Rabbit: the movement for phonics in the UK was essentially a grassroots one, starting with the teacher who came up with Jolly Phonics in the 80s. There was also Ruth Miskin who was then headteacher at a school in Tower Hamlets. These teachers (and a number of others) were unhappy with how many children were leaving their schools unable to read, and started reading the research, by reading psychologists, which by that time had pretty comprehensively destroyed the theoretical underpinnings of Whole Language, while indicating that phonics was probably superior to look and say. (It's important to understand that there's a difference between reading specialists in university departments of psychology, where much of this research was done, and reading specialists in departments of education, where Whole Language still mostly ruled.)
Some of these teachers got together with other supporters and established the Reading Reform Foundation, wrote newsletters, set up a website, and generally campaigned for the use of phonics. At the same time, there was a great deal of research going on in the US (where a lot more funding was available). By 2000, the research was so solid that a handful of politicians were willing to be persuaded by the arguments of these campaigning teachers. I believe David Blunkett wanted to introduce phonics in the Literacy Strategy of 1997, but eventually decided there would be too much opposition from teachers, academics and teaching unions. By 2007, 10 years later, as the research continued to pile up, the climate of opinion had shifted sufficiently to allow the government to attempt to implement the Rose Report, although with patchy results. Part of the reason for this was attrition: the most dogmatic opponents of phonics were gradually retiring, and being replaced by younger people with more open minds (have you heard the rather morbid saying, "science advances one funeral at a time"?