Tatton in the 1997 general election

Tatton in the 1997 general election was one of the UK's highest-profile constituencies. It was the fourth safest Conservative seat in the country, where an independent candidate, Martin Bell managed to take the seat from the sitting Conservative MP, Neil Hamilton.

Safe Seat
The Conservative majority at the 1992 general election had been almost 16,000 votes. In 1997, Tatton was the fourth safest Conservative seat in Britain.

Cash for Questions
The sitting MP, Neil Hamilton was implicated in the Cash for Questions for accepting money from Mohamed Al-Fayed. Hamilton was under investigation by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner as part of the cash for questions enquiry and some party members thought he should stand down after the collapse of his case against The Guardian. Disquiet in the local association became public, but the majority gave him the benefit of the doubt. Hamilton resisted the pressure from senior Conservatives and Conservative Central Office to stand down. Jeremy Paxman states that Conservative Central Office "begged him not to stand, but in a gesture of overweening arrogance, he refused to go quietly."

On 8 April 1997, Hamilton was chosen as the Conservative candidate for Tatton (182 for, 35 against, 100 abstained). The Observer commissioned ICM polls in the constituencies of the three Conservative candidates tainted by scandal and seeking re-election: Hamilton, Allan Stewart and Piers Merchant. Both Stewart and Merchant were found to have support consistent with their party's standing, but in Tatton "there was massive hostility to Hamilton".

Bell's Candidacy
On 7 April 1997, twenty-four days before that year's British general election, Martin Bell, the BBC war correspondent, announced that he was leaving the BBC to stand as an independent candidate in the Tatton constituency in Cheshire. Labour and the Liberal Democrats withdrew their candidates in Bell's favour in a plan masterminded by Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's press secretary. The two parties supported his "anti-corruption" campaign.

Result
On 1 May 1997, Bell defeated Hamilton being elected as an MP with a majority of 11,077 votes – overturning a notional Conservative majority of over 22,000 in the 4th safest Conservative seat in the UK – and thus became the first successful independent parliamentary candidate since 1951. There was a swing of 48%. Hamilton came second.

Although Hamilton vowed to return to parliament, this defeat marked the end of his political career in the Conservative Party. In March 1999, George Osborne was selected by the Tatton Conservative Association to be their candidate for the following general election.