Lemon flavoured
Extremely Online and incoherent
- Location
- Hucknall, Notts
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Alan Clark comes to mind, if you can get him into power in the first place, which might be tough.
Having recently read 'British Liberal Leaders', Duncan Brack's essay on Ashdown, in particular his analysis on Ashdown's emotional life, left me with a vague, uncomfortable feeling that Ashdown would have been well suited for authoritarian rule, and been a strongman who would have happily 'played' the structure of liberal democracy like Orbán had he felt it necessary.
I think for Northern Ireland the very obvious one is former Vanguard Leader William Craig in a UDI scenario - "Liquidate the Enemy" and all that. George Seawright is a good shout, but he was a bit of a feisty man and I'm not sure I see him lasting long without being overthrown. Down south, a funny prospect would be Conor Cruise O'Brien.
I wanted to say Haughey but I felt it would be cheating.Seawright was just a bit too much of a loose cannon to reach the top, if even the the early 80s DUP think your too extreme you know you have problems. I could see him as mid ranking brute muscle in a Bill Craig regime though.
Down South Charlie Haughey for the sheer craic. The amount of graft going on would be immense.
I think for Northern Ireland the very obvious one is former Vanguard Leader William Craig in a UDI scenario - "Liquidate the Enemy" and all that. George Seawright is a good shout, but he was a bit of a feisty man and I'm not sure I see him lasting long without being overthrown. Down south, a funny prospect would be Conor Cruise O'Brien.
I've started working on a list TL where this happens. It's probably ASB, but a centralist, parliamentary Republic of America turned out to be too fun to pass up.So it strikes me that in a world where the Anti-Federalists are weaker when the Constitution is drafted (let's say Thomas Jefferson goes through with committing suicide when his wife dies, and George Clinton and Patrick Henry just utterly, utterly fail to pick up the pieces), Alexander Hamilton might be one of these. The man's democratic instincts were certainly not one hundred percent.
There's also Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. I don't know enough about him to say whether he might have been inclined that way but IIRC there was talk at one point about drafting him as a stop Hitler candidate, with the Communists on one side and the National Socialists on the other it would be easy enough to find things inching towards an authoritarian state.Manfred von Richthofen in a reality where he lives and somehow assumes power if he was so inclined. Perhaps Franz Josef Strauss could be a West German Berlesconi?
@Comisario, I believe this is where the "a Cripps in every country" theory comes in.I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned Stafford Cripps yet. His ideas on using enabling acts to pass legislation and orders in council that wouldn't subsequently be allowed to be discussed or amended by Parliament were incredibly authoritarian.
Indeed. Prime examples of Crippses in other countries include Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Henry A. Wallace of the USA, and Östen Undén of Sweden: all men, socialist/social democratic in their political leanings, born in the 1880s to middle- or upper-class families, and with a deep affection for the Soviet Union.@Comisario, I believe this is where the "a Cripps in every country" theory comes in.
Never thought of Nehru in those terms before, but it makes perfect sense.Indeed. Prime examples of Crippses in other countries include Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Henry A. Wallace of the USA, and Östen Undén of Sweden: all men, socialist/social democratic in their political leanings, born in the 1880s to middle- or upper-class families, and with a deep affection for the Soviet Union.
Indeed. Prime examples of Crippses in other countries include Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Henry A. Wallace of the USA, and Östen Undén of Sweden: all men, socialist/social democratic in their political leanings, born in the 1880s to middle- or upper-class families, and with a deep affection for the Soviet Union.
Ehhhhh, his first visit in 1927 and most of his political prior to the Cold War fits very well with the “deep affection” the others in that list had. That isn’t to say that it was sustained, but it would be false to claim that he didn’t love the transformative power of the Soviets, study the works of Marx and Lenin, and seek to make common cause with them in a fraternal socialist manner for many decades.I'd hardly describe Nehru as having "a deep affection for the Soviet Union". At first he tried really hard to ally with the US because it was an ex-British colony which became a superpower (connections to India are obvious) and then became non-aligned after the US decided Pakistan would make for a better ally. He criticized the USSR's role in the Hungarian Spring, its 1961 resumption of nuclear testing, and opposed Khrushchev's threats to send "volunteers" to the Congo and Middle East in 1956 and 1958. I'm not sure if Nehru fully understood the idea of realpolitik, but India's alliance with the USSR was always one of convenience. He took Soviet money, though, and was entirely happy with the USSR instructing the Communist Party of India to work within the parliamentary framework.
Ehhhhh, his first visit in 1927 and most of his political prior to the Cold War fits very well with the “deep affection” the others in that list had. That isn’t to say that it was sustained, but it would be false to claim that he didn’t love the transformative power of the Soviets, study the works of Marx and Lenin, and seek to make common cause with them in a fraternal socialist manner for many decades.
I don’t think that Cripps/Wallace/Undén were necessarily all autocrats in their political lives and I would certainly not pin that as a common trait among all ‘Crippses’. Fair enough on his own lack of authoritarianism, though, even if I have read of his sometimes hectoring and bullying personality when dealing with ministers (which clashes with his public persona and subsequent democratic legacy, of course).That's pretty fair. Perhaps the biggest reason I would call him "un-Crippsian" is because of his aversion to dictatorship and autocracy, to an extent that some criticism of him has been laid at his "weakness" in this regard.