Michael Portillo's loss of the Enfield Southgate seat in the 1997 general election to Stephen Twigg came as a shock to many politicians and commentators, and came to symbolise the extent of the Labour landslide victory. Portillo had been widely expected to contest the Conservative leadership after the General Election, which without a Commons seat he was unable to do.
There had been a poll in The Observer newspaper on the weekend before the election which showed that Portillo held only a three-point lead in his hitherto safe seat.
He had a memorable interview with Jeremy Paxman on the election night prior to the calling of his own seat. Paxman decisively opened the interview with the question "so Michael, are you going to miss the limo?" - a clear reference to the strong feeling going around on election night that he had lost his own seat. Portillo was then stumped with the follow up question of "are we seeing the end of the Conservative Party as a credible force in British politics?". He has since admitted that he knew he had lost his seat by the time of the interview:
I saw that the exit poll was predicting a 160 seat majority for Labour. I thought, "when is Paxman going to ask me have I lost my seat?", because I deduced from that that I had. I then drove the car to my constituency and I knew I'd lost. But I also saw David Mellor. David Mellor had this really bad tempered spat with Jimmy Goldsmith [after the Putney election results had been announced]. I saw this and I thought if there's one thing I do when I lose, I'm going to lose with as much dignity as I can muster and not be like this David Mellor—Goldsmith thing.
Portillo's defeat represented a 17.4% swing to Labour. Although Twigg retained the seat with an increased majority in 2001, it returned to the Conservative Party in 2005 with a swing of 8.7%.
'Portillo moment'
The 1997 loss, symbolising the loss of the election by the Conservative Party, has been referred to as "the Portillo moment", and in the cliché "Were you up for Portillo?" (i.e., "Were you awake/did you see Portillo's result announced on television?") Portillo himself commented, thirteen years later, that as a consequence "My name is now synonymous with eating a bucketload of shit in public."