A man who will certainly be our Prime Minister for a very long time.The real fight is for David Steel.
(not sure if this reference is too obscure as I only showed you the bizarre biography quote at a meetup like five years ago).
A man who will certainly be our Prime Minister for a very long time.The real fight is for David Steel.
A man who will certainly be our Prime Minister for a very long time.
(not sure if this reference is too obscure as I only showed you the bizarre biography quote at a meetup like five years ago).
Thanks, now I’m gonna have nightmares of David Steel as a more successful Giovanni Giolitti.Someone should write a vignette based on this scenario.
Falklands never happens, and in 1984, the SDP-Liberal Alliance wins a ridiculously big landslide. David Steel becomes Prime Minister with Roy Jenkins as his chancellor. A referendum brings about proportional representation. As a consequence, there's never any real argument for a proper merger between the Liberals and the SDP.
And then the next thirty-five years, you basically see the Liberals in the centre as the biggest party, under David Steel shifting from coalitions to the left to coalitions on the right, to coalitions to the left, etc.
In 2019, David Steel is celebrating the thirty-fifth anniversary of his being appointed Prime Minister, never having been out of office since.
I really like this idea. Having Jenkins join the Liberals and Brown taking his place is the makings of a PR-nightmare. Brown’s tendency to be tired and emotional is bound to be parroted around by the press. Another POD could be the SDP forming in spite of Healey leading the Labour Party.I'd forgotten that, but it was pretty much what I was thinking.
For the different Gang approach, George Brown strikes me as an obvious alt-member - and whilst Rodgers was, as said, more significant than joked, I think his lack of notice with the *public* makes him the most reasonable to keep.
I really like this idea. Having Jenkins join the Liberals and Brown taking his place is the makings of a PR-nightmare. Brown’s tendency to be tired and emotional is bound to be parroted around by the press. Another POD could be the SDP forming in spite of Healey leading the Labour Party.
While somewhat goes against the rules of this challenge, how about the TIG forms up before the 2017 snappy? While the tabloid claims a splinter could get 200 MPs were a bit exaggerated, I imagine they’d get more than 11 MPs and some bigger names as well (Blair, Millibands one and two, Cooper).
Yes, a split only became inevitable when the snappy entrenched, rather than as expected, turfing out Corbyn.The thing is, I think those who'd be interested in forming such a party were counting on Labour self-destructing in 2017 and they would be able to capture the traumatised remnants, slash the membership to a malleable bone (isnt this cartilage?) and return to the sunlit uplands of 2000-ish.
Gateway drug?Given we know Alliance voters were pretty evenly divided, but probably favoured the Tories over Labour as their second preference, and I think Crewe and King show pretty clearly that SDP voters at least were much closer to the Tories in policy terms, I don't know why people are assuming the third party option faltering is a particular positive for Labour. I don't think the result at the next election changes hugely, and if anything it may benefit the Tories.
The difficulty is that she, like a lot of other people on the Labour right, isn't really in favour of a second referendum, so she was never a realistic recruit for ChUK. It could well be that Brexit actually made the mainstream Labour breakaway a lot smaller than it could have been.Cooper has been a bit of a hero to FBPE in a way that Umunna hasn't, thanks to Actually Doing Parliamentary Things to try to stop Brexit. She'd have been a coup.
Ed Miliband at least has a higher profile than Cooper. I'd say Diane Abbott too based on my experience.ISTR Cooper being the most well known current Labour MP after Corbyn.
Yes, they would look more opportunistic, but they would also have the advantages that they had at the beginning of their existence, before they began to slide, and probably would be in an even stronger position with more MPs to bring to the table. If you're the Lib Dems, an alliance with ChUK makes perfect sense at that point, especially if you're objective is to keep up the momentum from the Euros and attract more Labour voters to your side so that you push yourselves into the lead in what is an extremely fragmented political environment.Eh. Surely them trying to do OTL but after the Lib Dem successes would just look like a more monstrous act of egotism than OTL. You think the Lib Dems would feel the need to treat them as equal partners after those results? Man, good luck with that.
The Lib Dems indicated they were theoretically open to an electoral alliance, so it would have been relatively easy to achieve that had they pushed for one. The only thing which was off limits for the LDs was merging into a new party and losing their own identity.They had two realistic options to my mind, get over their egos and tribalism and contempt for the Lib Dems and outright defect, or just not bother with trying to frame it in party terms and just sit as an independent Labour group. The first would have meant the causes they champion, and not to say their careers, would have had much more lead in the pencil than OTL. The second would have spared them the embarrassment of the last few months and would have equally lead to them having more credibility, if only in that case in terms of the internal optics of Labour.
Given we know Alliance voters were pretty evenly divided, but probably favoured the Tories over Labour as their second preference, and I think Crewe and King show pretty clearly that SDP voters at least were much closer to the Tories in policy terms, I don't know why people are assuming the third party option faltering is a particular positive for Labour. I don't think the result at the next election changes hugely, and if anything it may benefit the Tories.
"No Falklands" meaning the Tories are going to go significantly backwards is a big if, with or without the SDP being a laughing stock.The success of the Alliance in by-elections led to them soaring in the polls, fuelling speculation over every perceived conflict between the left and right wings of the Labour Party, and whether this meant another slew of defections. ITTL, with the SDP tripping over its laces, focus is more on the centrist's failure - and I imagine Labour is able to retain something of its polling position prior to the Crosby by-election, when it was generally beating the Tories. I accounted for the Falklands, by saying the Tories still emerged the largest party, you'll notice.
The success of the Alliance in by-elections led to them soaring in the polls, fuelling speculation over every perceived conflict between the left and right wings of the Labour Party, and whether this meant another slew of defections. ITTL, with the SDP tripping over its laces, focus is more on the centrist's failure - and I imagine Labour is able to retain something of its polling position prior to the Crosby by-election, when it was generally beating the Tories. I accounted for the Falklands, by saying the Tories still emerged the largest party, you'll notice.
I'm doubtful how reliable the mid-term polling is as a clear predictor of a general election result, particularly when it comes to Labour. Labour lead for a lot of the 1983-87 parliament too, and the 1987-1992 parliament come to that. There's more recent examples as well with both parties, both in terms of basic leads and margins. Ed Milliband and Cameron under Brown both cruised their parliaments based on the polls and ended up getting burned when the eventual results come in. There's clearly a big element of people noting their dissatisfaction in mid-term polling which doesn't have any particular bearing on how they'll vote when they actually come to the focusing of minds in the run-up to a general election. Which is why I am not massively swayed by the national polling at the moment.
Equally the assumption that Labour's divisions were only accentuated with the arrival of the SDP seems a little odd. There was a long and particularly bitter pre-history on that one. And the Falklands is generally over-stated in these discussions.
Ultimately I think the demographic base of the SDP vote was part of a global western phenomenon. Boomers coming of voting age, essentially. SDP voters were the exact same type which formed the bedrock of the Gary Hart boomlet in 84, for example. I don't think these people were ever at risk of enthusiastically voting for Socialism red in tooth and claw, as they'd prove very emphatically over the next few decades. If the SDP collapses under Owenite madness, at best for Labour they're going to be pretty evenly divided between the two main parties, which is what we have on their OTL second preferences; depending on where it's located, this may benefit the Tories overall. Given Mrs T's margin over Labour IOTL was a paltry 15%, presumably for a hung parliament we are looking at dominant numbers of these voters and some people who voted Conservative IOTL thinking 'Labour under Foot - Labour under Foot during a general election campaign at that! - aint half bad', and I am seriously struggling to see that.
I also dragged things out to 1984, when you know - highest levels of unemployment since WW2 and all that, might make some people think 'maybe she doesnt know what shes doing'.
How to solve the problem of the Lib Dems and Greens, I've no idea.