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Lists of Heads of Government and Heads of State

A Most Violent and Glorious Island

1997-2003 Tony Blair (Labour) [1]

OCCUPATION AUTHORITY [2]

2003-2010 Jack Straw/Ra'ad al-Hamdanit (British Section of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party) [3]

SECOND GLORIOUS REVOLUTION/WARLORD PERIOD

2010-2012 Andy Brooks (Red Front) [4]
2012-2013 Richard Dawkins (Rational Liberation Army) [5]

RECONSTITUTED GOVERNMENT

2013-2016 Andy Burnham (Movement for Education, Leadership and Truth) [6]

THIRD GLORIOUS REVOLUTION

2016-- 20XX John McDonnell/Abdullah Öcalan (Universal Socialist Party) [7]

[1] The Iraq War was the defining moment of the Blair premiership, and of Britain's 21st Century. While controversial at home and abroad, evinced by daily monster rallies, it was clear that Britain would join the US in the war, and reshape the Middle East in its own image. After all, what could the frankly pathetic Iraqi Army do against the combined might of two world powers? Victory, in other words, was assured.


[2] A funny thing happened on the road to Baghdad.

So it turned out that while inspecting troops just prior to the invasion, President Bush took a little tumble and bumped his head. While not in and of itself a great event, the fact that when he awoke he displayed a (geographically unsound) Damascene conversion on war in general and this one in particular was rather more of one. Even this would have merely pushed back the invasion slightly, until Article 4 could be invoked, or alternately Dick Cheney could pull his famous party trick. However, in all the confusion no one thought to tell the British, who proceeded to act as the tip of a spear that had no shaft. But still, even alone, surely victory was assured.

So it turned out that the Iraqi army had decided that with the Americans operating a circular firing squad (constitutional debates about the fitness of the president to serve in the middle of an army base with an unclear chain of command can get dicey) the previous policy of "what's the Iraqi army, never heard of it guv, this rifle and uniform is an elaborate fancy dress" might not be necessary, and that it might even be a good idea to try attacking. At the same time, much of the British high command fell victim to the MRE's they had been eating, which unfortunately had been painted with lead. And so the confused, demoralised British army was dealt its most humiliating defeat in history, with most of the equipment falling into the grateful hands of the Republican Guard. But still, the British Mainland was secure, meaning that while this was embarrassing, it couldn't get any worse.

So it turned out that that nice Mr Assad had noticed that Allah was apparently a Ba'athist, and in an act of reconciliation that would have made Michel Aflaq weep, lent the now absurdly well-equipped Iraqi army borrow the Syrian Arab Navy. They proceeded to sail up the Mediterranean, dodging the extremely short localised civil war/"drastically divergent firing solutions" the US Navy was engaged in, and land at Dover. Despite the increasingly desperate protestations of Comical Campbell, they advanced ever closer to London, with the speed of men who knew that at some point they'd wake up from the dream and wanted to get as much done as possible. But still there was one final option, one way to make all the issues disappear in a bright, radioactive cloud.

So it turned out that the new Mr Bush, who walked out of the burning remains of the US's forward command centre with consensus that he was constitutionally fit for office and dead eyes, was also very, very anti-nuke. Specifically, he was anti the British using them. As the British government began to face up to the fact that the "independent" in independent nuclear deterrent was doing a lot of heavy lifting, the Republican Guard entered London. There is little need to recap in detail what followed. Atrocities such as the Burning of Buckingham Palace, as well as spectacles such as the arrest of the cabinet on live television (minus Mr Blair, who had an urgent engagement in Geneva) are etched into the public mind. Britain had fallen, and in the following months it was clear that it would stay that way for a good long time.


[3] Inaugurated by a cheerful round of show trials and disappearances, the Straw government remains one of the most hated in British history. While real power lay in the hands of General al'Hamdanit, it was Straw, perpetually in the shadow of the noose that had claimed most of his colleagues, who was the public face of the regime. After the initial bloodletting died down, grim authoritarianism became the order of the day. Indefinite detention, constant electronic surveillance and, shibboleth of shibboleth, mandatory ID cards were all rushed through the cleansed House of Commons, and the imprisonment of much of the Queen's family ensured royal assent. This, combined with the giveaway of public assets to create an enthusiastically collaborating oligarch class, meant that for a brief, shining period, it seemed like everything might turn out fine. And then everything went to shit.

It turned out that adopting a radical pacifist platform wasn't a vote winner in America, and Bush failed in his attempt to win the Republican nomination, losing to the insurgent campaign of John McCain, under the definitely not a fuck-you slogan of "No more illegitimacy". McCain was then also nominated by the Democrats, who didn't want to appear unpatriotic. Arms and "advisors" began to flow into Britain, theoretically to nice fluffy liberal groups, but in actuality mainly ending up in the hands of radical groups, on the grounds that they were actually willing to use them. Meanwhile Saddam's decided that if he could beat the Anglos, it might as well be time for another crack at the Iranians. And the Kuwaitis. And the Saudis. And the Turks. And really anyone else that was looking at him funny. While difficult to argue with from the evidence, this still meant that Iraqi troops had to be pulled out of Britain in ever greater numbers. Then the bottom fell out of the global economy, and there was no more money to pay the conscripts who were supposed to take their place. And then before you knew it was 2010, and Straw was being hustled onto a helicopter an hour ahead of the advancing Red Front militias, who had strong views on his economics (social fascist), his authoritarianism (not being done in the right way to the right people) and his head (shouldn't be attached to his shoulders). The occupation was over, and what a slightly literate PR intern in Langley had dubbed the Second Glorious Revolution had begun.


[4] Or alternately the Warlord Period started. While Brooks' forces were by far the strongest, having grown fat off of the aid Americans gave to any group who could mouth the cant of democracy, they were never unchallenged. Britain's Kurdish community, who had heard enough from the old country to book it the moment Iraqi boots hit the ground, never came down from the hills, and were increasingly joined by compatriots who had fled the chaos of the Middle East. Meanwhile fascist groups of various sizes held streets, boroughs, sometimes towns, and from his mountain fastness the bearded, wild eyed Richard Dawkins readied his legions of fanatics for war. Brooks compounded this problem by acting much in the way you would expect from the leader of a small Stalinist party who had lucked into leading the Left Opposition to the occupation by virtue of everyone else with organisational experience being dead or imprisoned. Many erstwhile comrades in the struggle were shuttled off to the same prisons, while aid money was sent towards the construction of gigantic statues of Stalin in every government-controlled town, and the rewriting of the school curriculum to increase revision, but remove revisionism. However, it was perhaps his most understandable excess, the liquidation of the collaborator oligarchs, that was to doom him. Faced with the death of people who could afford journalists and lobbyists, the incoming Clinton administration pulled support (coincidentally freeing up funds to be spent cleaning up McCain's decision to declare war on Iraq and Iran simultaneously) and instead endorsing well known liberal thinker and man of science, Richard Dawkins. This time, they were backing the right horse. Definitely. After that, Brooks' disaffected and underpaid troops began to melt away. Any hope of salvaging the situation was lost when a fedora and leather duster clad teenager drove a truck packed with semtex into the Palace of the People (formerly Buckingham Palace) killing Brooks and many of his remaining loyalists. Dawkins was then able to enter London unresisted, inheriting an even more fractured nation than before.


[5] The Dawkins regime began with a bang, and maintained that tenor throughout. Even more than under Brooks, Dawkins' Britain was terrifyingly fragmented. Lacking Brooks' credibility as a resistance fighter, or anywhere near as large a fighting force as the Red Front had been at its peak, Dawkins was unable to maintain a steady control of the nation, especially further north of Middle England. At first, it seemed that no amount of American aid could keep the Rationals in power. Then Dawkins and his acolyte's hit on a traditional solution, but with an innovative, disruptive twist. What if pogroms, but for Muslims? Speeches, articles and posters began to flood forth from London, denouncing "fifth columnists", collaborators with the "Islamo-fascist occupation regime" lurking amongst the population, in ways that left no doubt about whom to target. As the government inaugurated a purge of these misogynistic, homophobic, traitorous irrational elements, they could relax for a period, secure in the knowledge that they wouldn't need to guard their own flanks while citizens and militias made war elsewhere. Simultaneously ex-Red Front bands, who had been in the process of reforming, began to splinter as they fought over whether to refuse to engage in "sectional politics", intervene in defence of the persecuted minority, or in a few cases join in the purge in order to wipe out another tiresome opiate of the masses. Now, the Rationals could implement their program in security, usher in a new age of science and scepticism.

And what a program it was. Non-STEM education was banned, ending the corrupt woolly thinking encouraged by the humanities. "Biological Truth" was enforced, rather than irrational delusions on gender being indulged. While never pursued with the same vigour as Muslims, all theists, or in the regimes cant "Spaghetti Monster worshipping irrationals" were purged from public life. The only thing preventing the demolition of every place of worship the regime could find was that Brooks had already turned them into stables to prove a point. And in all areas, freedom was made mandatory. Every man was subject only to his conscience and his intellect, freed from the cloying embrace of the state, whether they wanted it or not.

Really, it was a surprise the regime lasted as long as it did. Never really more than Mayor of Greater Greater London, Dawkins relied heavily on American aid to keep himself afloat. As pictures began to flood out of Britain depicting the carnage inflicted on minority groups, America looked up from the red ruin it was making fighting a losing war, a conflict that now stretched from the Bosporus Straits to the Arabian Sea (the Clinton clean up had not gone to plan, to put it mildly) and saw a chance to regain the good old moral high-ground. In a swell of definitely sincere outrage, aid was cancelled to the Rational regime, and "advisors" began to pour into the country. Knowing which way the wind was blowing, Dawkins declined to imitate Andy Brooks, and absconded with much of Britain's remaining gold reserves, smuggled out inside small jars of honey. He currently resides in a compound in the Australian outback, fighting extradition requests from several British governments and writing apologetics for the regime. In his place the Americans installed an inoffensive moderate, someone who had served in the last democratic government in Britain. With power finally reasserted over the entire nation, and most of the armed groups having gone to ground, things were beginning to look up. Right?


[6] At last, stability! And for a brief, shining second that could actually be said with only a minimum of sarcasm. While more obviously a puppet of a foreign government than any PM/First Comrade/Technocrat in Chief since Straw, the rather gentler American occupation, and the fact that money was flowing into rather than out of Britain, kept the population quiescent. While never quite able to get the fear out of his eyes, Burnham ran, to the extent that he ran anything, a competent ship. Education was radically overhauled, actually aiming to educate rather than root out treason/revisionism/feelings. Infrastructure was repaired, rebuilding the links that had held the nation together. The prison camps of the various regimes were thrown open, and secret policemen brought to justice. A combination of Truth and Reconciliation commissions and overwhelming force brought most of the militias to the table. More than anything else, though, what the Burnham regime asserted was that people were no longer required to care about politics, that rather live in fear of the government they could relax in the knowledge that those on top strived for their betterment, and good times were just around the corner.

Then, and stop me if you've heard this one before, they weren't. It had always been known that a substantial amount of the reconstituted government's manpower and expertise came from former Ba'ath officials, many of whom had been civil servants at the beginning of the occupation, and anyway had been out of power long enough for memories to dull. For the early part of Burnham's tenure this was met with nothing more than low level resentment. There were occasional scandals when it turned out that Mr Philips in Accounting had previously moonlighted as the Butcher of Barnsley, but nothing major. In 2015, this all changed, as it was revealed that one of Burnham's chief advisors was William Straw, the so-called Green Prince. This news, on the heels of delays in aid convoys from America, substituted with dark rumours about internal ructions deep in the heartland, brought hundreds of thousands out into the street. The predictable, but still tragic response of the American troops then turned the protests into insurrection. It remains unknown whether the first shots fired were accidental or under orders, as the records were destroyed or lost within the next year. The grand tragedy, or possibly farce, of all this was that Straw wasn't even a very good advisor, and was weeks at best from being packed off to join his father in exile.

But even with the population busily digging up their buried Kalashnikovs and technicals, Burnham knew that he wasn't going anywhere. As long as he had the support of the US, he could stay in power. The situation would improve, people would return to their homes, and things would get back to normal. The work could begin anew to revive the Britain of 2003. And then, like Jack Straw, like Andy Brooks, like Richard Dawkins, he reached out for the support of his backers. And found only empty air.

The bloody details of the Heartland Coup are well known, so all that needed to be said is that the new hard-right ultra-isolationist junta saw no need to spend American blood and treasure propping up a commiecuck euroshill. It was probably being told this that pushed Burnham over the edge. As government officials crowded onto US helicopters, Burnham decided that he was unwilling to follow Straw and Dawkins into the humiliation of exile. Nor was he willing to wait for the end, as Brooks had done. On the fourth of June 2017, Andy Burnham shot himself. The troops of the Universal Socialist Party entered London the next week.


[7] It had been an odd path that had taken two old men to the very seat of British power.

John McDonnell had been part of the perpetual left awkward squad and had been swept up in the first round of arrests following the invasion, reportedly as part of a "self-care exercise" by Jack Straw. He waited out the long years of the occupation in a work camp near St David, helping in the construction of a gigantic statue of Saddam Hussein flipping the bird at the distant United States, and their not so distant navy. When the regime finally collapsed, and the camps were opened up, McDonnell was lucky enough to be able to get out before Brooks closed them again. As a social fascist revisionist crypto-trot wrecker/irrational Flying Spaghetti Monsterite crypto-theist/old dinosaur McDonnell was naturally not well liked by any of the new bosses, but a quick retreat to the hills, and a link up through his long-time colleague Jeremy Corbyn with the Kurds, allowed him to avoid their scrutiny. It is here that our second player, Abdullah Öcalan, enters the scene.

A titanic struggle had gripped the Middle East, intensifying as more and more outside actors were dragged in. It was a war of all against all, of nation against nation, and predictably this ended up fucking over the Kurds. More and more began to flee, some to Germany but more to Britain. Amongst them was Öcalan, freed from Imrali in a daring PKK raid in the chaos while the Pasdaran advanced on Turkey. Once in the country he quickly saw the way the wind was blowing and worked to build a strong network that could weather whatever storm was coming. He was much aided in this by his alliance with McDonnell, and together built an organisation that stretched from Bennites, to the strange Bookchinism of Öcalan's loyalists, to the ML and MLM Red Front diehards who still controlled a number of pockets in the country. Allegations that they received training from Iran's elite Quds Force, in attempt to both spite the Americans and keep the Kurds from coming home and making trouble, are fervently denied. When the time came, they were ready.

With the Burnham government already fatally wounded, the Universal Socialists swooped in and provided weapons and leadership to the up till that point largely leaderless mobs that had formed. American troops had largely pulled out at this point, but those that remained were quickly and brutally overrun, giving the rebels both serious hardware and valuable propaganda wins. The fall of London, which had happened so frequently at this point that the American late night hosts (even under a blood soaked fascist junta, some things never changed) joked that the city should have a sign on the road in asking invaders to please wipe their feet, merely confirmed what everyone already knew. Britain was an independent, socialist, nation once again.

In the years since what optimists call The Final, and pessimists the Third, Glorious Revolution, much has changed. Britain has become the Arsenal of Anti-Imperialism, funnelling weapons and experts to oppressed groups and nations across the globe, in a constant effort to spread the revolution. At home there is a mixture of tightening and loosening. Culturally the nation is a liberal as it has ever been, as LGBT rights and representation are pushed from the highest levels on down. Meanwhile much of the economy has been seized by the state, as computers do the work of hundreds if not thousands of central planners. Tensions exist of course. The democracy question is fraught, as people wonder when the much-promised election, the first in over 20 years, will be held, and if it should be, for the people have grown used to autocracy punctuated by mass insurrection. More worrying is the growing divide in the party’s cadre between the old and the young, as the incredibly radicalised youth push for greater, quicker, bolder reform, in the face of their elder’s conservatism. How long the present situation can hold, no one knows.

But it seems for the first time in years that there is a both a unity of purpose, and a drive to actually improve the nation. And after all, things can't exactly get worse. Right?

Gaze upon the absurdly late, absurdly long footnotes of the gimmick list I did for that trend half a year ago.
 
David Cameron (2010 - 2014)

Scotland narrowly votes for independence by just under 52% of the vote. It's a humiliation for the entire political establishment but particularly for a Prime Minister who runs the Conservative and Unionist Party. Knowing he'll be pushed if he doesn't go and frankly having lost all heart, Cameron falls on his sword. It doesn't look good that he's leaving when a few riots break out between disgruntled unionists and cheering SNP men in Scotland, or when a few drunk idiots batter English tourists.

Nick Clegg (2014)

Filling in for a fortnight while the Tories sort their new leadership out. As he can't really do anything substantial, he focuses on starting the nitty-gritty of how Scotland will be seperated from the union with Salmond - because here, the coalition is in agreement on not wanting to give up all the oil, ease of border crossing and dual citizenship, and how to seperate the economy and energy infrastructure. This does not go well because Alex Salmond is Alex Salmond and is drunk on success, and the SNP don't want to give up any of the North Sea oil they have. Clegg's term is defined entirely by this which actually serves him and the Lib Dems well, as the English tabloids cheer him for Standing Up To Jock.

David Davis (2014 - 2015)

The Cameroons fail to retain power and Davis is back. His grand sweeping plans for change are all stymied by the Other West Lothian Question and as negotiations drag on badly, both Davis and Salmond begin to look quite bad to their respective supporters - "why can't they just GET ON WITH IT?" Davis is greatly helped when certain allegations about Salmond come out and the SNP, worried independence will never bloody happen at this rate, stage a coup and Sturgeon takes over. This creates political chaos in Scotland and Davis makes it clear he plans to exploit that, but proves unable to: the Scots are all at each other's throats but the nationalists still all want the same things. The EU is unable to mediate as Davis will not accept that.

Plaid Cymru watch all this and decide not to attempt an independence push until they see how all this shakes out.

Ed Miliband (2015 - current)

Labour wins by promising an "mutually beneficial deal with our neighbours and friends", by promising an end to austerity and welfare, and by campaigning on how Davis wants to stage an EU referendum and cor blimey lads do you want another referendum after this? Even with the loss of Scottish seats, Labour won a slight majority as the Tories lost seats to/failed to take seats from the Liberal Democrats, this thanks to disgruntled Cameroon-ish Tories thinking how much better Clegg did than Davis, and UKIP finally broke into the big leagues with eight seats.

Miliband agrees with Sturgeon to get the EU involved and quiet talks with Edinburgh about how London will push very hard for Scotland to get an easy EU entry help the UK keep a moderately good chunk of the oil. The 2016 St Andrew's Day Agreement is a compromise people begrudgingly accept to be done with it, and Labour gets back to work on domestic policy & shifting all its defence assets south.

(Ironically, the first Prime Minister of Scotland turns out to be Conservative leader Ruth Davidson in a minority government - the SNP have lost a lot of support by how long it took and Where Is Our Oil, while Labour in Scotland is a flailing thing.)

The United Kingdom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland drifts leftward on social and environmental policies, and Miliband breathes a sigh of relief until, oh no, issues about trans rights and gender expose fault lines across Labour and give UKIP something to yell about. Still, if he can survive the ulcers from Scotland and the Ukraine crisis, he can handle anything.


2020??

Boris Johnson is rebuilding the Tories with blustering populism and being the 'cuddly' side of nationalism, helped by UKIP mooning the entire nation after they gained some power and failed to do much with it but yell "EUROPE, EUROPE, MUSLIMS". However, the Liberal Democrats are still holding fast under Chris Huhne - whose climate and energy policies mesh enough with Miliband's that he's forever in the press, shaking hands with Ed and looking quite authoritative. Smart money is on a Lib-Lab coalition, unless events, dear boy, knock Miliband enough to give Johnson his opening.
 
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Leaders of the National Labour Organisation
1931-1936: Ramsay MacDonald
1936-1942: Oswald Mosley
1942-1945: Harold Nicolson
1945-1954: Malcolm MacDonald
1954-1964: Harold Macmillan
1964-1968: Frederic Bennett

The Great Depression caused a splintering of the old parties and a coming together of a National Government - and one of the splinters which embedded itself in the foot of the new Government was National Labour.

Ramsay MacDonald could no longer depend on Labour support for his and Philip Snowden's economic policies, which were based on support for the Gold Standard, and therefore led his followers out of Labour and into coalition with the Tories and Liberals with the encouragement of the King. But National Labour wasn't just made up of MacDonald loyalists: there was another faction involved. Sir Oswald Mosley had been leading his New Labour Group to develop Keynesian and Protectionist ideas which were anathema to MacDonald, but he also partook of the view that the only solution to the Depression was for action to be taken by a broad coalition which would call a temporary truce on class warfare. For this reason, he encouraged his followers into National Labour. Some, such as Aneurin Bevan, were too romantically attached to the Labour Party to listen to Mosley, and resiled. However, Mosley's connections with young politicians of other parties, such as Cecil Dudgeon, Oliver Baldwin and Harold Macmillan, made up for them.

The partnership of MacDonald, Jowitt, Snowden and Mosley was a strong one, bringing together experience and youth, and the party performed well within an electoral accommodation with the Conservatives in the 1931 general election. But the ideological disputes weren't submerged under success for long. In 1932, the Ottawa Conference returned a verdict that protectionism had to be embarked upon - Snowden resigned and Mosley was vindicated, replacing him in the Cabinet. However, the internal disputes weakened the Party and they underwhelmed at the polls in 1935. One of their tactical mistakes was to retain MacDonald as Leader for the election, despite the fact that he was clearly on the way out and Mosley was a much more popular speaker by that point.

Mosley's tenure of the party leadership is divisive: although he fought stalwartly for corporatist, Keynesian policies against the majority in both Cabinet and his own caucus, it is impossible to dissociate him from his tenure of the Foreign Office, during which Appeasement reached new depths of squalor and Britain washed its hands of its humanitarian duties towards Jewish refugees. Few wept when the National Labour ministers were shuffled out as the price of Labour's entry into the wartime coalition, and Mosley ended his career as an EEC apparatchik. Mosley is also frequently pitched as a potential fascist dictator in an alternate Britain, but it has to be made clear that his squad of bodyguards was only set up to defend against Labour thugs breaking up 'traitorous' NL meetings.

Harold Nicolson, editor of the National Labour newspaper, Action, followed Mosley as leader. Although a Mosleyite in economic terms, he had criticised Appeasement and was the perfect caretaker leader during a time when the Party might have been forgotten: he exerted soft power by schmoozing with the political, artistic and journalistic greats. Perhaps he ought to have spent more time socialising with his constituents, for he lost his seat in 1945. In his place, the Party returned to economically orthodox MacDonaldism by selecting the former Prime Minister's son as their new standard-bearer. Urbane and liberal, Malcolm MacDonald guided the Party into the post-war period as an oft-overlooked minor partner to the Tories, always at risk of being merged with Labour, the Conservatives or the National Liberals, depending on whom one asked.

MacDonald served as a perfectly serviceable Foreign Secretary in Churchill's next Cabinet - he brought Britain into the mainstream of European integration, but the question of colonialism still loomed large. He retired as Leader to make room for others, specifically Harold Macmillan, who is remembered as one of Britain's best Chancellors. Corporatist and Keynesian in the finest tradition of Oswald Mosley, he presided of a period of high employment and comparatively low inequality, thus proving that the National Labour concept of ameliorating the worst instincts of Conservative rule had some merit.

However, the Party was atrophying even as it achieved its greatest successes: a long partnership with the Tories had failed to inspire many new figures to join up, while the old guard were dying off. After being sacked by Butler in the Night of the Long Knives, Macmillan retired from politics in embarrassment and his successor, Frederic Bennett, was a virtual nobody who never rose higher than the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster in domestic politics (although he was elected an MEP in 1974).

In 1968, then, the National Labour Organisation came to an end, as it was merged with the Liberals and the National Liberals to form the Centre Party, which has had a fairly wild history of its own since then.
 
Hello, here is a superfluous sequel.

Centre Party leaders
1968-1972: Charles Hill
1972-1977: Malcolm Muggeridge
1977-1979: Emlyn Hooson
1979-1989: Ian Gilmour
1989-1998: Michael Heseltine
1998-2009: Adam Ridley
2009-2017: Hugo Swire
2017-: Ivo Mosley

The Centre Party owes its genesis to the Night of the Long Knives in 1962, in which Rab Rutler sacked or demoted half his Cabinet – which just so happened to be the half including Ministers from the remnants of the National Liberal and National Labour parties. Although the first of these had become little more than an unusual name on a ballot paper by this point, hacked-off NatLab supporters of Harold Macmillan worked on persuading the NatLibs that their prospects of promotion would be higher if the Tories felt bound to include one or two of them in Cabinet.

The two parties therefore began to rejuvenate their branches and make tactical stands against carefully selected Conservative policies and by-election candidates. Disputes grew when the three parties were consigned to Opposition in 1964, with the public growing increasingly aware of the differences between the Conservatives and their allies when the latter lambasted Quintin Hogg for retaining the services of Enoch Powell after the Rivers of Blood speech.

Now in the forefront of the mass public mind, the National Liberals and National Labourites announced a swanky merged identity – the Centre Party. The Liberals also entered into this new political formation, having failed to surge back in the long years of unpromising leadership Clement Davies, Edward Martell and James Davidson. However, a leftist minority faction of the Liberals split off very quickly and are now part of the Radical Green Party.

As incumbent leader of the largest of the three proto-Centre Parties and a former Cabinet Minister, ‘Radio Doctor’ Charles Hill was the natural choice to lead the new party. However, he was getting old and was seen as fighting the 1971 election with insufficient alacrity. The Centre Party was semi-independent of the Tories in this contest, with the parties standing down for one another in 109 seats, but the results were not encouraging for those who had pushed the move away from full coalition. Indeed, if the Tories had won five more seats, it is likely that they would have attempted to govern alone. Hill was made Home Secretary but did not impress, and was encouraged to resign by his bitter comrades.

Hill’s replacement, similarly well-known from his broadcasting career, was Malcolm Muggeridge, the Punch editor whose father had been a Mosleyite. Muggeridge was a much more noticeable presence than Hill, drawing attention and voters alike with his contrarian opinions on diverse subjects. He brought a Christian viewpoint into the national debate (standing alongside Mary Whitehouse against the tide of the permissive society) while steadfastly opposing the leftists in the Henderson Labour Party and fighting for freedom of speech. This naturally gave rise to some misgivings among social liberals, which aided the first fleeting rise of the Radical Party and – after Muggeridge became even more outspoken in Opposition – led to the Party ditching him as leader.

Muggeridge, of course, has recently been in the news for his sexual crimes, along with all too many politicians of the time.

The new leader was the old Liberal hand Emlyn Hooson, who mostly served as a consensus figure with a focus on devolution for Wales and Scotland, but lost his seat in Shore’s foolhardy snap election of 1979 and is therefore scarcely remembered today. His replacement was the National Liberal Ian Gilmour, who stepped in at the last moment. Although the Centre Party was still running a semi-independent line, Thatcher still included them in Government at first, out of the desire to nullify any centrist opposition to her proposed economic reforms. However, Gilmour was only accorded the Defence portfolio – and even that was downgraded to Lord Privy Seal when his strategy in the Falklands went awry.

For the rest of the 80s, then, Gilmour was a dead duck who only retained power over his own Party because none of the factions could agree a suitable alternative. It was absolutely transparent that Max Mosley wanted it, but the liberals wouldn’t hear of it. In the end, the leonine Michael Heseltine challenged him in the Centre Caucus and won. At first, Thatcher was privately overjoyed as Heseltine’s victory, as Gilmour had been moping around Cabinet and damning her economic policy for most of the previous decade – however, Heseltine was just as much of a Liberal as his predecessor, and much more muscular about it. Within a year, Thatcher was gone. Another year on, John Major genuinely did depend on the Centre Party MPs due to the narrowness of his unexpected victory. Heseltine was promoted from Defence to the Foreign Office.

This was in many ways the high point of the Centre Party in the semi-independent days – and the subsequent descent was fairly precipitous. The Europound went into a tailspin, China intimidated Britain into agreeing to an early Hong Kong handover, and the Tory Party became a by-word for sleaze. The Centre Party suffered by association (although it was regarded as squeaky-clean with regard to the latter issue) and Heseltine took the bold step of calling an end to the Tory-Centre electoral agreement. From now on, Centrists would be elected on their own merits and only participate in Government if the electorate so desired.

The 1996 election saw Centre leap to a new (and as yet unmatched) high of 32 seats, largely thanks to being an acceptably middle-class alternative in safe Tory seats. Heseltine retired on a high at the age of 65, and the consensus was that the new Centre leader had to be someone with no history in the National Liberal Party – which was a remarkably anachronistic view, seeing as most of the newer MPs had no loyalty to any of the old minor parties. In any case, the wheel span and landed on Adam Ridley, a rather bloodless patrician with Asquithian ancestry. He brought a dry, analytical style to debates, which was regarded by his supporters as a welcome reprieve from the incessant vapidity of Tony Blair, who had by now succeeded the late John Smith in Number 10. The electorate held a different view on the relative merits of Blair and Ridley: he was putsched in 2009, just two months before the general election.

Hugo Swire followed him in the first Centre leadership election open to the mass membership, and signalled a turn against Europe, despite this having been a central principle of the Centre Party from its foundation. This, however, pulled in a few votes in a general election which could have turned out much worse. Some redoubtable performances denied Labour a majority, meaning that Blair (and, later, Miliband) had to rely on Radical Green support that inevitably ran dry in 2012, by which time Swire had had some time to bed in and silence some party malcontents. Another hung parliament followed, with the result that – despite the independent turn of the 90s – Hugo Swire sat as Foreign Secretary in yet another Conservative-Centre coalition. And as Centre’s new USP was their independence from both Right and Left, this provoked a feeling of genuine betrayal from their voters for the first time. It was not a happy time.

Swire - now utterly despised by the general public - resigned immediately after losing more seats than the Centre Party has ever lost in a single election. They were decimated. And worst of all, this is the first Conservative Government which has ruled without Centre (or National Liberal/Labour) support since 1924. How will the Party recover?

Its supporters hope that their reaction was correct: they have elected Ivo Mosley as their new spokesperson, a radical voice who cuts through the apparent consensus of the two main parties: he satisfies the liberals with his calls for direct democracy and sortition, while going further than most Mosleyites in that he favours monetary reform as an antidote to debt, corruption, and the extremist politics of Right and Left. It is a bold strategy – but surely the members of National Labour and the National Liberals were just as bold when they decided to stand up for concerted action against the Great Depression, no matter what the consequences were for their relationships with their native parties.

Under Ivo Mosley, the Centre Party has surged to almost 90,000 members, most of whom are very active on MSN – could we, perhaps, be seeing the birth of a new alternative to the tired old parties?
 
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Having seen @Makemakean's greater Sweden TL and evidently thought to myself "I want one too", I've been working on a TL where Finland remains part of Sweden for a few months now. It's... ballooned somewhat, nowhere as much as in the political/electoral sphere.

The Land Across the Water, Part II*

1864-1866: Robert Georg Wrede (Hat majority)
1866-1871: Robert Georg Wrede (Hat leading War Government with War Caps)
1869: "National Unity" (254; Hat 210, War Cap 44), Peace Cap (53), New Liberal (3)
1871-1875: Robert Georg Wrede (National majority)
1874: National (204), Liberal (104)
1875: National (201), Liberal (112)


Still rated high on the list of Chancery Presidents by most historians, Baron Wrede is perhaps less known to the general public than the war he led Sweden through. Started over religious politics in the Middle East, Gustav V's War (1866-69) saw Russia attack the Ottoman Empire and then face a coalition of Turkish, French, British and Swedish forces, which inflicted a sound defeat on it and came close to capturing St. Petersburg. The peace treaty saw the recovery of the far more defensible 1721 boundary in Karelia, along with the islands of Hogland, Tyterskär, Seitskär and Lövskär, giving Sweden essentially its modern-day borders.

At home, Wrede was a champion of protectionist tolls designed to shore up domestic industry, an age-old Hat position that carried over into the new National Party formed out of the wartime coalition. The Peace Caps and New Liberals merged into a corresponding Liberal Party, whose main policy was free trade; this proved unable to break through Wrede's majority in 1874, and again when King Gustav V died and the Riksdag was dissolved in 1875. Having served for close to twelve years, Wrede declared that he would not carry on under Adolf II, retiring to his estates in Finland Proper where he died in 1884.

1875-1877: Johan August Bååth (National majority)

Bååth is, frankly, not one of our better-remembered heads of government. Tapped by the King to replace Wrede, he failed to win the confidence of Wrede's old lieutenants, and a cabinet revolt forced him out after a year and a half in office.

1877-1882: Mauritz Klinckowström (National majority)
1878: National (199), Liberal (117), Radical (2)

Klinckowström, who had been President of the College of War for the better part of a decade and served as a general in the Army before that, was a stronger leader than Bååth or arguably Wrede. A tall man with a strong voice and a legendary temper, he suffered only for his lack of real independent ideas. His disposition made him a good general and an excellent cabinet minister, but as head of government he was questionable at best. Indeed, his domineering style suppressed many initiatives from both the Riksdag and the world of letters, ensuring that very little policy got carried out and Sweden merely carried on for the five years he was in power. The electorate, happy to give the Nationals a chance when Klinckowström's leadership was new, turned away from them when King Adolf's death triggered an early dissolution in 1882.

1882-1886: Erik Gustaf von Ungern-Sternberg (Liberal majority)
1882: Liberal (169), National (145), Radical (7)

The first Liberal government ever, and the first government in thirty-five years not led by a Hat or National, came to power with a slim majority, and Ungern-Sternberg did all he could to make sure he didn't suffer the sort of split that had brought down his predecessors. He was aided in this by the fact that a left split, the Radical Party, had already taken hold. Like the New Liberals before them, the Radicals were formed by backbenchers angry with the leadership for their vacillation on one key issue - but this time it wasn't trade, it was the franchise. The Radicals were staunch proponents of universal suffrage, and the satirical press soon gave them the nickname "Phrygians", which would follow them throughout their existence.

None of this particularly concerned Ungern-Sternberg, a Livonian nobleman of ancient lineage who led his government from the Lords. Instead he focused on the old Liberal flagships: free trade and free enterprise. The ancient restriction of foreign trade to chartered staple ports was abolished, as were the few remaining guild privileges, the burgher franchise was brought into line with the rural one, and tariffs were lowered across the board. The reforms came after most other European countries had already abolished their tariffs, and indeed some were moving back toward protectionism, but nevertheless helped keep prices down for the burgeoning industrial classes. Satisfied with his achievements, Ungern-Sternberg asked the King to dissolve the Riksdag for an election in spring 1886. In hindsight, this was likely a mistake...

1886-1889: Gustaf Fredrik Carpelan (National majority)
1886: National (193), Liberal (119), Radical (12)

Two days after the Riksdag was dissolved, a platoon of Russian soldiers on maneouvre crossed the border at Nujama. Swedish border troops opened fire, killed two Russians, and had one of their men crippled by a shot to the hip in response. The Russian government issued a formal apology, claiming it had been a genuine mistake, and war would ultimately not come, but the incident showed tensions were on the rise again in the Baltic. After a chaotic campaign where the defence issue drowned out any other consideration, the Swedish voters saw fit to return the Nationals. The new Chancery President was of an old Finnish family (whose name was originally Karppalainen), and spent his three years in office strengthening Army recruitment and expanding the fortresses at Sveaborg and Fredrikshamn. He was effective at this, and many expected him to survive for a long time, until the release of incriminating documents forced his resignation in 1889.

1889-1895: Augustin Beck-Friis (National majority)
1890: National (203), Liberal (99), Radical (20), Finnish Tenants (9)

Carpelan was replaced by one of the most successful peacetime leaders in the National Party's history. Beck-Friis was an old-school Hat of the Wredean tradition, and while extremely conservative, saw the benefits of a strong state economically as well as socially. His government would raise tariffs again, and with the revenue gained from this, buy up the railway network and extend it into the peripheral regions, turning it into an efficient transport network that could ferry passengers, cargo and - yes - troops from Malmö to Kuopio in as little as four days. The College of Mountains led the expansion of heavy industry, including the first prospecting surveys of the Norrbotten iron mines, and city councils were given increased powers to regulate street grids and clear out slums. Sweden was moving into the second Industrial Revolution with haste, and it was all going quite well, until a spate of crop failures in 1894 (which would turn out to be the last in Swedish history) caused a stock-market crash.

1895-1897: Alexander von Friesen (Liberal minority)
1895: Liberal (161), National (129), Finnish Tenants (20), Radical (17), Workers' Associations (7)

The 1895 elections were indecisive, but it was at least clear that the Nationals had been rejected. Using this argument, Friesen was able to get the backing of the Radicals and the Finnish Tenants' Association, which had been founded after Ungern-Sternberg's government expanded the franchise to include certain tenants as well as freeholders. Their main goal was to bring about more secure tenancy laws, and Friesen would deliver on this in exchange for their support. Other than that, not much was achieved - the Finnish Tenants were against most social reforms other than Finnish language rights, which many Liberals in the western half of the realm opposed, and any economic reforms were sure to be defeated by the National majority in the Lords. The Friesen ministry lasted twenty-seven months before resigning, and the resulting snap election did not go well for any party involved.

1897-1900: Augustin Beck-Friis (National majority)
1897: National (244), Liberal (51), Radical (39), Workers' Associations (3), Finnish Tenants (3)

"Beck-Friis back, please" was certainly not the slogan that won the 1897 elections, but it might as well have been. The old nobleman brought back more or less the old ministry, and true to his pragmatic sensibilities, did not try to undo the few changes Friesen had brought about. He presided over three years of quiet recovery, before dying of a brain haemmorhage seven months into the new century. The National grandees met to determine who would lead them, and would bring into power a man whose legend eclipsed that of Beck-Friis, and approached that of Wrede: the man who would lead Sweden through its greatest trial in two hundred years...

1900-1903: Adolf Lagerheim (National majority)
1902: National (177), Liberal (84), Radical (64), Labour (17)
1903-1907: Adolf Lagerheim (National leading War Government with Liberals and Radicals)

*Part I may be a while as it would require actual historical research
 
Having seen @Makemakean's greater Sweden TL and evidently thought to myself "I want one too", I've been working on a TL where Finland remains part of Sweden for a few months now. It's... ballooned somewhat, nowhere as much as in the political/electoral sphere.

The Land Across the Water, Part II*

1864-1866: Robert Georg Wrede (Hat majority)
1866-1871: Robert Georg Wrede (Hat leading War Government with War Caps)
1869: "National Unity" (254; Hat 210, War Cap 44), Peace Cap (53), New Liberal (3)
1871-1875: Robert Georg Wrede (National majority)
1874: National (204), Liberal (104)
1875: National (201), Liberal (112)


Still rated high on the list of Chancery Presidents by most historians, Baron Wrede is perhaps less known to the general public than the war he led Sweden through. Started over religious politics in the Middle East, Gustav V's War (1866-69) saw Russia attack the Ottoman Empire and then face a coalition of Turkish, French, British and Swedish forces, which inflicted a sound defeat on it and came close to capturing St. Petersburg. The peace treaty saw the recovery of the far more defensible 1721 boundary in Karelia, along with the islands of Hogland, Tyterskär, Seitskär and Lövskär, giving Sweden essentially its modern-day borders.

At home, Wrede was a champion of protectionist tolls designed to shore up domestic industry, an age-old Hat position that carried over into the new National Party formed out of the wartime coalition. The Peace Caps and New Liberals merged into a corresponding Liberal Party, whose main policy was free trade; this proved unable to break through Wrede's majority in 1874, and again when King Gustav V died and the Riksdag was dissolved in 1875. Having served for close to twelve years, Wrede declared that he would not carry on under Adolf II, retiring to his estates in Finland Proper where he died in 1884.

1875-1877: Johan August Bååth (National majority)

Bååth is, frankly, not one of our better-remembered heads of government. Tapped by the King to replace Wrede, he failed to win the confidence of Wrede's old lieutenants, and a cabinet revolt forced him out after a year and a half in office.

1877-1882: Mauritz Klinckowström (National majority)
1878: National (199), Liberal (117), Radical (2)

Klinckowström, who had been President of the College of War for the better part of a decade and served as a general in the Army before that, was a stronger leader than Bååth or arguably Wrede. A tall man with a strong voice and a legendary temper, he suffered only for his lack of real independent ideas. His disposition made him a good general and an excellent cabinet minister, but as head of government he was questionable at best. Indeed, his domineering style suppressed many initiatives from both the Riksdag and the world of letters, ensuring that very little policy got carried out and Sweden merely carried on for the five years he was in power. The electorate, happy to give the Nationals a chance when Klinckowström's leadership was new, turned away from them when King Adolf's death triggered an early dissolution in 1882.

1882-1886: Erik Gustaf von Ungern-Sternberg (Liberal majority)
1882: Liberal (169), National (145), Radical (7)

The first Liberal government ever, and the first government in thirty-five years not led by a Hat or National, came to power with a slim majority, and Ungern-Sternberg did all he could to make sure he didn't suffer the sort of split that had brought down his predecessors. He was aided in this by the fact that a left split, the Radical Party, had already taken hold. Like the New Liberals before them, the Radicals were formed by backbenchers angry with the leadership for their vacillation on one key issue - but this time it wasn't trade, it was the franchise. The Radicals were staunch proponents of universal suffrage, and the satirical press soon gave them the nickname "Phrygians", which would follow them throughout their existence.

None of this particularly concerned Ungern-Sternberg, a Livonian nobleman of ancient lineage who led his government from the Lords. Instead he focused on the old Liberal flagships: free trade and free enterprise. The ancient restriction of foreign trade to chartered staple ports was abolished, as were the few remaining guild privileges, the burgher franchise was brought into line with the rural one, and tariffs were lowered across the board. The reforms came after most other European countries had already abolished their tariffs, and indeed some were moving back toward protectionism, but nevertheless helped keep prices down for the burgeoning industrial classes. Satisfied with his achievements, Ungern-Sternberg asked the King to dissolve the Riksdag for an election in spring 1886. In hindsight, this was likely a mistake...

1886-1889: Gustaf Fredrik Carpelan (National majority)
1886: National (193), Liberal (119), Radical (12)

Two days after the Riksdag was dissolved, a platoon of Russian soldiers on maneouvre crossed the border at Nujama. Swedish border troops opened fire, killed two Russians, and had one of their men crippled by a shot to the hip in response. The Russian government issued a formal apology, claiming it had been a genuine mistake, and war would ultimately not come, but the incident showed tensions were on the rise again in the Baltic. After a chaotic campaign where the defence issue drowned out any other consideration, the Swedish voters saw fit to return the Nationals. The new Chancery President was of an old Finnish family (whose name was originally Karppalainen), and spent his three years in office strengthening Army recruitment and expanding the fortresses at Sveaborg and Fredrikshamn. He was effective at this, and many expected him to survive for a long time, until the release of incriminating documents forced his resignation in 1889.

1889-1895: Augustin Beck-Friis (National majority)
1890: National (203), Liberal (99), Radical (20), Finnish Tenants (9)

Carpelan was replaced by one of the most successful peacetime leaders in the National Party's history. Beck-Friis was an old-school Hat of the Wredean tradition, and while extremely conservative, saw the benefits of a strong state economically as well as socially. His government would raise tariffs again, and with the revenue gained from this, buy up the railway network and extend it into the peripheral regions, turning it into an efficient transport network that could ferry passengers, cargo and - yes - troops from Malmö to Kuopio in as little as four days. The College of Mountains led the expansion of heavy industry, including the first prospecting surveys of the Norrbotten iron mines, and city councils were given increased powers to regulate street grids and clear out slums. Sweden was moving into the second Industrial Revolution with haste, and it was all going quite well, until a spate of crop failures in 1894 (which would turn out to be the last in Swedish history) caused a stock-market crash.

1895-1897: Alexander von Friesen (Liberal minority)
1895: Liberal (161), National (129), Finnish Tenants (20), Radical (17), Workers' Associations (7)

The 1895 elections were indecisive, but it was at least clear that the Nationals had been rejected. Using this argument, Friesen was able to get the backing of the Radicals and the Finnish Tenants' Association, which had been founded after Ungern-Sternberg's government expanded the franchise to include certain tenants as well as freeholders. Their main goal was to bring about more secure tenancy laws, and Friesen would deliver on this in exchange for their support. Other than that, not much was achieved - the Finnish Tenants were against most social reforms other than Finnish language rights, which many Liberals in the western half of the realm opposed, and any economic reforms were sure to be defeated by the National majority in the Lords. The Friesen ministry lasted twenty-seven months before resigning, and the resulting snap election did not go well for any party involved.

1897-1900: Augustin Beck-Friis (National majority)
1897: National (244), Liberal (51), Radical (39), Workers' Associations (3), Finnish Tenants (3)

"Beck-Friis back, please" was certainly not the slogan that won the 1897 elections, but it might as well have been. The old nobleman brought back more or less the old ministry, and true to his pragmatic sensibilities, did not try to undo the few changes Friesen had brought about. He presided over three years of quiet recovery, before dying of a brain haemmorhage seven months into the new century. The National grandees met to determine who would lead them, and would bring into power a man whose legend eclipsed that of Beck-Friis, and approached that of Wrede: the man who would lead Sweden through its greatest trial in two hundred years...

1900-1903: Adolf Lagerheim (National majority)
1902: National (177), Liberal (84), Radical (64), Labour (17)
1903-1907: Adolf Lagerheim (National leading War Government with Liberals and Radicals)

*Part I may be a while as it would require actual historical research

Good use of the Swedish Ungern-Sternbergs there, I see. They were indeed part of the Cap party back in the 18th century. I myself decided to make use of the Ungern-Sternbergs in a different way, with a nod to the Russian branch of the family, with one member (Fredrik Johan) travelling east to Mongolia in a cartographic and scientific mission (a la Sven Hedin), but for a variety of reasons, Ungern-Sternberg gets himself embroiled in the politics of the Mongol clans, and it all columinates in him and his band of Swedes playing a minor a role when the Mongols do a (failed) revolt against the Qing and attempt to establish an independent state. He comes back ten years later to Sweden and writes a book about his travels, Khanens Vrede, that makes him a national celebrity.

Hrm... I might make a great-nephew of Fredrik Johan into a Foreign Minister under Sønderheim, come to think of it.

You making the Beck-Friis into Hats is also an interesting one. I made them into Caps for some reason I cannot recall.

I like this very much, the Liberals have sort of a Canadian-Liberals-before-Laurier feel to them.
 
I'll be honest here, the surnames were chosen more for aesthetics than any sort of historical significance.

I kind of do the same thing. I go through lists of surnames of people in the relevant era/people in the relevant area, and then I pick surnames that end up appealing to me and create entire characters from that.
 
I kind of do the same thing. I go through lists of surnames of people in the relevant era/people in the relevant area, and then I pick surnames that end up appealing to me and create entire characters from that.
The trouble is sometimes you come up with an unexpectedly iconic name which you didn't realise.
 
Fear, Loathing, and the Fucking Bag 2020

2017-2021: Donald Trump / Mike Pence (Republican)
2016: Hillary Clinton / Tim Kaine (Democratic)
2021-2023: Andrew Yang / Tammy Baldwin (Democratic)
2020: Donald Trump / Mike Pompeo (Republican), Howard Schultz / David Brooks (Independent - Let's Save America)
2023: Tammy Baldwin / vacant (Democratic)
2023-2025: Tammy Baldwin / Corey Johnson (Democratic)

2025: ???
2024: Tucker Carlson / Bill Lee (Republican) v. Tammy Baldwin / Corey Johnson (Democratic)

Against all odds, the "meme" candidacy of venture capitalist and businessman Andrew Yang wins out against Senators Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, as well as former Congressman Beto O'Rourke. Yang's stunning opposition to the Operation Venezuelan Freedom won him many plaudits from voters. Nonetheless, Senator Sanders secured a win by getting one of his endorsers on the Democratic ticket. Despite the fact Yang won the nomination, Businessman Howard Schultz pressed ahead with his abysmally unpopular candidacy, selecting terminally awful pundit David Brooks as his centrist running mate. The campaign pitted two businessmen against eachother, however the fallout from Trump dumping Mike Pence as his running mate would incite much controversy and push many Republican voters towards staying home. Yang triumphed, promising peace abroad and prosperity at home.

Skepticism from left and right alike proved both correct and unfounded as Yang unceremoniously withdrew America from the quagmire in Venezuela and finally took the radical step of ending the filibuster, using the special time he had in the majority to appoint two Supreme Court justices, enact a carbon tax, reverse the Trump Tax Cuts, push for a public option, and announce a referendum on Puerto Rico's statehood to coincide with the 2022 midterms. His main fight - the program of "Yangbucks" - or UBI - would be a tricky one indeed. While many were indeed enticed, the prospect of replacing a number of welfare programs wholesale struck many Democratic officials as suspect. However, Yang fought hard for what he wanted, and he didn't want his trademark policy falling by the wayside. After a remarkable swing upwards in the economy manifested itself in 2022, resulting in a victory for the President in the midterms, he finally had the capitol to make one last push on his program. The Future Dividend Act of 2021 passed narrowly, and Yang ensured his legacy as a transformational president.

Something was bubbling underneath the surface. Many in the "alt-right" movement, even those who had once ironically supported Yang, were ever so incensed at an Asian man and a lesbian enacting leftist policies (one exception was immigration where Yang was especially mum, having allegedly been reigned in from his more conservative leanings by staff and his VP). The growth of far right terrorism, allegedly bolstered by the rhetoric of former President Trump and talk show host Tucker Carlson, became a point of worry for many. President Yang was not immune. He, along with Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and many other figures in the Democratic party, became targets of ire. The summer of 2023 was particularly violent, culminating with the assassination of President Yang.

Tammy Baldwin never expected to be the one at the top, contenting herself to working within the role of Vice President. She nevertheless made herself a prominent figure, promising to crackdown on the threat of fascist violence, selecting the Mayor of NYC who had already dealt with a failed terror attack. A backlash would obviously follow. Tucker Carlson, having spent several years promoting the language of white nationalists and racists, decided it was time for a job promotion. He ran in the Republican primary on an outsider campaign lambasting elites and globalists, beating back Senators Matt Gaetz and Tom Cotton, as well as Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr., who proved to have the charisma of wet clay. Carlson's general election campaign would be staffed by volunteers from not only Maxime Bernier's People's Party in Canada, but also Tommy Robinson's UKIP and the National Front in France. While Baldwin had a clear and consistent lead throughout, last minute reports of a fake "bombshell" scandal sunk her numbers enough in a number of battleground states that Carlson could legitimately be in contention. On election night, Baldwin won the popular vote by 8%, but Republican governments in Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina, Texas, and Georgia made voter registration much more difficult and suppressed minority turnout. Recounts continue a month after the election, and many wonder if the nation will ever recover from this split.
 
@Ares96 is going to hate me for this...

Chancery Presidents of Sweden 1800-1900:

1800-1801: Vilhelm Macklean (Hat)
1801-1809: Teodor von Rosenfeldt (Hat)
1809-1813: Vilhelm Harald Thott (Hat)
1813-1821: Jedvard Vilhelmsson (Cap)
1821-1823: Gunde Hård af Segerstad (Hat)
1823-1829: Olaus Petri Frostrand (Hat)
1829-1833: Hubert Huber (Hat)
1833-1845: Linnaeus De Geer von Rosenfeldt (Cap)
1845-1853: Henrik Ährlig (Cap)
1853-1861: Dionysius Jernfeltz (Hat)
1861-1863: Johan Kennedy (Cap)
1863-1869: Linden Johansson (Cap)
1869-1874: Rikard Nilsson (Hat)
1874-1877: Gerard Fjord (Hat)
1877-1881: Jakob Vagner (Cap)
1881-1889: Ragnvald Reijer (Hat)
1889-1893: Göran Busker d.ä. (Hat)
1893-1901: Vilhelm Hamilton Klinckow (Cap)


By the way, the in-Universe explanation for why the colours are the way they are is something I came up with just yesterday from those Danish election maps from the late 1880s, in which the red colour had turned entirely brown as the paper had aged.

Basically, the Bureau of Tabulations (Tabellverket) begins to make electoral maps after Björnstjerna makes his reforms in the 1830s, and their basic idea is to have blue for the Hats and yellow for the Caps, after the Swedish flag. However, to make the yellow not fade away they end up adding a tinge of red to it to make it an orange-ey colour, and since they're using a very cheap blue colour in the printing, the blue pretty soon fades to a dark grey-ish colour. And, then, same as in the US... The Democrats and the Republicans never choose blue and red as their colours. It was chosen for them. After the 2000 election, all Americans knew that Democrats were blue and Republicans were red.
 
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obligatory queen nixon

1953-1961: Dwight Eisenhower/Richard Nixon (Republican)
1952: Adlai Stevenson/John Sparkman (Democratic)
1956: Adlai Stevenson/Estes Kefauver (Democratic)

1961-1963: Richard Nixon/Nelson Rockefeller (Republican)
1960: Lyndon B. Johnson/Wayne Morse (Democratic) , Unpledged Southern Electors
1963-1965: Nelson Rockefeller/Vacant (Republican)
1965-1969: John F. Kennedy/Stuart Symington (Democratic)

1964: Nelson Rockefeller/Thomas Kuchel (Republican) , Orval Faubus/Ross Barnett (Dixiecrat)
1969-1970: George Wallace/Robert McNamara (Democratic)
1968: Barry Goldwater/George Romney (Republican) , Eugene McCarthy/George McGovern (Progressive)
1970-1970: George Wallace/Vacant (Democratic)
1970-1977: George Wallace/Henry M. Jackson (Democratic)

1972: Pete McCloskey/William Scott (Republican)
1977-1979: Ronald Reagan/Tom McCall (Republican)
1976: Henry M. Jackson/Ed Edmonson (Democratic) , Evan Mecham/John G. Schmitz (Independent)
1979-1979: Ronald Reagan/Vacant (Republican)
1979-1985: Ronald Reagan/Gerald Ford (Republican)

1980: John McKeithen/Cesar Chavez (Democratic) , George McGovern/Bob Packwood (Progressive)
1985-1993: Donald Rumsfeld/Mike Gravel (Republican)
1984: William Proxmire/Jesse Helms (Democratic) , John B. Anderson/Jerry Brown (Progressive)
1988: Richard Celeste/Kent Hance (Democratic) , Patrick Leahy/Pete Stark (Progressive)

1993-1997: Lee Iacocca/Lynn Yeakel (Democratic)
1992: Orrin Hatch/John Eisenhower (Republican) , Dick Lamm/Tom Harkin (Progressive)
1997-0000: Ted Bundy/James Meredith (Republican)
1996: Lynn Yeakel/Richard Bryan (Democratic) , Fred Tuttle/Gary Johnson (Progressive) , Marvin Richardson/Randy Weaver (Natural Law)
 
obligatory queen nixon

1953-1961: Dwight Eisenhower/Richard Nixon (Republican)
1952: Adlai Stevenson/John Sparkman (Democratic)
1956: Adlai Stevenson/Estes Kefauver (Democratic)

1961-1963: Richard Nixon/Nelson Rockefeller (Republican)
1960: Lyndon B. Johnson/Wayne Morse (Democratic) , Unpledged Southern Electors
1963-1965: Nelson Rockefeller/Vacant (Republican)
1965-1969: John F. Kennedy/Stuart Symington (Democratic)

1964: Nelson Rockefeller/Thomas Kuchel (Republican) , Orval Faubus/Ross Barnett (Dixiecrat)
1969-1970: George Wallace/Robert McNamara (Democratic)
1968: Barry Goldwater/George Romney (Republican) , Eugene McCarthy/George McGovern (Progressive)
1970-1970: George Wallace/Vacant (Democratic)
1970-1977: George Wallace/Henry M. Jackson (Democratic)

1972: Pete McCloskey/William Scott (Republican)
1977-1979: Ronald Reagan/Tom McCall (Republican)
1976: Henry M. Jackson/Ed Edmonson (Democratic) , Evan Mecham/John G. Schmitz (Independent)
1979-1979: Ronald Reagan/Vacant (Republican)
1979-1985: Ronald Reagan/Gerald Ford (Republican)

1980: John McKeithen/Cesar Chavez (Democratic) , George McGovern/Bob Packwood (Progressive)
1985-1993: Donald Rumsfeld/Mike Gravel (Republican)
1984: William Proxmire/Jesse Helms (Democratic) , John B. Anderson/Jerry Brown (Progressive)
1988: Richard Celeste/Kent Hance (Democratic) , Patrick Leahy/Pete Stark (Progressive)

1993-1997: Lee Iacocca/Lynn Yeakel (Democratic)
1992: Orrin Hatch/John Eisenhower (Republican) , Dick Lamm/Tom Harkin (Progressive)
1997-0000: Ted Bundy/James Meredith (Republican)
1996: Lynn Yeakel/Richard Bryan (Democratic) , Fred Tuttle/Gary Johnson (Progressive) , Marvin Richardson/Randy Weaver (Natural Law)
Thanks, I hate it!
 
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