swung the vote.
The main reason why, it can be argued, Bismarck brought an end to the Kulturkampf is down to the fact that instead of limiting the power of the Catholics he was only increasing it. He made a mistake. The Catholics support can be seen in the Reichstag through the centre party which gained 91 seats in the 1874 elections opposed to their 58 seats in 1871. This showed Bismarck had in fact increased disunity in the German state instead of diminishing it; he had done the complete opposite of what he had hoped to do. None the less, Bismarck was no fool; he took advantage of a situation which he hoped would never come.
Did Gordon Brown’s unpopularity lose Labour the 2010 Election? In 2005, shortly after the general election of that year, Geoffrey Evans and Robert Andersen sought to assess the impact of Tony Blair’s unpopularity on Labour’s election performance. Labour won the election with a significantly reduced majority. How far had Blair’s unpopularity cost the party votes? Or was the ‘leadership factor’ swamped by other things, such as entrenched party preferences?
It is true that in 1964 400,000 people were unemployed and this rose to “just over 600,000 by 1970”, the end of Wilson’s time as Prime Minister. On the other hand, the Source does say that “perhaps from its last year in office”, Labour did make many successful policies, possibly referring to the Equal Pay Act of May 1970. It fails to acknowledge of the other grounding breaking social reforms that were introduced under Wilson’s rule, such as the Sexual Offences Act and Abortion Act of 1967, which has been done in Source B. Also, the Source says that Wilson’s Government made the “same mistakes as the Conservatives”, which suggests that six years in parliament is not enough to undo the mistakes previously made. One could infer from this that it was inevitable that Labour’s failures would outweigh their successes, as it would have happened to whatever party was voted into parliament in 1964.
The 1867 Reform Act that Disraeli passed, which gave the vote to about 1,500,000, certainly aided him in becoming party leader. However it was by no means the main factor and merely a contributory one. Other reasons, which contributed to his rise up the Conservative ranks; were his political skill and determination, the split of the Conservatives in 1846, resulting in a lack of opposition and Disraeli’s growing acceptability among Conservatives. Some of these factors were more important in Disraeli’s ascendancy to party leader than the 1867 Reform Act. The 1867 Reform Act played a significant part in Disraeli’s rise to the top of the Conservatives.
To what extent did World War One cause divisions within the Liberal Party? Although World War One (and the Labour Party) did contribute to divisions within the Liberals, the most important factor for the split is due to Lloyd George and the Conservatives. Lloyd George had replaced the Liberal Party leader Herbert Henry Asquith as Prime Minister in 1916, at the head of a coalition government with the Conservatives. So Asquith and many of his leading colleagues who did not want the split went into opposition to Lloyd and there was a formal split within the party. This was emphasized as Lloyd George and the Conservative leader Andrew Bonar Law decided to continue the coalition after the end of the First World War and held the “coupon election”.
Although some things were carried out well under the Conservatives, there were many missed opportunities and mistakes under the 4 prime ministers. I think that some of the prime ministers contributed more to the ‘wasted years’ than others, notably Eden, who made mistakes with both the Suez Crisis and the EDC. I also think that Britain missing out on the EEC and Europe is one of the main reasons why these years were wasted. Once it became clear that Britain’s role in the world was declining, and her Empire was changing to a Commonwealth, I think that the Conservatives should have seen that as the reason to lean more towards Europe. Although our relations with America did improve, and have later proved to be very important, missing out on Europe was a major mistake.
In some districts, a "personally popular moderate" will usually outperform his or her party’s national popularity. And a new top-two primary system in California, which featured eight districts with races between two Democrats or two Republicans, meant the other party did not get any votes in some cases. gerrymandering is a major form of disenfranchisement. In the seven states where Republicans redrew the districts, 16.7 million votes were cast for Republicans and 16.4 million votes were cast for Democrats. This elected 73 Republicans and 34 Democrats.
During the revolution, members of the imperial parliament gained control of the country.The army leadership felt they did not have the means to suppress the revolution and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. It is argued that the social and economic factors were the most important catalyst and the main cause of the revolution. Others may argue that the military factors were the downfall and breaking point of the country. Although the military factors were important and did play a huge role, the social and economic factors were perhaps the more important reason. The military issues perhaps would not have escalated the way they did if it was not for existing social and economic problems at home.
The lack of full government support greatly contributed to this. All in all, Canada’s involvement in the Second Boer War was a mistake that did not serve the best interests of the country. For Canada, confederation was a time to cut many ties with Britain and become their own independent country. However, the Boer War was a large set back in this area because of the way Britain tried to control Canada in their decisions, and Canada unfortunately let them. Laurier was opposed to imperial confederation and believed that the Canadian cabinet should decide Canada’s participation in the war.