Conservative Euroscepticism and the Referendum Party in the 1997 British General Election

Abstract

Few issues have divided the British Conservative Party more seriously than prospect of greater European integration in the 1990s. In the 1997 election, Conservative candidates were divided almost equally between declared Eurosceptics, opposing a single currency, and those taking a `wait and see' attitude. In addition, the Referendum Party challenged the major parties from a Eurosceptical position. Using exit poll data and constituency results, we find that although Eurosceptical Conservatives gained a marginal vote advantage of 2.3 percent compared to other Conservative candidates, most of this can be attributed to incumbency and turnout differences across constituencies rather than positions on Europe. More significantly, the intervention of a Referendum Party candidate cost the Conservatives an average of 3.4 percent of the vote, even after a wide variety of other factors are taken into account. Extrapolating this finding to the constituency results suggests that the Conservatives may have lost around 16 seats directly as a result of the intervention of the Referendum Party, and a further two seats as a result of the anti-European UK Independence Party. This estimate is higher than previous analyses of this phenomenon.