The ALP predates both the British Labour Party and New Zealand Labour Party in party formation, government, and policy implementation.

After the fall of the Conservative government to Labour in 1997, she served as Shadow Health Secretary between 1998 and 1999 and later as Shadow Home Secretary between 1999 and 2001 under William Hague.

Both the Barbados Labour Party and the Democratic Labour Party have formed the government in the elections since 1961.

While they had yet to become electable as a government, they underlined their growing reputation as a worthwhile alternative to Labour and Conservative, offering plenty of debate in parliament and not just representing a protest vote.

There was much speculation and fear about the prospect of a Labour government, and comparatively little about a Liberal government, even though it could have plausibly presented an experienced team of ministers compared to Labour's almost complete lack of experience, as well as offering a middle ground that could get support from both Conservatives and Labour in crucial Commons divisions.

But instead of trying to force the opportunity to form a Liberal government, Asquith decided instead to allow Labour the chance of office in the belief that they would prove incompetent and this would set the stage for a revival of Liberal fortunes at Labour's expense.

Ramsay MacDonald was forced into a snap election in 1924, and although his government was defeated, he achieved his objective of virtually wiping the Liberals out as many more radical voters now moved to Labour whilst moderate middle-class Liberal voters concerned about socialism moved to the Conservatives.

Lloyd George offered a degree of support to the Labour government in the hope of winning concessions, including a degree of electoral reform to introduce the alternative vote, but this support was to prove bitterly divisive as the Liberals increasingly divided between those seeking to gain what Liberal goals they could achieve, those who preferred a Conservative government to a Labour one and vice-versa.

The Labour Party benefited the most from this huge change in the British electorate, forming its first minority government in 1924.

With many traditional domestic Liberal policies now regarded as irrelevant, he focused the party on opposition to both the rise of Fascism in Europe and the appeasement foreign policy of the British government, arguing that intervention was needed, in contrast to the Labour calls for pacifism.

In the February 1974 general election the Conservative government of Edward Heath won a plurality of votes cast, but the Labour Party gained a plurality of seats due to the Ulster Unionist MPs refusing to support the Conservatives after the Northern Ireland Sunningdale Agreement.

Instead a minority Labour government was formed under Harold Wilson but with no formal support from Thorpe.

In the October 1974 general election the Liberals slipped back slightly and the Labour government won a wafer-thin majority.

When the Labour government fell in 1979, the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher won a victory which served to push the Liberals back into the margins.

In 1946, shortly after the end of Norman's tenure, the bank was nationalised by the Labour government.

On 6 May 1997, following the 1997 general election which brought a Labour government to power for the first time since 1979, it was announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, that the Bank of England would be granted operational independence over monetary policy.

This was revived in the late 1990s due to accounts of so-called " sleaze " by the Labour government.

( Several Labour ministers of later generations, such as Michael Foot and Tony Benn, were the sons of Liberal MPs.

This group opposed what they saw as a leftward shift in Labour policy, the increasing prominence within the party of Tony Benn, and the involvement of trade unions in choosing the leader of the Labour Party.

Democratic, Democratic Labour, and Radical were all mentioned as possible names for the new party, as well as New Labour ( which future Labour leader Tony Blair would use to promote the Labour Party more than a decade later ) but eventually Social Democratic was settled on because the ' Gang of Four ' consciously wanted to mould the philosophy and ideology of the new party on the Social Democracy practised on mainland Europe.

On 17 July 2003, Kelly, an employee of the Ministry of Defence, apparently committed suicide after being misquoted by BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan as saying that Tony Blair's Labour government had knowingly " sexed up " the " September Dossier ", a report into Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.

Having served as prime minister for six years and 92 days, his reign as prime minister was the longest unbroken reign of any Labour leader until Tony Blair more than 50 years later.

However, in the run-up to the 1997 general election, Labour opposition Tony Blair was in talks with Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown about forming a coalition government if Labour failed to win a majority at the election ; however there was never any need for a coalition to be formed as Labour won the election by a landslide.

Labour MP Tony Benn introduced a Commonwealth of Britain Bill several times between 1991 and 2001, intended to abolish the monarchy and establish a British republic.

In 1992 John Smith made him Shadow Social Security Secretary and three years later Dewar was made a Chief Whip for the Labour Party by Tony Blair,

The Electoral success of New Labour in 1997, which would be led by two Prime Ministers with Scottish connections, Tony Blair ( who was brought up in Scotland ) from 1997 to 2007 and Gordon Brown from 2007 – 10, opened the way for constitutional change.

By this time the " New " Labour Party was seen as a reformed and fresh alternative under the leadership of Tony Blair, and after eighteen years in office the Conservatives lost the 1997 general election in one of the worst electoral defeats since the Great Reform Act of 1832.

Few then were surprised when Major's Conservatives lost the 1 May 1997 general election to Tony Blair's " New Labour ", although the immense scale of the defeat was not as widely predicted: in 1987 and 1992 the Conservatives had polled better than had been suggested by the opinion polls, but in 1997 this was no longer the case.

His task became even more difficult after the well-received election of Tony Blair as Labour leader in July 1994.

The former Labour MP Tony Banks said of Major in 1994 that " He was a fairly competent chairman of Housing on Lambeth Council.

By the time Labour returned to government in 1997 after 18 years in opposition, Tony Blair ( leader since 1994 ) had abandoned the Labour policy of going back on Tory-led union reforms, as well as ending the commitment of nationalisation of industries and utilities.

In the United Kingdom in the 1980s, the term hard left was applied to supporters of Tony Benn, such as the Campaign Group and Labour Briefing, as well as Trotskyist groups such as the Militant Tendency and Socialist Organiser.

Under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown the British Labour Party re-branded itself as New Labour in order to promote the notion that it was less left-wing than it had been in the past.

After Labour Listens, the party went on, in 1988, to produce a new statement of aims and values — meant to supplement and supplant the formulation of Clause IV of the party's constitution ( though, crucially, this was not actually replaced until 1995 under the leadership of Tony Blair ) and was closely modelled on Anthony Crosland's social-democratic thinking — emphasising equality rather than public ownership.

The Westropes and Kimche were members of the Independent Labour Party, although at this time Blair was not seriously politically active.

The Labour Party generally opposed these changes, although after the party became New Labour, the Blair government retained elements of competition and even extended it, allowing private health care providers to bid for NHS work.

On 11 September 1997, the 700th anniversary of Battle of Stirling Bridge, the Blair led Labour government again held a referendum on the issue of devolution.

This came less than a year after the death of his successor as Labour leader John Smith and the election of Tony Blair as the party's new leader.

In the general election of 1997, for example, 13. 5 million people voted for the Labour Party led by Tony Blair ; 9. 6 million for the Conservative Party, led by John Major, the previous Prime Minister ; and, 5. 2 million for the Liberal Democrat Party led by Paddy Ashdown.

For example, Tony Blair, whose Labour party was elected in 1997 partly on a promise to enact a British Bill of Rights and to create devolved governments for Scotland and Wales, subsequently stewarded through Parliament the Human Rights Act ( 1998 ), the Scotland Act ( 1998 ) and the Government of Wales Act ( 1998 ).

Jenkins is seen by many as a key influence on " New Labour ", as the Labour Party marketed itself after the election of Tony Blair ( who served as prime minister from winning the first of three successive general elections in 1997 ) in 1994, when the party abandoned many of its long-established policies including nationalisation, nuclear disarmament and unconditional support for the trade unions.