Abstract: The main aim of the book is to explore electoral behaviour in Britain from 1979– 97, which covers the 18years of Conservative government with Margaret Thatcher and John Major as prime ministers of the country and ends with New Labour's landslide victory in 1997. The authors of The Rise of New Labour describe the electoral experiments in the British political spectrum in this period, assess the reasons for their success and failure and discuss their implications in the framework of the underlying theories of electoral behaviour. The analyses in the book are based on the series of British Election Surveys (BESs) that have been undertaken immediately after every election since 1964 and on the 1992–97 British Election Panel Study (BEPS).

Keywords: British Election Studies, Conservative government, electoral behaviour, electoral experiments, New Labour, Margaret Thatcher