CTTeller
You still haven't passed my pipe
- Location
- Pinner, Middlesex
- Pronouns
- he/him
I was writing an email to someone who asked if they could see one of my wikibox series, and in the process I've ended up writing something that is far too long. Here it is, I hope you enjoy it.
The point of divergence here is that Douglas-Home decides to go to the country immediately, and although he manages to significantly tighten the points deficit, Labour still manages to win a majority in December 1963, marginally larger than that which they won in our world in 1964. Labour run into problems, similar to that which they faced in our world, and they lose their majority in early 1967. Heath, having been elected about the same time as in our world, calls a vote of no confidence, which passes, and an election is scheduled to coincide with the 1967 GLC election.
Labour are essentially destroyed, the victims of an unbelievably poor election timing. Almost the entire Labour cabinet are unseated; the only survivors really are Roy Jenkins, Peter Shore, and Richard Crossman. Wilson becomes the first Prime Minister to lose their seat, which he blames on the candidacy of one David Sutch, who he holds a grudge against for the rest of his life. Crossman becomes interim, and later full time leader. The result is so bad that a 24-year-old Michael Howard wins the previously assumed-to-be safe seat of Liverpool Edge Hill, becoming Baby of the House, amongst so many others.
The 1971 election sees a minimal net recovery, but the result is arguably worse. As a result of unfavourable Liberal vote gains in certain seats sees Crossman, who was ailing, to lose his seat, and even worse his assumed successor Jenkins goes out too. The only presumed leadership material at this point is Shore, who most consider not ready yet. It is at this point that the Labour Party see no choice but to change the rules; the NEC changes the leadership election rules so that the leader does not need to be an MP (opening up the leadership election to Lords) or even in parliament (for a worst case scenario). With Jenkins gone, Ashfield MP David Marquand begins to rise as the new face of the pro-Europe wing, with essentially everyone else gone.
Wilson returns to parliament in Huyton, and is in a position to return as interim leader and LOTO for the duration of the leadership election. Eventually, the party decides on a very unorthodox choice; the pacifist Reverend, Lord Soper. A captivating orator, he spends the first month of his leadership in the Lords, after which West Ham South MP Elwyn Jones resigns on promise of a peerage to allow him a place, where Soper is easily elected and becomes LOTO, taking over from Wilson who continued with Soper's appointed Shadow Cabinet; two years later Soper would appoint him as Shadow Chancellor, returning to a role he had last held twelve years prior.
Soper leads Labour into the 1975 election, where they gain just over a dozen seats, with no one else around, Soper continues as leader, as Marquand continues his rise. Throughout all this, Heath has served as Prime Minister with an unprecedentedly large single-party majority. Soper remains leader through the 1979 election (the Reverend now seventy-six years old) where he gains a reasonable 23 seats. With the Liberals also gaining a seat, they reduce Heath (who has now been PM for twelve years) to... 431 seats. It's still infallible. Wilson again loses Huyton, mainly thanks to boundary changes.
Soper retires as leader in November 1980, a few months short of his 78th birthday, triggering another leadership election where Peter Shore, now a long serving Shadow Chancellor, stands. Marquand, thanks to boundary changes and another unhelpfui Liberal surge, had lost his Ashfield seat, but this was no longer a problem. Marquand is helped by the now-Lord Jenkins and others to successfully defeat Shore and become leader, for the first time ever from outside Parliament. Margaret Jay, who held the seat her father James Callaghan lost in 1967, was persuaded to retire, much like Elwyn Jones a decade previously, and Marquand returns as MP for Cardiff South and Penarth in January of '81, relieving Soper from the frontbench for the last time. Shore, his rival, is sent to the backbenches. John Parker, the Father of the House of Commons, is elected his deputy to provide a breadth of experience.
A major part of Marquand's platform for leader was sorting out a joint list with the Liberals, where they would stand down in a great number of the Liberals' best hopes for seats, and vice versa. He successfully negotiates this with Liberal leader Richard Wainwright, and it is all ready to go by late 1981, forming United for Democracy. Heath similarly decides to form an alliance with the now-split off Ulster Unionists, and forms the Ulster and Conservative Alliance, which would put the UUP in Cabinet, but curiously only was set to go into effect after an election.
Marquand leads Labour into the 1983 election, which sees modest gains once again and sees Heath (having now been in power for sixteen long years, the longest serving Prime Minister since Pitt the Younger) once again win a landslide majority. Wilson, determined to outlast Heath in parliament, returns one more time, as member for the Huyton successor seat of Knowsley South. As a result of the joint list Labour technically lose about four percent of the vote, the Liberals gain a handful of seats though which is seen as very good for them. A lot of people in Labour, however, are quite unhappy. Peter Shore leads the charge against the joint list, claiming the deal had seen the Liberals take liberties. Shore calls for a binding vote of the NEC to dissolve the alliance, which very narrowly passes. Marquand is furious, and immediately resigns as leader, astonishingly defecting to the Liberal Party at once. Wilson assumes the acting leadership once more, for the duration of the leadership election, which sees a tired and tainted Shore elected over Lord Jenkins (a leadership election which had been anticipated for over 16 years now) surprisingly strongly. Shore appoints Wilson as Shadow Home Secretary. Meanwhile, Heath appoints UUP leader James Molyneaux as Northern Ireland Secretary, a role in which he serves until he pulls his party out of the utterly unnecessary coalition in early 1986.
Wainwright retires as leader of the Liberal Party in mid 1985, and Marquand is elected his successor. He swiftly moves to rename the party to the Democratic Alliance, framing themselves as the true successors to the United for Democracy joint list while saying Labour were stuck to their dogmatic ways. This leads into the 1987 election, where Labour's gains are utterly pitiful, three seats and a marginal increase in vote, while the DA (as they were referred) gain almost 4% and a dozen seats, putting Heath (now having served as PM for just over 20 years, putting him on the brink of breaking Walpole's record) at 399 seats, still an infallible majority but now beginning to come down somewhere close to earth. Marquand, seeing Cardiff South and Penarth unwinnable for his party, decants to the DA target of Sheffield Hillsborough, which he wins narrowly. Shore immediately announces his intention to resign, pending a leadership election, while Marquand pledges to carry on. The Labour leadership election sees the 50-year-old Shadow Foreign Secretary, Donald Dewar, become leader, and he quickly endears himself to the public. Edward Heath becomes Father of the House of Commons following the election, only the second PM to be so concurrently to his premiership, following Henry Campbell-Bannerman.
On 1 March 1988, Edward Heath celebrates becoming the longest serving Prime Minister of all time, to the grievance of Wilson, who Dewar moves back to SFCO for the first time in 25 years shortly after. In June 1990, Edward Heath resigns as Leader of the Conservative Party after an incredible 25 years at the helm, with 23 of them as Prime Minister. Now aged 74, tributes are made to him from across the House. In July, the long serving lieutenant Jim Prior succeeds him as leader, but announces that on account of his long tenure, Heath will remain as Prime Minister until the next general election, which he announces for 1991. Heath conducts a reshuffle, reviving the First Secretary of State title for Prior, and shuffles a number of posts to Jim's liking, including making the Chief Whip, the formidable Alan Haselhurst, Leader of the House of Commons. Shortly after, Marquand renames the Democratic Alliance further, to the Democrats.
A few months before the '91 election, in January, David Marquand abruptly resigns as leader of the Democrats and announces his intention to stand down from parliament. This catches the Democrats off guard, and they swiftly elect the 45-year-old Archy Kirkwood as his successor. The 1991 election results in the first major gains in seats for Labour in almost thirty years. They gain almost forty, the Conservatives down to 363, no longer a landslide victory but still a strong majority, and the Democrats down a handful, likely as a result of not having enough time to bed-in Kirkwood. Dewar, having led Labour back to a very respectable 233 seats, triumphantly announces his intention to stay on as leader and fight the next election. Edward Heath, who was re-elected MP for Old Bexley and Sidcup, leaves Downing Street for the last time as Prime Minister, after an unfathomable 24 years at the helm, and Jim Prior becomes PM at the age of nigh-on 64. In October of that year, Harold Wilson, his faculties perfectly intact but still knackered after forty years of frontbench politics and 75 years of life, finally retires to the backbenches, having been re-elected once again.
Prior is at the very least competent as Prime Minister, but with the Conservatives in power for so long there is only so much popularity he can muster. Mid-Parliament, Labour sneak into the lead for the first time in a generation in polling. Despite all this, Prior only waits four years before calling the next election, when he could have waited until 1996. This would prove to be a terrible mistake, but perhaps not as terrible as Labour would have liked, as it would see the Conservatives as the largest party, but short six seats of an overall majority. They form a coalition once more with the Ulster Unionist Party, now led by Robin Chichester-Clark, where they have an unusual condition. The Speaker, former Wales Secretary Margaret Thatcher, had stood down from Parliament, and the UUP along with concessions in Ulster, demanded the Speakership. Not in a position to argue, Prior accepts, and James Molyneaux is elected Speaker, the fourth consecutive Conservative-aligned speaker, which irritates Labour considerably. There was only one other condition: Prior's head. The Tories were already not particularly happy with him, and Prior announces shortly after forming the coalition that he would be resigning as Prime Minister and Leader following the election of a successor. Prior, 68, is succeeded by Leader of the House Alan Haselhurst, who had become known for his strong performances during procedural debates. Harold Wilson, once again re-elected, watches from the backbenches with amusement. Edward Heath, who had also been re-elected once more, watches with a tinge of sadness as his old colleague goes to the backbenches. Haselhurst appoints the 49-year-old Teri Turnbull, wife of Australian politician Malcolm Turnbull, as his Social Security Secretary.
Upon becoming Prime Minister, Haselhurst's oratorical skills were on full show; he was utterly incredible. A ferociously good speaker. Shockingly so, for an unprepared Labour, an unprepared Dewar. Polling now saw the Democrats being squeezed considerably between the two major parties, and within four months Haselhurst was comfortable enough to go to the country, just eight months after the last election. The 1996 election saw the Conservatives shockingly regain their majority; a circumstance essentially unforeseen by Labour. Haselhurst won a majority of 18, an incredible triumph for the best Commons orator since Churchill. Labour also managed to gain seats at the behest of the Democrats, and the gap between Labour and the Tories only increased by 0.5%. The real loser of this election was Archy Kirkwood, who as a result of the squeeze had ended up leading his party into losing half of their seats, and almost half their vote. Kirkwood naturally resigned as leader and was replaced by Alex Carlile. David Marquand, the former leader of two parties, was so impressed by Haselhurst's liberally minded Conservative leadership that he joined the Conservatives. Donald Dewar also conceded defeat in a melancholy speech and announced his coming resignation as leader. Harold Wilson, who turned 80 four days after the election, is re-elected once more. Edward Heath is also re-elected once again and continues to serve as Father of the House. Jim Prior, however, retires from the House of Commons and is nominated for a peerage by Haselhurst.
After this the Labour Party does not know what to do. Were they ever going to win again? They thought they could win in 1995; the Conservatives won a plurality hung parliament. They sure as hell thought they would win in 1996; the Tories gained seats and won a nigh-on 20 seat majority! What were they to do? All through this time, the Labour Party had become increasingly paranoid about the country. Many of their staffers and workers though that the Tories had rigged the system and that was the only reason why they had stayed in power for so long. They were terrified of making one small wrong move, that would set Labour back for another three decades. But they decided they had to take a risk, and so they decided to think radically outside of the box.
Eric Idle, the former Python, had been elected to parliament in Lewisham back in 1987, out of almost desperation, thinking 'I have to bloody do something, here!' He had served in the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Media Secretary, and later through shadowing the Fisheries and Environment department. It was from this position that Idle defeated David Blunkett to become leader, as an outrageous outsider.
Idle was reasonably good at PMQs but was never truly able to triumph over the impeccable Haselhurst. Despite this, Labour fell into a strong lead as the Conservative government began to seriously show its age after 30 years of single party rule. However, before victory came, tragedy struck. Harold Wilson, who had served on the backbenches for the previous eight years, died of colon cancer, in office, at the age of 83 in July 1999. He was the only living Prime Minister not from the Tory party and had been so since the death of Attlee in the 1960s. In many ways it marked the end of an era. Despite his leading the Labour Party into such a crushing defeat in 1967, he was warmly tributed by many people across the House, none more so than Edward Heath, who felt very sorry for him in some ways. Local councillor Ken McGlashan was elected his successor in a by-election.
The polling situation was not made any better by the Bishop of Rochester. Michael Nazir-Ali, who had recently won a seat in the Lords as a Lord Spiritual as a result of his seniority in the Church, had finally had enough of close to 35 years of Heathism controlling the party, and very controversially launched a splinter party, the High Tories, on Christmas Day 1999. Such an intervention from a sitting Bishop of the Church was seen as outrageous by most, from all parties and even from the Church itself. Nazir-Ali's often strongly religious rhetoric often forced the Church to have to make statements that the Bishop was not speaking on behalf of them when making religious-sounding political speeches. But Nazir-Ali persisted, and it won him very considerable ratings in the polls. The Conservatives were now in serious danger of being well and truly smashed in a way not dissimilar to Labour in 1967. The High Tories also saw a number of defections from the Conservatives in the House of Commons (as well as Lords). For the time being, one of those defectors, Reigate MP George Gardiner, served as their leader in the Commons.
Haselhurst waited as long as he could before calling the next election, which eventually came in March 2001, almost exactly 5 years after the previous. After almost 34 years of Conservative government, the Tories were comprehensively defeated like never before. Labour won 435 seats and the Tories crashed to 125, which was actually one seat less than Labour won in 1967, while faring far, far worse in the popular vote. This defeat was severely exacerbated by the High Tories, still led by the sitting Bishop, who won a whopping 32 seats and 11% of the vote, an unprecedented total for a party on its first outing. However, they had lost in Reigate their leader in the Commons, George Gardiner. He was replaced by freshman MP, and staunch Nazir-Ali ally, Rodney Atkinson, the brother of the Blackadder and Mr. Bean actor. The Democrats led by Alex Carlile had gained 22 seats, which was more than they had lost in their pasting in the last election. Haselhurst announced his resignation as Leader of the Conservative Party during his final Downing Street speech, with his leaving date scheduled for after the local elections. Eric Idle was invited to the Palace where he became the first Labour PM for 34 years; having last been in power when he was 24. Amongst his cabinet was the now-second term MP for Rhondda, Huw Irranca-Davies, as Welsh Secretary. He also appointed former leader Donald Dewar as Leader of the House of Commons in a surprise appointment, given Dewar was on the backbenches. However, tragically, Dewar would die suddenly of a heart attack after just ten days in the job, at the age of 63. Meanwhile, Edward Heath had been re-elected once again, now at the age of almost 85.
Idle was something of a showman as Prime Minister, though he took the actual office itself very seriously. He was a delegatory Prime Minister who allowed his ministers to have a lot of power, partially down to what he privately admitted was a lack of political skill. The real center of power was initially with the very senior Deputy Prime Minister, John Morris, who had first been elected in the 1967 demolition. Following his retirement in 2003, it shifted to Paul Boateng.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives elected former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Young to be Haselhurst's successor in May 2001, winning the former Prime Minister's full support. Young was again very competent but was absolutely crippled by the effect of Nazir-Ali's High Tories, who went from strength to strength following the election of yet another Heathite to the leadership, despite Young moving slightly to the right to try to win those votes back. The result of that was not the return of those voters, but the resignation of David Marquand from the party in 2002, and he proceeded to join Plaid Cymru. 2002 also saw the retirement of Speaker Molyneaux, who had perhaps surprisingly proven to be a non-partisan, neutral speaker... and it was not in that vein that the government announced they would be nominating Dennis Skinner, the legendary backbench MP for Bolsover and founder/longtime President of the Labour Socialist Alliance; essentially the leader of the Labour left, to be his replacement. This took an unbelievable amount of persuasion for Dennis to accept, which he only did so upon having a long, and apparently hearty, meeting with Idle. He is easily taken to the chair, where he suspends his Labour membership and does surprisingly end up being a non-partisan speaker himself.
2003 saw the resignation of Alex Carlile as Leader of the Democrats after seven years. His successor is 40-year-old Matthew Taylor, the youngest major party leader in living memory. The year also saw Alan Haselhurst become Chair of the Public Accounts Committee. 2004 saw the foundation of the Welsh Parliament, and the first elections, which saw Labour unsurprisingly win a strong majority with their devolved leader, Denzil Davies, become the first Prime Minister of Wales, and also saw David Marquand elected Welsh MP for Dwyfor Meirionnydd at the age of nigh-on 70.
Idle called an election for late June of 2005. The election saw Labour win a second landslide majority, but one down by thirty seats. The Conservatives were not beneficiaries of this, as they actually managed to lose a dozen seats, mainly to the High Tories. For the first time in history, they fell to third place in the popular vote behind the Democrats, who gained a dozen seats to reach 51 in a sensational result for Matthew Taylor. The Tories had almost fallen to fourth place behind the High Tories, who were only two points behind them, and had gained a further 19 seats to reach 51, tying with the Democrats for third in terms of seats. In the event, the Government announced that the Democrats would be designated third largest party by taking into account popular vote as a means of tiebreaker. Edward Heath finally left the House of Commons at this election after a whopping 55 years in the house and retired to Salisbury. Former Prime Minister Alan Haselhurst was re-elected in Broxbourne. The only resignation as a result of this election was George Young, who announced the leadership election would be immediate and that there would be a new leader before the state opening. Before retiring, Young offered to make Heath Duke of Bexley, but he decided he was content as Sir Edward. This leadership election resulted in the victory of John Hayes, the unbelievably right-wing MP for South Holland and the Deepings, to the leadership, a leader so right wing in fact most considered him to the right of Nazir-Ali and his High Tories. For the first time in many, many decades, the Tory left had lost.
This is not good enough for a number of Tory MPs, chief amongst them Teri Turnbull, the former Leader of the House of Commons. She sensationally defects to the Democrats and becomes a frontbench spokesperson shortly thereafter.
Nazir-Ali actually gets on quite well with Hayes, and they form certain agreements in particular seats. This becomes particularly important when the Church finally forces Nazir-Ali to choose between the Church and politics, and he opts to resign as Bishop of Rochester after 15 years in post. He therefore loses his seat in the House of Lords, but he had already arranged for the Suffolk Coastal MP, Michael Lord, to resign and trigger a by-election he would run in. As a gesture of good faith, Hayes stood down the Tory candidate, and Nazir-Ali won easily, entering the House of Commons for the first time.
Eric Idle resigns as Leader of the Labour Party at a rather inconvenient time in January 2009. Most had expected him to call an election for May, but he had elected to bring his political career to a close and return to writing. The two main candidates to succeed him were the Defence Secretary Nick Brown, and the Pensions and Social Welfare Secretary Huw Irranca-Davies. Surprisingly, Irranca-Davies won over the more experienced Brown, and became Prime Minister at the age of 46. Initially, Irranca-Davies is seen as something of a mediocre figure, not particularly well liked or disliked within the party. He has a clinical relationship with his Deputy, Alan Johnson, who reportedly agreed not to stand in the contest in return for becoming Deputy and eventually succeeding Irranca-Davies as leader.
2009 also saw the death of a living legend. Edward Heath passed away at the age of 93 at his home in Salisbury in December. Warm tributes were paid across both Houses of Parliament, and the great man who served almost a quarter century as Prime Minister was given a ceremonial funeral not at Westminster Abbey, but at his beloved Salisbury Cathedral.
Irranca-Davies called an election in 2010, as late as possible for June 2010, as a result of Labour's now innate paranoia. It results in Labour's majority being slashed from 160 to 60, and the Conservatives gaining over thirty seats. The High Tories reasonably suffer, falling five seats and 3% of the vote, and the Tories regain their place as the second party in terms of vote share. However, the Democrats had once again fared very well under Matthew Taylor, swelling to 71 seats. All four leaders, at least for now, remained in place after this election. Former Prime Minister Alan Haselhurst was once again re-elected in his constituency of Broxbourne. Immediately after this election, nascent talks begin for a merger between the two increasingly close allies. This is met with a lot of hostility from the Tory left, but the membership had grown increasingly Hayes-affiliated. Reports of infiltration from High Tories were largely without firm evidence, but nevertheless probably accurate.
February 2012 sees the announcement of Speaker Skinner that he would be resigning as Speaker to return to party politics, which was strongly in contravention of centuries of speakership convention. Despite this, it is accepted, Skinner returning to the presidency of the Labour Socialist Alliance shortly after and Anne Begg being elected Labour's second consecutive Speaker, the first wheelchair user to be elected. are coming near to their conclusion when, shortly after the local elections, Alan Johnson shockingly announces his resignation as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Deputy Prime Minister. He announces his intention to challenge Irranca-Davies as leader, saying that he is leading Labour towards inevitable defeat once the High Tories and Tories inevitably (sic) merge. Irranca-Davies is shocked and considerably betrayed by this turn and sees no other choice than to resign as Leader. This turn of events essentially outrages the Labour Party, and it quickly leads to the Hiddite/Johnsonite split. Hiddites are in incredibly broad church, everyone from John McDonnell to Angela Eagle describe themselves as Hiddites. Meanwhile, the Johnsonites were mainly figures associated with the Labour Right; figures such as Jack Straw. The Hiddites run Mike O'Brien as their protest candidate, while also running him for Deputy leader (defeating Johnsonite candidate Straw very easily), but Johnson is just too strong, and he wins the leadership, becoming Prime Minister shortly after. Johnson refuses to appoint his Deputy Leader to the government, let alone cabinet or DPM, and appoints Johnsonite Siobhan McDonagh in his stead.
June 2012 saw a Welsh Parliament election that resulted in Welsh Labour losing their majority. Welsh Labour, now led by Dai Davies, swiftly moved to form an arrangement with Plaid Cymru, leading to David Marquand, at the age of 78, becoming Deputy Prime Minister of Wales. He served in this role for two years, before retiring as Leader of Plaid Cymru at the age of 80 and announcing his coming retirement from politics at the next Welsh Parliament election.
The name of the merged party is decided, Hope and Glory. A shadow leadership election is held so that if and when the merged party comes into being, it would immediately have a full-time leadership team. The two candidates were the two leaders, Nazir-Ali and Hayes and it was an unusually good-tempered campaign despite their usual rhetorical standards. Nazir-Ali narrowly edges it, the 63-year-old then poised to become Leader of the Opposition. On the 178th anniversary of the Tamworth Manifesto, the Tory Party ceases to exist after exactly that many years of existence, and the High Tories after 13, the date coming close to its' anniversary as well. Nazir-Ali assumes office as the leader of the new Hope and Glory party and becomes Leader of the Opposition. He immediately appoints John Hayes as his Deputy Leader and makes him Shadow Foreign Secretary. Nazir-Ali is surprisingly lukewarm as LOTO-proper, seeming to sound more tired, his age catching up with him, and also the public becoming metaphorically tired with his religious speaking style. Alan Haselhurst refuses to countenance this, and in a blistering speech announces he will not sit for Hope and Glory and will not contest the next election. He sits the rest of parliament as an independent. In revenge, Nazir-Ali orders his removal as Chair of the Public Accounts committee by his MPs, which is successful, causing outrage even amongst Labour and Democrat members. Lord Prior, 85, and now the only other living Conservative Prime Minister, also said he would not sit as a Hope and Glory Peer and moved to the crossbenches. George Young also announced much the same thing, and sat as an independent for the rest of the parliament.
In February 2013, Matthew Taylor resigns as Leader of the Democrats after a full decade in charge. He is replaced by Scottish MP Danny Alexander. Johnson calls an election for June 2014. The election results in Hope and Glory gaining only a dozen seats, while the Labour Party have a heavier fall thanks to the Democrats, to only hold a majority of 20. The Democrats under Alexander swell to over 80 seats. Former Prime Minister Huw Irranca-Davies is re-elected in Rhondda. None of the leaders chose to resign as a result of this election. However, Labour's inner paranoia begins to whirr. Nazir-Ali refuses to offer peerages to Alan Haselhurst or George Young, which results in the Prime Minister unprecedentedly nominating former leaders of the party opposing the government to a peerage themselves. Haselhurst is offered the Labour whip, which he politely but firmly refuses, and is also offered the Democrats whip, which he seriously considered but decides against, sitting as a crossbencher. Young follows suit.
The cogs of the Labour machine begin to whisper, and they begin to start a campaign against Alan Johnson. This all simmers under the surface until December 2014, when one backbench MP declares he will 'Challenge for Labour's future'.
It was Huw Irranca-Davies.
Irranca-Davies had received an overwhelming number of urges from people from all across the Labour Party to challenge Johnson, the man who had couped him from the leadership, back again, and the Welshman had decided to take the plunge. Johnson was publicly dismissive, which was a grave strategic error. He sat for an official portrait in January 2015, an essentially triumphalist gesture during which he said he was very confident in a strong victory. His private pollsters were running on their own fumes, and had terrible methodology pointing to him winning the biggest mandate since Dewar. A special conference is held on 19 February 2015 to announce the leadership election result, ending in Huw Irranca-Davies well and truly trouncing the man who once couped him, defeating Johnson by 55-45. Johnson is incredibly bitter but the Hiddites and most of the party are jubilant. Johnson is not evn given a celebratory final PMQs that had become custom since Heath (and had even extended to LOTOs starting with Haselhurst for his incredible Commons skills, sans Hayes who remained on the frontbench) and Irranca-Davies returned to the premiership just a day later.
December 2016 saw the death of former Prime Minister Jim Prior, which saw tributes led by Huw Irranca-Davies and Lord Haselhurst.
Irranca-Davies called an election for June 2018, and his campaign strategy centred around trying to pincer the Democrat vote in an attempt to replicate what Haselhurst had managed 22 years prior. The election result saw Labour sensationally winning a majority of 68, a true triumph that secured Irranca-Davies' place in Labour and British history. He would now be able to become the longest serving Labour Prime Minister of all time, succeeding the record set by Attlee almost 70 years prior. The result saw a period of almost worship from Labour membership, which almost stays to this day to some extent. The election saw Hope and Glory also gain a dozen seats, both parties gaining at the detriment of the Democrats, who were well and truly crushed, losing 37 of their 83 seats and almost a third of their 24% of vote. Danny Alexander immediately announces his coming resignation as the Leader of the Democrats. Although he does not publicly admit such a thing, Nazir-Ali privately admits that he will not contest the next general election.
The Democrats hold a very swift leadership election, that sees Teri Turnbull, the former Haselhurst cabinet minister, elected leader at the age of 62. Turnbull, her husband now the Leader of the Opposition in Australia, had a calm and collected demeanor that appealed to the kind of liberally minded Heathite voters that Hope and Glory were in danger of losing forever. In 2019 Anne Begg announced she would retire as Speaker of the House of Commons, and the government successfully nominate Anna Soubry, a former Conservative MP who defected due to John Hayes' leadership, as her successor, outraging Hope and Glory and especially Hayes, now Shadow Home Secretary following a reshuffle, himself.
Into 2020 Nazir-Ali is finally under pressure to announce his resignation date, and after 22 years leading the party he announces he will not only retire as leader but as an MP to return to the Church in December, which is met generally with a hostile reception from said Church of England due to his overwhelming role in politics from 1999. John Hayes also announces he will be resigning as Deputy Leader of Hope and Glory to usher in a new generation of leadership, and says he will be moving to the backbench, pointedly adding "for now".
His replacement is the former Editor of the BBC News, Laura Kuenssberg. Kuenssberg puts on a moderate face, but Labour try to spin her leadership as merely being a puppet of Hayes; neither her moderate face nor Labour's attempt at spin were particularly accurate. Kuenssberg was a first term MP who had only been first elected two years prior. However, she had had a long career as a political correspondent and ultimately Political Editor of BBC News. When she was announced as the candidate for Bury St Edmonds, while she was still serving as editor, the BBC was shocked and had to immediately distance and state they had absolutely no knowledge that this would be forthcoming.
Irranca-Davies, now approaching sixty, somewhat tired after a combined total of eleven years as Prime Minister, calls an election as late as possible in July 2023, so late in fact it was brought into legal question. His party now reasonably behind in the polls to the moderate faced-Kuenssberg, Irranca-Davies' main hope was to deny Hope and Glory a majority, and Labour were unusually confident in his abilities given Labour's propensity in this world for paranoia and worry. When the election comes, Kuenssberg leads Hope and Glory to victory over a very tired Labour Party, who had been in power for 23 years by this point and not as able to hold onto power as long as the old Conservative Party. Hope and Glory win a majority of 32, considered safe from the chance of a majority being reduced over the course of a parliament. The Democrats, led by Teri Turnbull, wife of the now Prime Minister of Australia, surge up by a dozen seats, representing a reasonable recovery.
Irranca-Davies announces he will resign as Leader of the Labour Party at conference in October at which point his successor would be announced, and then goes to the Palace to advise the King to send for Kuenssberg. At her first meeting as Prime Minister, she begins to show the true face of Hope and Glory, and the King can't entirely hide his shock. In government, the moderate face the party had put on is shed away as they get to work dismantling what they genuinely see as Labour's infiltration of the civil service, media and public life. The BBC is turned into a government mouthpiece, or as they see it the BBC has their socialist biases removed. Channel 4 is entirely shut down. The civil service is shaken up from top to bottom, and not for the better. Anna Soubry, the third consecutive Speaker to come from the Labour benches, is removed from her position, the first time ever that a Speaker had been removed in such a way. Hope and Glory then replace her with someone from their own benches, someone who would be impartial, safe, a trusty pair of hands... John Hayes, the former frontbencher. He is regularly seen at Downing Street and he barely even keeps up the pretense of impartiality, though he does resign his membership of Hope and Glory. As such, for the first time, the new leader of the Labour Party, former Culture Secretary Louise Haigh, saw it necessary to appoint Soubry to the frontbench as the very first Shadow Speaker of the House of Commons. All of this is far too much for George, Lord Young to stay as a Crossbencher, and he announces in September 2023 that he had joined the Democrats.
Then, to top it all off, Norman Banks announces his retirement as Archbishop of Canterbury in September. The government are insistent that Labour have infiltrated the Church with socialists and subversives, and so there is only one person who the Prime Minister considers... Michael Nazir-Ali. It is at this point the King strongly argues against, and threatens to refuse the nomination, whereupon the Government threatens to start a constitutional crisis. The King notes that there is a mandatory retirement age of 70, and the Government reminds him that Parliament is sovereign and can and will override this with an 'x notwithstanding' clause, which they pass. The King relents but he is utterly furious and briefs the press to that effect. Nazir-Ali becomes Archbishop which outrages a great many in the Church. Labour for their part, with their new leader former Culture Secretary Louise Haigh, are utterly sickened and are so radicalised by what Hope and Glory have been doing that they are currently pledging to disestablish the Church.
The last few weeks have been incredibly eventful. On 20 January 2024, Lord Haselhurst, now 86, announced at a press conference with Teri Turnbull that he had followed in the footsteps of his successor Lord Young and joined the Democrats. Both he and Young sung Turnbull's praises during the event.
Meanwhile, the draconian actions of the Hope and Glory government have gone down like a bag of sick. It is the worst kept secret in Britain that the King hates the party and considers them a threat to the nation, though where that might lead, we do not know. Labour have already won a small handful of by-elections off them and Haigh is reasonably popular. With the defection of Haselhurst, the first few polls have shown the Democrats essentially annihilating Hope and Glory's hold on the old Tory leaning vote, with Labour winning a landslide and Hope and Glory approaching wipeout.
I doubt such a wipeout will come to fruition, but then again... look at what happened to Labour in 1967... or the Tories in 2011... anything could happen...
I hope someone here enjoyed that. A special thanks to @Turquoise Blue for a great many ideas and inspiration during the making of this and to @aaa for a great signature.
Labour are essentially destroyed, the victims of an unbelievably poor election timing. Almost the entire Labour cabinet are unseated; the only survivors really are Roy Jenkins, Peter Shore, and Richard Crossman. Wilson becomes the first Prime Minister to lose their seat, which he blames on the candidacy of one David Sutch, who he holds a grudge against for the rest of his life. Crossman becomes interim, and later full time leader. The result is so bad that a 24-year-old Michael Howard wins the previously assumed-to-be safe seat of Liverpool Edge Hill, becoming Baby of the House, amongst so many others.
The 1971 election sees a minimal net recovery, but the result is arguably worse. As a result of unfavourable Liberal vote gains in certain seats sees Crossman, who was ailing, to lose his seat, and even worse his assumed successor Jenkins goes out too. The only presumed leadership material at this point is Shore, who most consider not ready yet. It is at this point that the Labour Party see no choice but to change the rules; the NEC changes the leadership election rules so that the leader does not need to be an MP (opening up the leadership election to Lords) or even in parliament (for a worst case scenario). With Jenkins gone, Ashfield MP David Marquand begins to rise as the new face of the pro-Europe wing, with essentially everyone else gone.
Wilson returns to parliament in Huyton, and is in a position to return as interim leader and LOTO for the duration of the leadership election. Eventually, the party decides on a very unorthodox choice; the pacifist Reverend, Lord Soper. A captivating orator, he spends the first month of his leadership in the Lords, after which West Ham South MP Elwyn Jones resigns on promise of a peerage to allow him a place, where Soper is easily elected and becomes LOTO, taking over from Wilson who continued with Soper's appointed Shadow Cabinet; two years later Soper would appoint him as Shadow Chancellor, returning to a role he had last held twelve years prior.
Soper leads Labour into the 1975 election, where they gain just over a dozen seats, with no one else around, Soper continues as leader, as Marquand continues his rise. Throughout all this, Heath has served as Prime Minister with an unprecedentedly large single-party majority. Soper remains leader through the 1979 election (the Reverend now seventy-six years old) where he gains a reasonable 23 seats. With the Liberals also gaining a seat, they reduce Heath (who has now been PM for twelve years) to... 431 seats. It's still infallible. Wilson again loses Huyton, mainly thanks to boundary changes.
Soper retires as leader in November 1980, a few months short of his 78th birthday, triggering another leadership election where Peter Shore, now a long serving Shadow Chancellor, stands. Marquand, thanks to boundary changes and another unhelpfui Liberal surge, had lost his Ashfield seat, but this was no longer a problem. Marquand is helped by the now-Lord Jenkins and others to successfully defeat Shore and become leader, for the first time ever from outside Parliament. Margaret Jay, who held the seat her father James Callaghan lost in 1967, was persuaded to retire, much like Elwyn Jones a decade previously, and Marquand returns as MP for Cardiff South and Penarth in January of '81, relieving Soper from the frontbench for the last time. Shore, his rival, is sent to the backbenches. John Parker, the Father of the House of Commons, is elected his deputy to provide a breadth of experience.
A major part of Marquand's platform for leader was sorting out a joint list with the Liberals, where they would stand down in a great number of the Liberals' best hopes for seats, and vice versa. He successfully negotiates this with Liberal leader Richard Wainwright, and it is all ready to go by late 1981, forming United for Democracy. Heath similarly decides to form an alliance with the now-split off Ulster Unionists, and forms the Ulster and Conservative Alliance, which would put the UUP in Cabinet, but curiously only was set to go into effect after an election.
Marquand leads Labour into the 1983 election, which sees modest gains once again and sees Heath (having now been in power for sixteen long years, the longest serving Prime Minister since Pitt the Younger) once again win a landslide majority. Wilson, determined to outlast Heath in parliament, returns one more time, as member for the Huyton successor seat of Knowsley South. As a result of the joint list Labour technically lose about four percent of the vote, the Liberals gain a handful of seats though which is seen as very good for them. A lot of people in Labour, however, are quite unhappy. Peter Shore leads the charge against the joint list, claiming the deal had seen the Liberals take liberties. Shore calls for a binding vote of the NEC to dissolve the alliance, which very narrowly passes. Marquand is furious, and immediately resigns as leader, astonishingly defecting to the Liberal Party at once. Wilson assumes the acting leadership once more, for the duration of the leadership election, which sees a tired and tainted Shore elected over Lord Jenkins (a leadership election which had been anticipated for over 16 years now) surprisingly strongly. Shore appoints Wilson as Shadow Home Secretary. Meanwhile, Heath appoints UUP leader James Molyneaux as Northern Ireland Secretary, a role in which he serves until he pulls his party out of the utterly unnecessary coalition in early 1986.
Wainwright retires as leader of the Liberal Party in mid 1985, and Marquand is elected his successor. He swiftly moves to rename the party to the Democratic Alliance, framing themselves as the true successors to the United for Democracy joint list while saying Labour were stuck to their dogmatic ways. This leads into the 1987 election, where Labour's gains are utterly pitiful, three seats and a marginal increase in vote, while the DA (as they were referred) gain almost 4% and a dozen seats, putting Heath (now having served as PM for just over 20 years, putting him on the brink of breaking Walpole's record) at 399 seats, still an infallible majority but now beginning to come down somewhere close to earth. Marquand, seeing Cardiff South and Penarth unwinnable for his party, decants to the DA target of Sheffield Hillsborough, which he wins narrowly. Shore immediately announces his intention to resign, pending a leadership election, while Marquand pledges to carry on. The Labour leadership election sees the 50-year-old Shadow Foreign Secretary, Donald Dewar, become leader, and he quickly endears himself to the public. Edward Heath becomes Father of the House of Commons following the election, only the second PM to be so concurrently to his premiership, following Henry Campbell-Bannerman.
On 1 March 1988, Edward Heath celebrates becoming the longest serving Prime Minister of all time, to the grievance of Wilson, who Dewar moves back to SFCO for the first time in 25 years shortly after. In June 1990, Edward Heath resigns as Leader of the Conservative Party after an incredible 25 years at the helm, with 23 of them as Prime Minister. Now aged 74, tributes are made to him from across the House. In July, the long serving lieutenant Jim Prior succeeds him as leader, but announces that on account of his long tenure, Heath will remain as Prime Minister until the next general election, which he announces for 1991. Heath conducts a reshuffle, reviving the First Secretary of State title for Prior, and shuffles a number of posts to Jim's liking, including making the Chief Whip, the formidable Alan Haselhurst, Leader of the House of Commons. Shortly after, Marquand renames the Democratic Alliance further, to the Democrats.
A few months before the '91 election, in January, David Marquand abruptly resigns as leader of the Democrats and announces his intention to stand down from parliament. This catches the Democrats off guard, and they swiftly elect the 45-year-old Archy Kirkwood as his successor. The 1991 election results in the first major gains in seats for Labour in almost thirty years. They gain almost forty, the Conservatives down to 363, no longer a landslide victory but still a strong majority, and the Democrats down a handful, likely as a result of not having enough time to bed-in Kirkwood. Dewar, having led Labour back to a very respectable 233 seats, triumphantly announces his intention to stay on as leader and fight the next election. Edward Heath, who was re-elected MP for Old Bexley and Sidcup, leaves Downing Street for the last time as Prime Minister, after an unfathomable 24 years at the helm, and Jim Prior becomes PM at the age of nigh-on 64. In October of that year, Harold Wilson, his faculties perfectly intact but still knackered after forty years of frontbench politics and 75 years of life, finally retires to the backbenches, having been re-elected once again.
Prior is at the very least competent as Prime Minister, but with the Conservatives in power for so long there is only so much popularity he can muster. Mid-Parliament, Labour sneak into the lead for the first time in a generation in polling. Despite all this, Prior only waits four years before calling the next election, when he could have waited until 1996. This would prove to be a terrible mistake, but perhaps not as terrible as Labour would have liked, as it would see the Conservatives as the largest party, but short six seats of an overall majority. They form a coalition once more with the Ulster Unionist Party, now led by Robin Chichester-Clark, where they have an unusual condition. The Speaker, former Wales Secretary Margaret Thatcher, had stood down from Parliament, and the UUP along with concessions in Ulster, demanded the Speakership. Not in a position to argue, Prior accepts, and James Molyneaux is elected Speaker, the fourth consecutive Conservative-aligned speaker, which irritates Labour considerably. There was only one other condition: Prior's head. The Tories were already not particularly happy with him, and Prior announces shortly after forming the coalition that he would be resigning as Prime Minister and Leader following the election of a successor. Prior, 68, is succeeded by Leader of the House Alan Haselhurst, who had become known for his strong performances during procedural debates. Harold Wilson, once again re-elected, watches from the backbenches with amusement. Edward Heath, who had also been re-elected once more, watches with a tinge of sadness as his old colleague goes to the backbenches. Haselhurst appoints the 49-year-old Teri Turnbull, wife of Australian politician Malcolm Turnbull, as his Social Security Secretary.
Upon becoming Prime Minister, Haselhurst's oratorical skills were on full show; he was utterly incredible. A ferociously good speaker. Shockingly so, for an unprepared Labour, an unprepared Dewar. Polling now saw the Democrats being squeezed considerably between the two major parties, and within four months Haselhurst was comfortable enough to go to the country, just eight months after the last election. The 1996 election saw the Conservatives shockingly regain their majority; a circumstance essentially unforeseen by Labour. Haselhurst won a majority of 18, an incredible triumph for the best Commons orator since Churchill. Labour also managed to gain seats at the behest of the Democrats, and the gap between Labour and the Tories only increased by 0.5%. The real loser of this election was Archy Kirkwood, who as a result of the squeeze had ended up leading his party into losing half of their seats, and almost half their vote. Kirkwood naturally resigned as leader and was replaced by Alex Carlile. David Marquand, the former leader of two parties, was so impressed by Haselhurst's liberally minded Conservative leadership that he joined the Conservatives. Donald Dewar also conceded defeat in a melancholy speech and announced his coming resignation as leader. Harold Wilson, who turned 80 four days after the election, is re-elected once more. Edward Heath is also re-elected once again and continues to serve as Father of the House. Jim Prior, however, retires from the House of Commons and is nominated for a peerage by Haselhurst.
After this the Labour Party does not know what to do. Were they ever going to win again? They thought they could win in 1995; the Conservatives won a plurality hung parliament. They sure as hell thought they would win in 1996; the Tories gained seats and won a nigh-on 20 seat majority! What were they to do? All through this time, the Labour Party had become increasingly paranoid about the country. Many of their staffers and workers though that the Tories had rigged the system and that was the only reason why they had stayed in power for so long. They were terrified of making one small wrong move, that would set Labour back for another three decades. But they decided they had to take a risk, and so they decided to think radically outside of the box.
Eric Idle, the former Python, had been elected to parliament in Lewisham back in 1987, out of almost desperation, thinking 'I have to bloody do something, here!' He had served in the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Media Secretary, and later through shadowing the Fisheries and Environment department. It was from this position that Idle defeated David Blunkett to become leader, as an outrageous outsider.
Idle was reasonably good at PMQs but was never truly able to triumph over the impeccable Haselhurst. Despite this, Labour fell into a strong lead as the Conservative government began to seriously show its age after 30 years of single party rule. However, before victory came, tragedy struck. Harold Wilson, who had served on the backbenches for the previous eight years, died of colon cancer, in office, at the age of 83 in July 1999. He was the only living Prime Minister not from the Tory party and had been so since the death of Attlee in the 1960s. In many ways it marked the end of an era. Despite his leading the Labour Party into such a crushing defeat in 1967, he was warmly tributed by many people across the House, none more so than Edward Heath, who felt very sorry for him in some ways. Local councillor Ken McGlashan was elected his successor in a by-election.
The polling situation was not made any better by the Bishop of Rochester. Michael Nazir-Ali, who had recently won a seat in the Lords as a Lord Spiritual as a result of his seniority in the Church, had finally had enough of close to 35 years of Heathism controlling the party, and very controversially launched a splinter party, the High Tories, on Christmas Day 1999. Such an intervention from a sitting Bishop of the Church was seen as outrageous by most, from all parties and even from the Church itself. Nazir-Ali's often strongly religious rhetoric often forced the Church to have to make statements that the Bishop was not speaking on behalf of them when making religious-sounding political speeches. But Nazir-Ali persisted, and it won him very considerable ratings in the polls. The Conservatives were now in serious danger of being well and truly smashed in a way not dissimilar to Labour in 1967. The High Tories also saw a number of defections from the Conservatives in the House of Commons (as well as Lords). For the time being, one of those defectors, Reigate MP George Gardiner, served as their leader in the Commons.
Haselhurst waited as long as he could before calling the next election, which eventually came in March 2001, almost exactly 5 years after the previous. After almost 34 years of Conservative government, the Tories were comprehensively defeated like never before. Labour won 435 seats and the Tories crashed to 125, which was actually one seat less than Labour won in 1967, while faring far, far worse in the popular vote. This defeat was severely exacerbated by the High Tories, still led by the sitting Bishop, who won a whopping 32 seats and 11% of the vote, an unprecedented total for a party on its first outing. However, they had lost in Reigate their leader in the Commons, George Gardiner. He was replaced by freshman MP, and staunch Nazir-Ali ally, Rodney Atkinson, the brother of the Blackadder and Mr. Bean actor. The Democrats led by Alex Carlile had gained 22 seats, which was more than they had lost in their pasting in the last election. Haselhurst announced his resignation as Leader of the Conservative Party during his final Downing Street speech, with his leaving date scheduled for after the local elections. Eric Idle was invited to the Palace where he became the first Labour PM for 34 years; having last been in power when he was 24. Amongst his cabinet was the now-second term MP for Rhondda, Huw Irranca-Davies, as Welsh Secretary. He also appointed former leader Donald Dewar as Leader of the House of Commons in a surprise appointment, given Dewar was on the backbenches. However, tragically, Dewar would die suddenly of a heart attack after just ten days in the job, at the age of 63. Meanwhile, Edward Heath had been re-elected once again, now at the age of almost 85.
Idle was something of a showman as Prime Minister, though he took the actual office itself very seriously. He was a delegatory Prime Minister who allowed his ministers to have a lot of power, partially down to what he privately admitted was a lack of political skill. The real center of power was initially with the very senior Deputy Prime Minister, John Morris, who had first been elected in the 1967 demolition. Following his retirement in 2003, it shifted to Paul Boateng.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives elected former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Young to be Haselhurst's successor in May 2001, winning the former Prime Minister's full support. Young was again very competent but was absolutely crippled by the effect of Nazir-Ali's High Tories, who went from strength to strength following the election of yet another Heathite to the leadership, despite Young moving slightly to the right to try to win those votes back. The result of that was not the return of those voters, but the resignation of David Marquand from the party in 2002, and he proceeded to join Plaid Cymru. 2002 also saw the retirement of Speaker Molyneaux, who had perhaps surprisingly proven to be a non-partisan, neutral speaker... and it was not in that vein that the government announced they would be nominating Dennis Skinner, the legendary backbench MP for Bolsover and founder/longtime President of the Labour Socialist Alliance; essentially the leader of the Labour left, to be his replacement. This took an unbelievable amount of persuasion for Dennis to accept, which he only did so upon having a long, and apparently hearty, meeting with Idle. He is easily taken to the chair, where he suspends his Labour membership and does surprisingly end up being a non-partisan speaker himself.
2003 saw the resignation of Alex Carlile as Leader of the Democrats after seven years. His successor is 40-year-old Matthew Taylor, the youngest major party leader in living memory. The year also saw Alan Haselhurst become Chair of the Public Accounts Committee. 2004 saw the foundation of the Welsh Parliament, and the first elections, which saw Labour unsurprisingly win a strong majority with their devolved leader, Denzil Davies, become the first Prime Minister of Wales, and also saw David Marquand elected Welsh MP for Dwyfor Meirionnydd at the age of nigh-on 70.
Idle called an election for late June of 2005. The election saw Labour win a second landslide majority, but one down by thirty seats. The Conservatives were not beneficiaries of this, as they actually managed to lose a dozen seats, mainly to the High Tories. For the first time in history, they fell to third place in the popular vote behind the Democrats, who gained a dozen seats to reach 51 in a sensational result for Matthew Taylor. The Tories had almost fallen to fourth place behind the High Tories, who were only two points behind them, and had gained a further 19 seats to reach 51, tying with the Democrats for third in terms of seats. In the event, the Government announced that the Democrats would be designated third largest party by taking into account popular vote as a means of tiebreaker. Edward Heath finally left the House of Commons at this election after a whopping 55 years in the house and retired to Salisbury. Former Prime Minister Alan Haselhurst was re-elected in Broxbourne. The only resignation as a result of this election was George Young, who announced the leadership election would be immediate and that there would be a new leader before the state opening. Before retiring, Young offered to make Heath Duke of Bexley, but he decided he was content as Sir Edward. This leadership election resulted in the victory of John Hayes, the unbelievably right-wing MP for South Holland and the Deepings, to the leadership, a leader so right wing in fact most considered him to the right of Nazir-Ali and his High Tories. For the first time in many, many decades, the Tory left had lost.
This is not good enough for a number of Tory MPs, chief amongst them Teri Turnbull, the former Leader of the House of Commons. She sensationally defects to the Democrats and becomes a frontbench spokesperson shortly thereafter.
Nazir-Ali actually gets on quite well with Hayes, and they form certain agreements in particular seats. This becomes particularly important when the Church finally forces Nazir-Ali to choose between the Church and politics, and he opts to resign as Bishop of Rochester after 15 years in post. He therefore loses his seat in the House of Lords, but he had already arranged for the Suffolk Coastal MP, Michael Lord, to resign and trigger a by-election he would run in. As a gesture of good faith, Hayes stood down the Tory candidate, and Nazir-Ali won easily, entering the House of Commons for the first time.
Eric Idle resigns as Leader of the Labour Party at a rather inconvenient time in January 2009. Most had expected him to call an election for May, but he had elected to bring his political career to a close and return to writing. The two main candidates to succeed him were the Defence Secretary Nick Brown, and the Pensions and Social Welfare Secretary Huw Irranca-Davies. Surprisingly, Irranca-Davies won over the more experienced Brown, and became Prime Minister at the age of 46. Initially, Irranca-Davies is seen as something of a mediocre figure, not particularly well liked or disliked within the party. He has a clinical relationship with his Deputy, Alan Johnson, who reportedly agreed not to stand in the contest in return for becoming Deputy and eventually succeeding Irranca-Davies as leader.
2009 also saw the death of a living legend. Edward Heath passed away at the age of 93 at his home in Salisbury in December. Warm tributes were paid across both Houses of Parliament, and the great man who served almost a quarter century as Prime Minister was given a ceremonial funeral not at Westminster Abbey, but at his beloved Salisbury Cathedral.
Irranca-Davies called an election in 2010, as late as possible for June 2010, as a result of Labour's now innate paranoia. It results in Labour's majority being slashed from 160 to 60, and the Conservatives gaining over thirty seats. The High Tories reasonably suffer, falling five seats and 3% of the vote, and the Tories regain their place as the second party in terms of vote share. However, the Democrats had once again fared very well under Matthew Taylor, swelling to 71 seats. All four leaders, at least for now, remained in place after this election. Former Prime Minister Alan Haselhurst was once again re-elected in his constituency of Broxbourne. Immediately after this election, nascent talks begin for a merger between the two increasingly close allies. This is met with a lot of hostility from the Tory left, but the membership had grown increasingly Hayes-affiliated. Reports of infiltration from High Tories were largely without firm evidence, but nevertheless probably accurate.
February 2012 sees the announcement of Speaker Skinner that he would be resigning as Speaker to return to party politics, which was strongly in contravention of centuries of speakership convention. Despite this, it is accepted, Skinner returning to the presidency of the Labour Socialist Alliance shortly after and Anne Begg being elected Labour's second consecutive Speaker, the first wheelchair user to be elected. are coming near to their conclusion when, shortly after the local elections, Alan Johnson shockingly announces his resignation as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Deputy Prime Minister. He announces his intention to challenge Irranca-Davies as leader, saying that he is leading Labour towards inevitable defeat once the High Tories and Tories inevitably (sic) merge. Irranca-Davies is shocked and considerably betrayed by this turn and sees no other choice than to resign as Leader. This turn of events essentially outrages the Labour Party, and it quickly leads to the Hiddite/Johnsonite split. Hiddites are in incredibly broad church, everyone from John McDonnell to Angela Eagle describe themselves as Hiddites. Meanwhile, the Johnsonites were mainly figures associated with the Labour Right; figures such as Jack Straw. The Hiddites run Mike O'Brien as their protest candidate, while also running him for Deputy leader (defeating Johnsonite candidate Straw very easily), but Johnson is just too strong, and he wins the leadership, becoming Prime Minister shortly after. Johnson refuses to appoint his Deputy Leader to the government, let alone cabinet or DPM, and appoints Johnsonite Siobhan McDonagh in his stead.
June 2012 saw a Welsh Parliament election that resulted in Welsh Labour losing their majority. Welsh Labour, now led by Dai Davies, swiftly moved to form an arrangement with Plaid Cymru, leading to David Marquand, at the age of 78, becoming Deputy Prime Minister of Wales. He served in this role for two years, before retiring as Leader of Plaid Cymru at the age of 80 and announcing his coming retirement from politics at the next Welsh Parliament election.
The name of the merged party is decided, Hope and Glory. A shadow leadership election is held so that if and when the merged party comes into being, it would immediately have a full-time leadership team. The two candidates were the two leaders, Nazir-Ali and Hayes and it was an unusually good-tempered campaign despite their usual rhetorical standards. Nazir-Ali narrowly edges it, the 63-year-old then poised to become Leader of the Opposition. On the 178th anniversary of the Tamworth Manifesto, the Tory Party ceases to exist after exactly that many years of existence, and the High Tories after 13, the date coming close to its' anniversary as well. Nazir-Ali assumes office as the leader of the new Hope and Glory party and becomes Leader of the Opposition. He immediately appoints John Hayes as his Deputy Leader and makes him Shadow Foreign Secretary. Nazir-Ali is surprisingly lukewarm as LOTO-proper, seeming to sound more tired, his age catching up with him, and also the public becoming metaphorically tired with his religious speaking style. Alan Haselhurst refuses to countenance this, and in a blistering speech announces he will not sit for Hope and Glory and will not contest the next election. He sits the rest of parliament as an independent. In revenge, Nazir-Ali orders his removal as Chair of the Public Accounts committee by his MPs, which is successful, causing outrage even amongst Labour and Democrat members. Lord Prior, 85, and now the only other living Conservative Prime Minister, also said he would not sit as a Hope and Glory Peer and moved to the crossbenches. George Young also announced much the same thing, and sat as an independent for the rest of the parliament.
In February 2013, Matthew Taylor resigns as Leader of the Democrats after a full decade in charge. He is replaced by Scottish MP Danny Alexander. Johnson calls an election for June 2014. The election results in Hope and Glory gaining only a dozen seats, while the Labour Party have a heavier fall thanks to the Democrats, to only hold a majority of 20. The Democrats under Alexander swell to over 80 seats. Former Prime Minister Huw Irranca-Davies is re-elected in Rhondda. None of the leaders chose to resign as a result of this election. However, Labour's inner paranoia begins to whirr. Nazir-Ali refuses to offer peerages to Alan Haselhurst or George Young, which results in the Prime Minister unprecedentedly nominating former leaders of the party opposing the government to a peerage themselves. Haselhurst is offered the Labour whip, which he politely but firmly refuses, and is also offered the Democrats whip, which he seriously considered but decides against, sitting as a crossbencher. Young follows suit.
The cogs of the Labour machine begin to whisper, and they begin to start a campaign against Alan Johnson. This all simmers under the surface until December 2014, when one backbench MP declares he will 'Challenge for Labour's future'.
It was Huw Irranca-Davies.
Irranca-Davies had received an overwhelming number of urges from people from all across the Labour Party to challenge Johnson, the man who had couped him from the leadership, back again, and the Welshman had decided to take the plunge. Johnson was publicly dismissive, which was a grave strategic error. He sat for an official portrait in January 2015, an essentially triumphalist gesture during which he said he was very confident in a strong victory. His private pollsters were running on their own fumes, and had terrible methodology pointing to him winning the biggest mandate since Dewar. A special conference is held on 19 February 2015 to announce the leadership election result, ending in Huw Irranca-Davies well and truly trouncing the man who once couped him, defeating Johnson by 55-45. Johnson is incredibly bitter but the Hiddites and most of the party are jubilant. Johnson is not evn given a celebratory final PMQs that had become custom since Heath (and had even extended to LOTOs starting with Haselhurst for his incredible Commons skills, sans Hayes who remained on the frontbench) and Irranca-Davies returned to the premiership just a day later.
December 2016 saw the death of former Prime Minister Jim Prior, which saw tributes led by Huw Irranca-Davies and Lord Haselhurst.
Irranca-Davies called an election for June 2018, and his campaign strategy centred around trying to pincer the Democrat vote in an attempt to replicate what Haselhurst had managed 22 years prior. The election result saw Labour sensationally winning a majority of 68, a true triumph that secured Irranca-Davies' place in Labour and British history. He would now be able to become the longest serving Labour Prime Minister of all time, succeeding the record set by Attlee almost 70 years prior. The result saw a period of almost worship from Labour membership, which almost stays to this day to some extent. The election saw Hope and Glory also gain a dozen seats, both parties gaining at the detriment of the Democrats, who were well and truly crushed, losing 37 of their 83 seats and almost a third of their 24% of vote. Danny Alexander immediately announces his coming resignation as the Leader of the Democrats. Although he does not publicly admit such a thing, Nazir-Ali privately admits that he will not contest the next general election.
The Democrats hold a very swift leadership election, that sees Teri Turnbull, the former Haselhurst cabinet minister, elected leader at the age of 62. Turnbull, her husband now the Leader of the Opposition in Australia, had a calm and collected demeanor that appealed to the kind of liberally minded Heathite voters that Hope and Glory were in danger of losing forever. In 2019 Anne Begg announced she would retire as Speaker of the House of Commons, and the government successfully nominate Anna Soubry, a former Conservative MP who defected due to John Hayes' leadership, as her successor, outraging Hope and Glory and especially Hayes, now Shadow Home Secretary following a reshuffle, himself.
Into 2020 Nazir-Ali is finally under pressure to announce his resignation date, and after 22 years leading the party he announces he will not only retire as leader but as an MP to return to the Church in December, which is met generally with a hostile reception from said Church of England due to his overwhelming role in politics from 1999. John Hayes also announces he will be resigning as Deputy Leader of Hope and Glory to usher in a new generation of leadership, and says he will be moving to the backbench, pointedly adding "for now".
His replacement is the former Editor of the BBC News, Laura Kuenssberg. Kuenssberg puts on a moderate face, but Labour try to spin her leadership as merely being a puppet of Hayes; neither her moderate face nor Labour's attempt at spin were particularly accurate. Kuenssberg was a first term MP who had only been first elected two years prior. However, she had had a long career as a political correspondent and ultimately Political Editor of BBC News. When she was announced as the candidate for Bury St Edmonds, while she was still serving as editor, the BBC was shocked and had to immediately distance and state they had absolutely no knowledge that this would be forthcoming.
Irranca-Davies, now approaching sixty, somewhat tired after a combined total of eleven years as Prime Minister, calls an election as late as possible in July 2023, so late in fact it was brought into legal question. His party now reasonably behind in the polls to the moderate faced-Kuenssberg, Irranca-Davies' main hope was to deny Hope and Glory a majority, and Labour were unusually confident in his abilities given Labour's propensity in this world for paranoia and worry. When the election comes, Kuenssberg leads Hope and Glory to victory over a very tired Labour Party, who had been in power for 23 years by this point and not as able to hold onto power as long as the old Conservative Party. Hope and Glory win a majority of 32, considered safe from the chance of a majority being reduced over the course of a parliament. The Democrats, led by Teri Turnbull, wife of the now Prime Minister of Australia, surge up by a dozen seats, representing a reasonable recovery.
Irranca-Davies announces he will resign as Leader of the Labour Party at conference in October at which point his successor would be announced, and then goes to the Palace to advise the King to send for Kuenssberg. At her first meeting as Prime Minister, she begins to show the true face of Hope and Glory, and the King can't entirely hide his shock. In government, the moderate face the party had put on is shed away as they get to work dismantling what they genuinely see as Labour's infiltration of the civil service, media and public life. The BBC is turned into a government mouthpiece, or as they see it the BBC has their socialist biases removed. Channel 4 is entirely shut down. The civil service is shaken up from top to bottom, and not for the better. Anna Soubry, the third consecutive Speaker to come from the Labour benches, is removed from her position, the first time ever that a Speaker had been removed in such a way. Hope and Glory then replace her with someone from their own benches, someone who would be impartial, safe, a trusty pair of hands... John Hayes, the former frontbencher. He is regularly seen at Downing Street and he barely even keeps up the pretense of impartiality, though he does resign his membership of Hope and Glory. As such, for the first time, the new leader of the Labour Party, former Culture Secretary Louise Haigh, saw it necessary to appoint Soubry to the frontbench as the very first Shadow Speaker of the House of Commons. All of this is far too much for George, Lord Young to stay as a Crossbencher, and he announces in September 2023 that he had joined the Democrats.
Then, to top it all off, Norman Banks announces his retirement as Archbishop of Canterbury in September. The government are insistent that Labour have infiltrated the Church with socialists and subversives, and so there is only one person who the Prime Minister considers... Michael Nazir-Ali. It is at this point the King strongly argues against, and threatens to refuse the nomination, whereupon the Government threatens to start a constitutional crisis. The King notes that there is a mandatory retirement age of 70, and the Government reminds him that Parliament is sovereign and can and will override this with an 'x notwithstanding' clause, which they pass. The King relents but he is utterly furious and briefs the press to that effect. Nazir-Ali becomes Archbishop which outrages a great many in the Church. Labour for their part, with their new leader former Culture Secretary Louise Haigh, are utterly sickened and are so radicalised by what Hope and Glory have been doing that they are currently pledging to disestablish the Church.
The last few weeks have been incredibly eventful. On 20 January 2024, Lord Haselhurst, now 86, announced at a press conference with Teri Turnbull that he had followed in the footsteps of his successor Lord Young and joined the Democrats. Both he and Young sung Turnbull's praises during the event.
Meanwhile, the draconian actions of the Hope and Glory government have gone down like a bag of sick. It is the worst kept secret in Britain that the King hates the party and considers them a threat to the nation, though where that might lead, we do not know. Labour have already won a small handful of by-elections off them and Haigh is reasonably popular. With the defection of Haselhurst, the first few polls have shown the Democrats essentially annihilating Hope and Glory's hold on the old Tory leaning vote, with Labour winning a landslide and Hope and Glory approaching wipeout.
I doubt such a wipeout will come to fruition, but then again... look at what happened to Labour in 1967... or the Tories in 2011... anything could happen...
I hope someone here enjoyed that. A special thanks to @Turquoise Blue for a great many ideas and inspiration during the making of this and to @aaa for a great signature.