The real campaign gets underway
It was around 1130 when Tony Blair returned to Downing Street. He exited his car and went to address the gathered press: “As you know, I have just been to Buckingham Palace to ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament, which she has graciously consented to do. There will be a general election in Britain on May 5. I’d like to say a few words about it.”
And so it began – officially. After months of speculation and the parties trading blows in the phoney campaign, the worst kept secret in British politics was confirmed (full story).
It emerged on Sunday that the long-expected announcement of the date of the general election would not be taking place on Monday, in a show of respect for the late Pope John Paul II, who died at the weekend.
So certain were the opposition parties that the election would now be announced on Tuesday that both Conservative leader Michael Howard and Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy held campaign launches before Mr Blair had even set-off for his meeting with the Queen.
Speaking at a hotel in central London at 1000, Mr Howard declared: “The country has a choice: reward Mr Blair and vote for five more years of talk. Or vote for a party committed to action on the issues of hard-working Britain.” (full story)
Even earlier that morning, Mr Kennedy had embarked upon a series of whistle-stop visits to cities across the UK. He began at 0800 in Manchester, where he paraded the disaffected former Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Ribble Valley, Stephen Wilkinson, who had stepped down from Labour to join the Liberal Democrats (full story).
From there, Mr Kennedy went on to hold press conferences with frontbench colleagues in Newcastle upon Tyne, at Leeds-Bradford airport, in Edinburgh and in Norwich. Mr Kennedy aimed to distinguish his party from Labour and the Conservatives by promising that the Liberal Democrats would fight a “clean” campaign, and appeal only to people’s hopes, rather than their fears.
Mr Howard headed for Birmingham, where he addressed party supporters at the International Conference Centre, alongside Sandip Verma, PPC for Wolverhampton South West – who, facing a Labour majority of just over 3,500, stands a real chance of becoming the Conservatives’ first female Asian MP (full story).
The Prime Minister, meanwhile, headed straight from the low-key Downing Street announcement – stark in its contrast with the much-derided announcement of the 2001 general election, at which the Prime Minister appeared before a stained glass window on stage in a Southwark primary school with a choir of children – for Battersea heliport.
He flew to South Dorset, Labour’s most marginal constituency, won for the first time in 2001 by Jim Knight with a majority of just 150.
He told supporters, “In every single part of our country today we can see the progress of the past eight years but we need to keep it going. That’s why we say forward not back, forward with progress not back to the failed old days of the Conservative Party.”(full story)“>
