John Smith (Labour Party leader) John Smith (Labour Party leader) John Smith (13 September 1938 – 12 May 1994) was a British Labour politician who served as Leader of the Labour Party from July 1992 until his death from a heart attack in May 1994. Smith first entered Parliament in 1970 and, after junior ministerial roles as Minister of State for Energy (1975–1976) and Minister of State for the Privy Council Office (1976–1977), he entered the Cabinet at the end of James Callaghan's tenure as Prime Minister, serving as Secretary of State for Trade and President of the Board of Trade (1978–1979). During Labour's time
John Smith (Labour Party leader) John Smith House in his memory. Tony Blair, Smith's successor as Leader of the Labour Party, was initially quite popular and an effective campaigner who capitalised on public mistrust of the Conservative Party to win a landslide victory at the 1997 general election. Smith's biographer, Mark Stuart, claimed that Smith could have won Labour a victory on a scale similar to that achieved by Blair because of the combination of the Black Wednesday debacle and internal Conservative Party divisions over Europe since 1992. Stuart argues that the lack of a "Blair effect" would have meant that the Conservative Party would