Examiner’s Specific Advice

This question is testing several skills and also your knowledge of the topic; in this case the decline of the Conservative Party and the rise of New Labour between the fall of Mrs Thatcher in 1990 and Tony Blair’s landslide election win in 1997. You are also being required to provide a balanced historical explanation and to make a substantiated judgement.

As always with an essay-type question, relevance is the key – your answer can be selective rather than comprehensive as long as you address the precise question. There should be direct relevance to the key words of the specific question, backed by secure understanding of the overall context of political developments in the 1990s.

The key thing is not to narrate and describe, but to use your knowledge purposefully in order to explain and evaluate. You should also think about the length of your answer – a shorter, more coherent and controlled answer is always preferable to a longer, more detailed answer that is unfinished or lacking in clarity and accuracy. The amount if detail you include should take this into account and it should be selected to match your arguments. If, for example, you feel the key factor was the re-branding of ‘New Labour’ under Blair, Brown and Mandelson, then it would be right to cover this aspect in depth. But if your main argument is based on Conservative divisions you would need much less detail on Tony Blair and much more on the legacy of Mrs Thatcher and the problems that bedevilled John Major.

Exemplar Question

‘Labour’s stunning electoral victory in 1997 owed much more to the collapse of the Conservative Party than to the leadership of Tony Blair.’

How justified is this view of political developments between 1990 and 1997? [45 marks]

Plan

• Introduction: outline the argument that will be presented and show an awareness of the context of political developments, 1990–97.
• Organised paragraphs to support a balanced judgement of the relative importance of Conservative weaknesses and the strengths of Tony Blair and ‘New Labour’ during the years from 1880 until the ‘Labour landslide of 1997’.
• Conclusion: resolve the debate between various perspectives and show consistency with the arguments presented in the introduction.

View Exemplar Answer 1

View Exemplar Answer 2