Tony Blair's first term as Prime Minister had gone as smoothly as could have been hoped. By the spring of 2001, Downing Street was satisfied with how the last four years had gone. Peace had been brokered in Northern Ireland, the economy was still ticking along nicely, devolution had been delivered to Scotland and to Wales and, most importantly, the party had survived four years without major scandal and had a double-digit lead in the polls. Only briefly during the fuel protests did the party ever lose their polling lead, a temporary aberration that was soon corrected.
In contrast, the Conservatives appeared more divided than ever. Ken Clarke's leadership of the party had consisted mainly of internal battles over the party's position on Europe, aggressive anonymous briefings from shadow ministers to hostile journalists and consistent rumours of leadership challenges. It was a wonder to some how Clarke had managed to still remain in post by 2001, given the ill-feeling he generated amongst much of the Conservative Party. His first Shadow Chancellor, the Eurosceptic John Redwood, had resigned from the frontbench after barely eighteen months in post in protest of the leadership's tactic support for the government's so-called 'European integration agenda', whilst his successor William Hague in turn overshadowed his leader with assured performances at the despatch box and Thatcherite economic policy that the party could rally round. Clarke nonetheless remained more popular with the general public than he did in his own party and, whilst the party struggled to come close to Labour in the opinion polls, Clarke's personal ratings at least gave something for party headquarters to be cheerful about.
Thus was the backdrop to the 2001 election, penned in for 7th June after Blair opted to call time on his first ministry a year early. The question was, from the very beginning, how large Labour's majority would be, as opposed to a question of whether they would get it or not. The campaign itself failed to capture the attention of the public or the media, with the exception of an incident between John Prescott and a pro-hunting protestor, who found himself on the end of a Prescott punch after he threw an egg at the Deputy Prime Minister. The Labour manifesto was far less revolutionary than its 1997 iteration, whilst the Tory manifesto sought to focus on bread and butter issues - tax, immigration and crime. Notably, it tried to avoid the European issue altogether, failing to mention Europe or the EU even once. That didn't stop shadow ministers from going rogue on the issue, with Shadow Education Secretary Ann Widdecombe and Shadow Health Secretary Liam Fox both indicating that they would be pushing for Britons to have a "real say" on any future European treaty, interventions that incensed Clarke and delighted backbench Thatcherites. Lady Thatcher herself even involved herself in the debate, publicly criticising Clarke for failing to oppose the Euro.
Finding themselves increasingly squeezed were the Liberal Democrats, who had failed to make much of an impact on anything since the election of the drab Simon Hughes in August 1999, replacing the far more popular Paddy Ashdown. Lib Dems longed for Ashdown's personality and strong party management, although Hughes continued his tradition of wooden Commons performances. Initially planning for an offensive campaign, the party soon realised that it would need to be defending the mix of Celtic, northern urban and southern rural seats it had sensationally won four years previous.
The polls remained steady throughout the campaign, with Labour swinging between the mid and low forties, the Tories usually a margin of about ten points behind them, whilst the Lib Dems remained statically beneath the twenty percent mark.
The election result was essentially a repeat of 1997, with even the most optimistic Labour strategists delighted with the very marginal fifteen seat loss the party made at the end of the night. The Conservatives saw a small uptick in terms of vote share and seats but found themselves eight percentage points and two hundred and seventeen seats behind Labour, with the result being recorded as their second worst in over a century. The Liberal Democrats had a disappointing night, slipping back four seats and seeing their vote share drop too, despite hopes that some would use the party as a protest vote to give the two main parties a bloody nose. Having presided over relatively serene political, economic and social conditions, the feeling of prosperity in the United Kingdom had been maintained into the new millennium, and Labour would have a free hand to assert its ideals in the subsequent parliament. Despite the victory, voter apathy was a major issue, as turnout fell to sixty-one percent, over ten percentage points down on 1997. All three main parties saw their total number of votes fall, with some suggesting this sharp fall in turnout and interest was a sign of the general acceptance of the status quo and the likelihood of Labour's majority remaining unassailable.
Clarke had set himself a private target of making a net gain of thirty seats, something he narrowly missed out on. Whilst pragmatists in the party suggested he had done better than could be expected against a popular incumbent government and a Prime Minister that seemed to defy political gravity, Clarke's unpopularity amongst the party grassroots made it almost certain he would have been swiftly seen to by the men in grey suits if he didn't leave of his own accord. As it was, Clarke announced his resignation the afternoon after the election, a development that was celebrated by many in his party. Though he tried to remain in post, arguing that a recovering Tory Party made gains difficult and that he had done as well as could be expected when facing an apathetic electorate, Simon Hughes eventually decided to move on too in early 2002 after facing open revolt in his parliamentary party and opinion polls that suggested the party was falling to levels of support not seen since the dark days of the 1970s. He was replaced by Charles Kennedy, who many liberals believed should have been elected over Hughes the first time around.