General election

A general election was a nationwide election of Members of Parliament in the United Kingdom.

History

20th century

Winston Churchill was an MP for Dundee in the early 20th century until one election where his constituents "ran [him] out of town". (AUDIO: Human Conflict)

Once the war against Nazi Germany ended in 1945, Churchill called a general election after the VE Day celebrations. (AUDIO: Churchill Victorious) His opponent was Clement Attlee and his socialist Opposition. Churchill advocated continued military activities against Japan and the newly-ascendant Soviet Union. He vociferously opposed Attlee's platform which he worried would grant dangerous levels of power to the state. His strategic advisor, "Simon Saunders", advised Churchill move away from his less popular ideas and instead focus on a domestic programme of his own. Of particular note was a dispensed speech in which Churchill compared the Opposition to the Gestapo. The Seventh Doctor reinstated these speeches to prevent changes to the timeline, claiming the outcome of the election was a fixed point in time. Churchill's approval rating plummeted and Attlee became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Churchill blamed the Doctor for his defeat and renounced his friendship with the present incarnation. (AUDIO: Subterfuge) In the aftermath, he turned his attention to writing, including works such as A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. (AUDIO: Living History) He served a Prime Minister once more, however, from 1951 to 1955. (AUDIO: Their Finest Hour)

In 1964, the Labour Party won the UK general election and Harold Wilson became Prime Minister. In the immediate aftermath of the election, General Peters led a military coup against Wilson's government. However, it was defeated by the Intrusion Countermeasures Group. (AUDIO: State of Emergency)

Wilson called a general election for June 1970. The Labour Party lost and the Conservative leader Edward Heath became Prime Minister. Political observers speculated that the publication of the book version of "Bad Science" had coincided not-so-incidentally with the election. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy)

In the 1970s, a coalition of Liberals, various disenfranchised Tories and Socialists, and a group of minor fringe parties won the general election. They ran on a platform of social reform, the abolition of the death penalty, and a strong interstellar defence programme. (PROSE: The Devil Goblins from Neptune)

On 9 June 1983, Labour lost the general election in a landslide to the ruling Conservative Party. (AUDIO: Rat Trap)

In 1992, pacifist Margery Phipps and her Harmony Party came to power. (AUDIO: Council of War)

There was a 1997 general election but the government was briefly deposed by the Ice Warriors. (PROSE: The Dying Days)

21st century

In the 2002 general election, Sherilyn Harper's New Britannia Party were considered likely to get into power on the back of racist fearmongering. (AUDIO: The Fearmonger)

In early 2006, Rose Tyler remarked that she'd missed the 2005 general election and didn't know who was Prime Minister. He was killed by the Slitheen. (TV: Aliens of London) By Christmas that year, Harriet Jones had become Prime Minister after winning a landslide majority in an election. (TV: The Christmas Invasion)

Upon arriving in London of a parallel Earth in 2007, Mickey Smith suggested a possible difference being Tony Blair never getting elected. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen)

The Master, under the alias "Harold Saxon", came to power in a 2008 election. (TV: The Sound of Drums) This was partly due to the Tenth Doctor, who instigated the political downfall of his predecessor, Harriet Jones, on Christmas Day 2006 shortly after his regeneration. (TV: The Christmas Invasion)

Jo Patterson won a general election for an unnamed party in 2021. She consolidated the position through assistance from Jack Robertson, who she made a deal with to produce the Defence Drones in her constituency so long as he gave her the credit to boost her chance of an election victory. (TV: Revolution of the Daleks)

Behind the scenes

• In the real world, Tony Blair was elected in the 1997 general election and was still Prime Minister when Aliens of London was broadcast. However, the identity of the slain Prime Minister in that episode was not made clear and Rose does mention the 2005 election she missed (which Blair won). Blair resigned as Prime Minister in 2007 and was replaced by Gordon Brown, who ascended as Prime Minister around the same time the final episodes of Series 3, featuring Harold Saxon, were broadcast.
• Introducing later editions of The Dying Days, Lance Parkin recounts a story about Conservative MP and Doctor Who fan Tim Collins reportedly rushing through the novel on the night of the 1997 general election, so he could finish reading the Virgin New Adventures under a Conservative government.