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Lists of Heads of Government and Heads of State

Leaders of the Communist Party of China

1943-1959: Mao Zedong
1959-1963: Zhang Wentian
1963-0000: Liu Shaoqi

Peng Dehuai is the most repulsive villain and traitor to the Revolution that history has ever seen! Together with Zhang Wentian and Huang Kecheng, he commands the absolute loyalty of China's bourgeoisie and undermines the socialism of the Chinese people through rightism masquerading as pragmatism! Peng is the premier running dog of Western capitalism and KMT reactionaries! At Lushan, he spread lies; from Beijing, he spreads misery! To recover the Party and the nation, we the youth must abandon and trample upon the banner of Peng, and raise the banner of Liu! Only Liu Shaoqi can save the Party!
—Pamphlet Criticizing the Opportunists' Clique's Obstruction of the Revolutionary March of History
 
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I've not done one of those 'electoral history of an individual' ones yet, so here's one, inspired by something @OwenM suggested a while back:

Electoral history of Martin Winter (aka an Unlikely Number of Martins)
1999-2004: 1 of 3 Labour councillors for Stainforth ward, Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council
2001: Candidate for Labour selection for candidacy for directly-elected Mayor of Doncaster
2001 Martin Vickers def. Martin Winter
2004-2005: 1 of 3 Labour councillors for Stainforth & Moorends ward, Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council
2005-2009: Labour MP for Doncaster North
2005 def. Martin Williams (Community Group with Lib Dem endorsement), Martin Drake (Conservative), (all others >5%)
2009 Labour whip withdrawn due to MPs' expenses scandal

2009-2010: Independent MP for Doncaster North
2010: Independent candidate for Doncaster North
2010 Sandra Holland (Labour) def. Martin Greenhalgh (Conservative), Martin Williams (Community Group with Lib Dem endorsement), Martin Winter (Independent, inc.), (all others >5%)
2011: Independent candidate for Stainforth & Moorends ward, Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council
2011 David Martin (Community Group) def. Ken Keegan (Labour, inc.), Martin Winter (Independent), Martin Drake (Conservative)
2012-2012: Independent councillor for Stainforth & Moorends ward, Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council
2012 def. Paul Bissett (Liberal Democrat), John Sheppard (Labour), Martin Drake (Conservative) Stewart Rayner (Community Group)
2012-2013: Doncaster First--Independent Alliance councillor for Stainforth & Moorends ward, Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council
2013-2014: Doncaster First--Independent Alliance Directly-elected Mayor of Doncaster
2013 def. Mick Maye (Liberal Democrat), Tony Revill (Labour), Martin Drake (Conservative)
2014-2016: UKIP Directly-elected Mayor of Doncaster
2016 Local government suspended by commissioners, remanded into custody
 
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A Million to One Chance

2010-2015: David Cameron (Conservative) Coalition with Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrat)

2010: David Cameron (Conservative) [306] Gordon Brown (Labour) [258] Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrat) [57] Peter Robinson (DUP) [8] Alex Salmond (SNP) [6] Gerry Adams (Sinn Fein) [5] Iuen Wynn Jones (Plaid Cymru) [3] Margaret Ritchie (SDLP) [3] Caroline Lucas (Green Party England & Wales) [1] David Ford (Alliance) [1] Sylvia Herman (Independent) [1] John Bercow (Speaker) [1]

The Browne Review into student tuition fees was delayed until February and in deference to the Liberal Democrats it was agreed to leave a decision on the matter until after the Local Elections.

2011 AV Referendum: 50.1% Yes, 49.9% No (35.1% turnout)

The Conservatives initially ran a highly negative campaign on AV for the No side, which faltered after leaked emails described how they planned to cut off the Lib Dems from victory. David Cameron faced constant calls for a debate and finally when it happened it was between Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, with David Miliband representing the "maybe" side. Things got worse for Cameron when he experienced a "brain fade" in the middle of an interview and couldn't answer basic questions on the problem with AV. With the tide slowly turning Yes edged to victory by a tiny margin.

David Cameron had been embarrassed by the dramatic failure of his own constitutional reform - elected Police and Crime Commissioners, and had lost authority with his own party. This, combined with the small margin of the Lib Dem's victory made many Conservative backbenchers reject the legitimacy of the referendum results. The Bill eventually passed only with the support of Labour.

The incident poisoned many Lib Dems against working closely with the Conservatives, leading to their decision to abstain on tuition fees. The Bill passed only with support from Labour following an amendment reducing the increase to £5k.

2012-2017: William Hague (Conservative) Coalition with Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrat)

2012: David Miliband (Labour) [288] David Cameron (Conservative) [277] Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrat) [66] Peter Robinson (DUP) [6] Alex Salmond (SNP) [5] Gerry Adams (Sinn Fein) [5] Iuen Wynn Jones (Plaid Cymru) [4] Patsy McGlone (SDLP) [3] Mike Nesbitt (UUP) [2] Natalie Bennett (Green Party England & Wales) [1] Naomi Long (Alliance) [1] Sylvia Herman (Independent) [1] John Bercow (Speaker) [1]

The 2012 election ended with the Conservatives gaining the most votes but Labour having the most seats allowing the Liberal Democrats a chance to pick their choice of coalition partners. Following the removal of David Cameron the two parties agreed to a referendum on STV, to be held in 2016. 2013 saw the legalisation of gay marriage and the non-renewal of Trident, in 2014 the devolved governments were granted new powers and in 2017 a new Gender Recognition Act granted self-ID for trans people of binary identities. In general it was felt that the Liberal Democrats had the upper hand in negotiations. The largest point of conflict between the two parties was the Snooper's Charter, which rumbled on as an issue throughout the term.

2014 Scottish Independence Referendum: 44.8% Yes, 55.2% No (83.9% turnout)

2016 STV Referendum: 42.8% Yes, 57.2% No

2017-2022: David Miliband (Labour) with Nicola Sturgeon (SNP)

2017: David Miliband (Labour) [278] William Hague (Conservative) [265] Nicola Sturgeon (SNP) [53] Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrat) [10] Nigel Farage (UKIP) [8] Arlene Foster (DUP) [6] Caroline Lucas and Darren Hall (Green Party England & Wales) [4] Robin Swann (UUP) [2] Gerry Adams (Sinn Fein) [5] Leanne Wood (Plaid Cymru) [2] Patsy McGlone (SDLP) [3] Naomi Long (Alliance) [1] Sylvia Herman (Independent) [1] Claire Wright (Independent) [1] John Bercow (Speaker) [1]

The Labour-SNP Coalition was an opportunity for both projects to develop their constitutional ideas. For Labour this meant reorganisation of the House of Lords. The new system would be made up half of experts and political leaders with appointed by the Lords Appointments Commission, a quarter with Lord Senators appointed to represent the different regions based on a proportion of votes in the last election, and a quarter by direct election using the D'Hondt system. The number of Peers was capped at 600.

The Labour-SNP government extended the Named Person Scheme to England and Wales, rewrote abortion law to formally legalise it, adopted the Nordic Model to assist sex workers, introduced a sugar tax, and banned advertising of junk food.

2019: English Regional Assemblies Referendum: 34.1% Yes, 65.9% No

English Regional Assemblies were meant to be introduced without a referendum, however an amendment introduced by Labour backbenchers stopped this and brought the idea to the public, where it floundered, serving mostly to ignite interest in an English Assembly and to provide another arena for the now constant UKIP internal struggles between the Carswellites, Faragists and the #FreeTommy party grassroots.

2022: Boris Johnson (Conservative) [388] David Miliband (Labour) [219] Nicola Sturgeon (SNP) [12] Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat) [7] Emma Little Pengelly (DUP) [6] Michelle O'Neill (Sinn Fein) [5] Margaret Ritchie (SDLP) [3] Neil McEvoy (Plaid Cymru) [2] Robin Swann (UUP) [2] Caroline Lucas (Green Party England & Wales) [2] Naomi Long (Alliance) [2] Nigel Farage (UKIP) [1] John Bercow (Speaker) [1]

Achieving the first majority government in 12 years Boris plans to introduce a referendum on an English Parliament in 2023 and is negotiating with the EU in preparation for a referendum on Brexit. His party has benefited from the years long collapse of UKIP and has cannibalised it in many areas, improving the party's support in the north at the expense of Labour. Labour's response is, against all common sense, to turn to the left under Katy Clark. With Labour making itself unelectably left wing and opportunities to unify his party through a referendum on Brexit, it is likely that Boris Johnson will remain in power a very, very long time.
 
Not sure why but this made me laugh quite a bit.
I had got that far and then decided it didn't have enough of that yet to be realistic for either Doncaster or Winter.

The UKIP defection is probably the least realistic bit, because the previous results imply the coalition was avoided so where are their votes coming from in order to have the same surge as OTL - but I just liked the idea of it being a suitably unscrupulous bit of bandwagon-jumping.
 
Would the Lib Dems really drop that far without the tuition fees sword hanging over them (which presumably would have hit them in 2012 if it was that big an issue)?
 
That is an absurdly big drop for what, on paper at least, seems to have been an actually successful period in Government, the failed referendum on STV notwithstanding.
 
That is an absurdly big drop for what, on paper at least, seems to have been an actually successful period in Government, the failed referendum on STV notwithstanding.

I mean there's still austerity, still being in government, still going into coalition with the Tories, so I'd expect a drop, but probably more like the 30s or low 40s.

Which is still potentially losing half their seats and a big defeat of course.
 
I'm not normally one to try and format-lawyer things @Sideways, but it seems to me that presenting every party leader in Bold makes it a bit harder to read. May just be the colors though.

That said for being an ignorant Yank the after effects seem quite fun to me. I feel like AV settings are really interesting.
 
I'm not normally one to try and format-lawyer things @Sideways, but it seems to me that presenting every party leader in Bold makes it a bit harder to read. May just be the colors though.

That said for being an ignorant Yank the after effects seem quite fun to me. I feel like AV settings are really interesting.

No, format lawyering is useful. I am literally trying to work on a format. This forum has a limited colour pallet but hex codes are pretty easy to do so I was using the colour scheme from wikipedia, which is probably too bright. I think that's likely a big part of the problem

I mean there's still austerity, still being in government, still going into coalition with the Tories, so I'd expect a drop, but probably more like the 30s or low 40s.

Which is still potentially losing half their seats and a big defeat of course.

You could be right. I was working on the assumption that two extra years in government plus them already being re-elected once, plus more of a rise for UKIP and the Greens, plus a more centrist Labour Party would all lead to further squeezing of the Lib Dem number of seats.
 
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You could be right. I was working on the assumption that two extra years in government plus them already being re-elected once, plus more of a rise for UKIP and the Greens, plus a more centrist Labour Party would all lead to further squeezing of the Lib Dem number of seats

The counter to this is that the instinctive 'oh no you've gone into coalition now you're terrible' and 'damn you student loans' votes would have left in 2012 so I'd expect the remaining vote-base to be more resilient- there's probably a lot of people who have gone 'Lib Dem 2010-Non Voter 2012-UKIP/Green 2017' but that wouldn't really affect Lib Dem seats held in 2012.

I suppose I'm just struggling to see what's the big thing between 2012 and 2017 that causes massive numbers of people to defect from the party.
 
You could be right. I was working on the assumption that two extra years in government plus them already being re-elected once, plus more of a rise for UKIP and the Greens, plus a more centrist Labour Party would all lead to further squeezing of the Lib Dem number of seats
If they were cut down during the reelection I could see it, but reelected with a comfortable increase of nearly 10 seats? Even if UKIP and Greens surge and Labour lurched back into the centre, a base clearly exists ITTL for the LibDems (not to mention that Labour lurching to the centre would do more to eat into UKIP than the LibDems), one that would likely keep heads in the high 20s low 30s seat wise when the crunch comes, unless at some point in those 2 years they elected the ghost of Cyril Smith as Leader.
 
2019: English Regional Assemblies Referendum: 34.1% Yes, 65.9% No
I am slightly confused by this, I must admit; is this the accumulated results of various smaller referendums, or was it literally a single referendum to decide all the different Assemblies?
 
Dullpunk: New Zealand Edition
1974-1978: Bill Rowling (Labour) [1]
1975 defeated Jack Marshall (National), Bruce Beetham (Social Credit), Tony Clough (Values)

1978-1987: Brian Talboys (National) [2]
1978 def. Bill Rowling (Labour), Bruce Beetham (Social Credit), Tony Kunowski (Values)
1981 defeated Bill Rowling (Labour), Bruce Beetham (Social Credit), Tony Kunowski (Values) [3]
1984 defeated Michael Bassett (Labour), Bruce Beetham (Social Credit)


1987-1990: Geoffrey Palmer (Labour)
1987
defeated Brian Talboys (National), Bob Jones (“Revivalist” National) [4], Gary Knapp (Social Credit)

1990-1999: Simon Upton (National) [5]
1990 def. Geoffrey Palmer (Labour), Jim Anderton (“True” Labour)
1993 def. Helen Clark (Labour), Bruce Beetham (Centre Coalition)
1996 def. Michael Cullen (Labour), Richard Prebble (“New” Labour), Tuku Morgan (Mana)


1999-2006: Philip Goff (Labour) [6]
1999 def. Simon Upton (National), Richard Prebble (Forward!), Tuku Morgan (Mana) [7]
2002 def. Bill English (National), Tariana Turia (Mana), Dick Quax (Liberal), Jeanette Fitzsimons(Green)
2005 def. Bill English (National), Pita Sharples (Mana), Dick Quax (Liberal) [8]


2006-2008: Margaret Wilson (Labour)

2008-2017: Peter Dunne (National)
2008 defeated Margaret Wilson (Labour), Nanaia Mahuta (Mana), Dick Hubbard (Liberal)
2011 defeated David Parker (Labour), Tariana Turia (Mana), Alfred Ngaro (National in electorate agreement with Citizens' Action League: No Commercial Airport At Whenuapai), Colin Craig (Values) [9]
2014 defeated Andrew Little (Labour), Colin Craig (Values), Winston Peters (Mana), Denise Roche (Green)


2017-0000: David Shearer (Labour)
2017 defeated Peter Dunne (National), Gareth Morgan (A New Approach), Metiria Turei (Mana), Denise Roche (Green)

[1] After the death of Norman Kirk, Bill Rowling was left with a country reeling from multiple systemic shocks. The oil price had tripled overnight. The UK had voted to enter the EEC, and exports were on track to plummet if the country couldn't find new export partners. Inflation was already over 10%. With the 1975 election looming, it would take a miracle to keep the Third Labour Government in power.

And then Jack Marshall decided to give it just one more go.

The reprieve was brief; Labour nosed over the line with 44 seats to National's 43, and gave up the Speaker's chair to preserve their razor-thin majority. And while making Rob Muldoon Speaker of the House was a nice way of smothering his political career, it did not make for a productive term in office.

[2] Brian Talboys waltzed into the leadership in 1976 and into the new Executive Wing in 1978, crushing Rowling with a majority of twelve even as Social Credit successfully defended a seat for the first time in its history. The next two elections would be a sort of managed decline from this peak, as Talboys led the party through diminishing electoral returns and the country through diminishing economic ones. Timid reforms were attempted as the 1980s wound on, though radicals within the party called this "fiddling in the margins", their discontent a foretaste of things to come.

[3] Another foretaste of things to come was the rise and fall of third parties in the form of Values and Social Credit, who between them managed a fifth of the vote in 1981. While their fortunes ebbed with those of the Talboys Government as protest votes trickled back to Labour, small parties have endured as a feature of New Zealand's political landscape since, usually polling a respectable five per cent of the vote with at least one election per decade where they will collectively break into the double digits, particularly if they manage to win a by-election or the incumbent government is extremely unpopular.

[4] Where the once-a-decade peak interacts with an unpopular government, then, accidents like the Fourth Labour Government happen. Geoffrey Palmer was a man intended to lose the election with dignity in order for Labour to put itself in position to repeat 1972 (or, as the economy continued to stagnate, 1935) come 1990. What they got was a repeat of 1957. While reformers like Bob Jones (whose "National Revival" faction voted with Labour on most economic issues from 1985 to 1990) applauded the "crash course" reforms, the Labour Party itself did not react well, particularly as the PM occupied himself more with constitutional affairs than "real" politics.

[5] In a reversal of 1987, National's wunderkind seized the Beehive by exploiting the left-right split in Labour, tactically "failing to correctly submit" candidate registration forms in certain Labour strongholds and leaving the field open for situations like Christchurch Central, where no fewer than five candidates, all purporting to be from the Labour Party, ran against the Prime Minister. Upton continued to use Labour against itself for the next nine years, fending off two uninspiring challenges before the 1998 financial crisis and voter fatigue turfed him out of office.

[6] It was a cleaner break than his successor would end up getting; while Phil Goff won more elections than any other Labour PM and secured the longest Labour Government since the First, he lost control of his caucus and was dethroned in 2006. Unfortunately for all involved, the country simply did not take well to "that bloody impossible woman", replacing her with the reassuringly bland Peter Dunne on election night 2008.

[7] The Mana Party has exploited an unusual niche in New Zealand politics, harnessing both the Maori political awakening and the strengthening currents of discontent with neoliberalism as the 2000s turned into the 2010s. Portraying itself as a voice for all of those marginalised and forgotten by the metropolitan elites, the party has become an increasingly big tent over the past few years and is rapidly approaching the heights Social Credit once reached.

[8] At the other end of the spectrum, the right-Labour faction who were ejected from the party in 1999 congealed into a new movement of their own, eventually settling on the Liberal brand at the same time as they hit on the winning "stand an athlete as your candidate" formula. It didn't outlast Quax's leadership for long, however, and at the end of the day, all of the Dicks left the House.

[9] Finally, at the bottom of the scale, the disparate fragments of the population who considered themselves Christians before all else and rallied behind a strange little man with strange little billboards were cruelly disappointed. Utterly blind to irony in its naming, the second Values Party was a bizarre sequel which made even less of an impact on New Zealand politics than the first.
 
1970-1974: Edward Heath (Conservative majority)
1970: Harold Wilson (Labour), Jeremy Thorpe (Liberal)
1974-1974: Harold Wilson (Labour minority)
1974 (Feb): Edward Heath (Conservative), Jeremy Thorpe (Liberal)
1974-1976: Harold Wilson (Labour majority)
1974 (Oct): Edward Heath (Conservative), Jeremy Thorpe (Liberal)
1976-1981: Michael Foot (Labour majority)
1978: Margaret Thatcher (Conservative), David Steel (Liberal)
1981-1983: Peter Shore (Labour majority)
1983-: Peter Walker (Conservative-Liberal coalition)

1983: Peter Shore (Labour), David Steel (Liberal), Shirley Williams (Reform)

In this world, Pompidou didn't go to the French people with a plebiscite on the expansion of the EEC in 1972. Thus, Labour's position on holding a referendum remained steadfastly opposed (with only Tony Benn and a group of left-wingers agitating for such a constitutional instrument). Labour managed to scrape together a majority after the indecisive result of February 1974, but no referendum was forthcoming. With Wilson gone in '76, the Eurosceptics of both left and right (the 'Referendum Group' of Labour MPs) organised around Michael Foot as their representative in the ensuing leadership election, and Foot took over with a mandate from the PLP to put EEC membership to the British public in 1977. That referendum campaign was hard-fought and hard-won by Foot and his colleagues, allowing him to call an election the following spring that increased the Labour majority from 1 to 47. Footism, in an air of national renewal (helped by England's positive performance in the 1978 World Cup in Argentina), flourished and the conservatism of the defeated Thatcher was relegated to simply another tendency in a party brimming with factional backbiting and an inability to come to terms with the reversal of Britain's accession to the European Economic Community. There was little hope left for monetarists on the one hand or Heathites on the other, with the former's economics and the latter's Europhilia having to be junked lest the party never return to power (as some were beginning to fear by the start of the Eighties). Out of this mess, after the interim leadership of William Whitelaw, came Peter Walker: the committed Keynesian and Heathite who, back in the early '60s, had been an enemy of the pro-EEC faction within his own party. He had since switched to pro-European ideas, but was able to temper his feelings on the EEC in order to reach out to the Eurosceptic Tories that had largely abandoned the party. "The issue of Europe is a political dead-end", he announced at his first conference speech as leader in 1980, "and the Conservative Party must respect the will of the British people". Putting the issue to bed allowed him to creep ahead of the incoming Shore regime, which was faltering as Labour's own ranks were splitting off and attempting to revive the battle over Europe (Shirley Williams, the former Prices and Consumer Protection Secretary, headed the most successful pro-European outfit to secede from Labour: the Reform Party). In 1983, Shore and Walker were to trade jobs as the Tories entered into coalition with the buoyant Liberals (who saw off most Reform challenges to their dominance as the most pro-European party). No talk of the EEC was allowed, the referendum result having been formally accepted in the Tories' 1983 manifesto, A Modern Plan for a Modern Britain. Walker's coalition was to be focused on cutting wasteful expenditure, deepening the collaboration with the unions that had begun under Labour, and reforming the education system to ensure high standards across the board.​
Europe? Nobody but the bitterest of Liberals and the middle-class cranks talked about Europe anymore.​
 
I am slightly confused by this, I must admit; is this the accumulated results of various smaller referendums, or was it literally a single referendum to decide all the different Assemblies?

In my tired ass form I was thinking of a single referendum on English devolution. But thinking of I am fairly sure it would not go that way

If they were cut down during the reelection I could see it, but reelected with a comfortable increase of nearly 10 seats? Even if UKIP and Greens surge and Labour lurched back into the centre, a base clearly exists ITTL for the LibDems (not to mention that Labour lurching to the centre would do more to eat into UKIP than the LibDems), one that would likely keep heads in the high 20s low 30s seat wise when the crunch comes, unless at some point in those 2 years they elected the ghost of Cyril Smith as Leader.

There is five years between the two elections - as I understand AV, it would have helped the Lib Dems in a pre-coalition era, which is essentially where they're at in 2012, but gets less useful when they're not getting decent second places in as many places. There's many things to consider for why the Lib Dems collapsed so utterly, and the student fees debacle was one of them, but I'm not convinced it was the whole story. Being in power for 7 years, they'd comprehensively lose the Fuck All of You voters, and the anti-Tory voters, and it seemed like the party was struggling on the ground level and has had to refocus and reform to restore that activist base, and you've got the frankly depressing "look left, look right" campaign, but against a Tory Party that's a little less right wing and a Labour Party that's firmly centre. And you've got a notion that coalitions do just continue and maybe the Lib Dems will just always be in power now.
 
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