Memorable moments from general election campaigns gone by

Published

1 year ago

June 30, 2024

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Since Rishi Sunak called the election, Sky News’ Politics Hub has been looking back over memorable moments from campaigns gone by.

From David Cameron‘s football own goal, to an upstart Nick Clegg emerging as the unlikely victor from the UK’s first televised leaders debate, there were plenty to choose from.

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We’ve collated them all here for you to reminisce on – and a fair warning, given the fine weather we’ve had this week, one might leave you craving some ice cream…

Cameron’s own goal

Nothing says “man of the people” like a good football reference.

But – in an embarrassing slip during the 2015 campaign – David Cameron did little to convince us he was a true fan.

In a speech in which he sought to celebrate Britain’s diversity, he said this was “a country where people of all faiths, all colours, creeds, and backgrounds can live together” – and one where “you can support Man Utd, the Windies, and Team GB all at the same time”.

“Of course, I’d rather you support West Ham,” he quipped.

Alas, he’s an Aston Villa fan.

‘Hell yes, I’m tough enough’

Labour had been tipped to return to power at the 2015 election, but some bruising TV appearances for Ed Miliband didn’t help the party’s chances by the end.

One saw him grilled on Sky News by Jeremy Paxman about whether he was “tough enough” to be prime minister.

Leaning forward, Mr Miliband shared an anecdote about the UK government’s desire to intervene in Syria that year, in line with the US under then president Barack Obama.

He told Paxman how he was “called into a room” to speak to David Cameron and his deputy, Nick Clegg, fresh off the phone with Mr Obama, and ultimately decided to vote against taking action.

“Standing up to the leader of the free world shows a certain toughness,” said Mr Miliband.

Defending his record on foreign policy, he concluded his point with the immortal words: “Am I tough enuss… tough enough? Hell yes, I’m tough enough.”

Johnson hides in a fridge

Indiana Jones infamously hid in a fridge to survive a nuclear explosion, but who knew they were equally effective at protecting yourself from Piers Morgan.

During the election campaign of December 2019, Boris Johnson retreated into an industrial fridge at a milk firm in Yorkshire after being invited to speak on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.

Told by a producer from the show that he was live on telly, Mr Johnson said he’d be “with you in a second” before enacting his daring escape.

“He’s gone into the fridge,” Morgan muttered in apparent disbelief, down the line from the ITV studio, as the then prime minister surrounded himself with the comfort of milk bottles.

Mr Johnson did eventually emerge and went on to win the election.

Flakes between friends

New Labour’s time in power often saw stories about a fractious relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

But the pair put on the truest form of friendship on the 2005 campaign trail: enjoying delectable 99 Flakes together.

The photo op was a rebuttal to reports of a fallout, and nothing brings people together like good ice cream.

And they probably really did cost 99p back then.

‘We’re alright!’

It’s 1992 – and Labour’s Neil Kinnock is facing John Major.

A week out from the vote, and the opposition thinks it is on track to finally re-enter Downing Street after more than a decade out of power.

Thousands of the party faithful gathered at Sheffield Arena for a huge rally.

Amid rampant cheering and applause, Mr Kinnock bellowed what was reported to be the phrase “we’re alright!”

This was taken to be him signalling Labour would be winning – a sign of complacency and overconfidence.

His party went on to lose to Mr Major’s Tories, and Mr Kinnock resigned as party leader.

He has since argued he was actually saying “well alright” in an attempt to get the crowd to listen to him.

‘Nothing has changed’

Theresa May didn’t have a great time during the 2017 campaign.

One moment in particular went down in infamy, as she repeatedly told journalists “nothing has changed” despite a screeching U-turn on controversial plans to get the elderly to pay for their social care.

It was perhaps the nadir of a campaign that had begun with her tipped to inflict a crushing defeat upon Labour, but instead saw her lose her majority.

‘I agree with Nick’

The big winner from the UK’s first ever TV prime ministerial debate in 2010 wasn’t primary contenders David Cameron and Gordon Brown, but Nick Clegg.

As the Tory and Labour leaders looked to take chunks out of one another, they saved a more conciliatory side for the insurgent Lib Dem.

He could do no wrong that night, with Messrs Cameron and Brown both finding it completely irresistible not to simply “agree with Nick”.

Cleggmania took him all the way into Number 10 as part of the coalition.

The Ed Stone

Never mind his bacon sandwich eating technique, it was unveiling Labour’s 2015 election pledges inscribed on an enormous slab of limestone that really got voters wondering what Ed Miliband was up to that year.

The then party leader thought the stunt, known as the Ed Stone, would persuade the public he was serious about delivering his promises.

They included “a strong economic foundation” and “controls on immigration” (these sound familiar, no?).

Worse still, Labour even committed to putting it up in the Downing Street garden should they win power.

But it was immediately ridiculed upon its unveiling in Hastings, and the party ended up performing so disappointingly at the election that the now shadow energy secretary resigned as leader.

Bigotgate

Nigel Farage has claimed that the furore over Rishi Sunak leaving D-Day commemorations was the prime minister’s “Gillian Duffy moment”.

So fittingly, we looked back at the original.

“Bigotgate” was born after the then prime minister Gordon Brown described one voter – Gillian Duffy – airing concerns about immigration in Rochdale as a “bigoted woman”.

Mr Brown muttered it after an exchange on camera, not realising he was being picked up by a microphone, and the comment was subsequently broadcast.

The Prescott punch

How would you react if someone threw an egg in your face?

In the case of John Prescott, the answer was to punch them.

The former deputy prime minister threw a fist at the voter who targeted him ahead of a campaign rally in Wales.

The incident came on the day Labour launched its 2001 manifesto, and went down in such infamy it has its own Wikipedia page.

Mr Prescott, then Tony Blair’s deputy, insisted the hefty jab was an act of self-defence – but him choosing violence divided the party leadership, with Gordon Brown more sympathetic than the prime minister was.

Politics

China ‘enemy’ reference removed from key witness statement for collapsed spy trial

Published

4 hours ago

October 24, 2025

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China 'enemy' reference removed from key witness statement for collapsed spy trial

A reference to China being an “enemy” of the UK was removed from key evidence for a collapsed spy trial in 2023 as it “did not reflect government policy” under the Conservatives at the time, according to the national security adviser.

In the letter published by parliament’s Joint Committee on National Security Strategy earlier on Friday, National Security Adviser (NSA) Jonathan Powell said Counter Terror Police and the Crown Prosecution Service were aware of the change made by Deputy National Security Adviser (DSNA) Matt Collins.

This would mean the CPS knew the “enemy” reference had been removed before charging the two suspects, according to Mr Powell.

In another letter published on Friday, the director of public prosecutions (DPP) Stephen Parkinson told the committee that it took DSNA Mr Collins more than a year to confirm to prosecutors he would not say China posed a threat to UK national security in court.

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The DPP said a High Court judge ruled in June last year that an “enemy” under law is a state which “presently poses an active threat to the UK’s national security”, prompting the CPS to ask the DNSA whether China fulfilled that criteria.

He added prosecutors did not believe there would be “any difficulty in obtaining evidence” from Mr Collins that China was a national security threat, but added: “This was a sticking point that could not be overcome.”

Mr Parkinson added that the DNSA’s “unwillingness” to describe China as an active or current threat was “fatal to the case” because Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry’s defence teams would have been entitled to call him as a witness.

The DPP added: “This factor is compounded by the fact that drafts of the first witness statement, reviewed by us in July 2025, showed that references to China being an ‘enemy’ or ‘possible enemy’ had been deleted.

“Those drafts would probably have been disclosable to the defence.”

A final draft of Mr Collins’ statement was sent to then-prime minister Rishi Sunak in December 2023, Mr Powell’s letter said.

“Drafts of a statement provided to DNSA included the term ‘enemy’ but he removed this term from the final draft as it did not reflect government policy,” the letter reads.

It comes amid a political row over the collapse of the prosecution of Christopher Berry and Christopher Cash last month, who were accused of conducting espionage for China.

Both individuals vehemently deny the claims.

Because the CPS was pursuing charges under the Official Secrets Act 1911, prosecutors would have had to show the defendants were acting for an “enemy”.

DPP Mr Parkinson has come under pressure to provide a fuller explanation for the abandonment of the case.

He has blamed insufficient evidence being provided by the government that Beijing represented a threat to the UK at the time of the alleged offences.

The Conservatives have accused Sir Keir Starmer of letting the case collapse, but Labour has said there was nothing more it could have done.

The current government has insisted ministers did not intervene in the case or attempt to make representations to ensure the strength of evidence, for fear of interfering with the course of justice.

The DNSA and DPP will face questions from the parliamentary committee on Monday afternoon.

The current attorney general, Lord Hermer, and the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, Darren Jones, will be questioned on Wednesday.

The PM’s spokesman reiterated the government’s position that “what is relevant in a criminal case of this nature is the government’s position at the time of the alleged offences”.

Politics

Who is Lindsay Whittle? The man who stood unsuccessfully in Caerphilly 13 times, then won on the 14th try

Published

4 hours ago

October 24, 2025

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Who is Lindsay Whittle? The man who stood unsuccessfully in Caerphilly 13 times, then won on the 14th try

Lindsay Whittle stood for election in Caerphilly 13 times since 1983 – and on the 14th attempt, he finally succeeded.

In the process, the 72-year-old local boy – nicknamed “Mr Caerphilly” – humiliated the Labour Party, which had held the Senedd seat since its creation in 1999 and the Westminster constituency for over a century.

Born in the miner’s hospital, Mr Whittle lived in a council house and grew up in the town, located to the north of Cardiff, that he now represents.

A lifelong Plaid Cymru activist, his interest in politics was first piqued in the 1960s. He said he even missed an O Level (GCSE) exam in the 1970s because he was out canvassing for the party.

Mr Whittle was first elected in 1976 to represent the Penyrheol and Trecenydd ward on Rhymney Valley district council, and he was re-elected repeatedly until the council was abolished in 1996.

He then contested the Penyrheol ward on the new Caerphilly County Borough Council, created in 1995, and was elected to represent it seven times. He served as the council’s leader for two periods between 1999 and 2004, and has also served as Plaid Cymru’s group leader on the council since 2022.

But, despite his success at the local level, Mr Whittle was only able to secure election to the then Welsh Assembly once in six attempts since its creation in 1999, becoming an MS on the South Wales East list 2011, before losing his seat in 2016.

In those five years in Cardiff, he was appointed Plaid Cymru’s spokesperson for Social Services, Children, and Equal Opportunities, and he was able to work on his key political interests of housing and local government, as well as combating homelessness.

Election by the people of his hometown of Caerphilly has always eluded him, however, having lost the 13 other elections for Westminster and the Senedd that he has stood in throughout a lifetime in Welsh politics.

But that all changed last night when he was elected with a majority of nearly 4,000 votes to take over from the late Hefin David, the beloved Labour representative to whom he paid tribute in his victory speech.

Speaking to our chief political correspondent Jon Craig as dawn broke over the town he was born in and now represents, Mr Whittle said: “I would need to be a poet to put into words how I genuinely feel about the honour that all the people of Caerphilly have bestowed upon me.

“Almost half of the people who went out to vote, just 2% short of half of the people, put their confidence in Lindsay Whittle and Plaid Cymru. I cannot tell you what an honour that is.”

He added: “Retirement is not for me. I’m not the sort of guy who relaxes on beaches. In fact, I don’t think I ever relax. It’s people. It’s people that make me carry on.”