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Lists of Heads of Government and Heads of State

Presidents of the United States of America

1857-1861 Millard Fillmore (American)
1856 (with John C. Breckinridge) def. in contingent election, James Buchanan (Democratic), John C. Fremont (Republican)
1861-1865 James Guthrie (Democratic)
1860 (with Daniel S. Dickinson) def. in contingent election, William Seward (Republican), Sam Houston (American)
1865- Salmon P. Chase (Republican)
1864 (with Nathaniel P. Banks) defeated James Guthrie (Democratic)

Basically, The Know Nothings do a bit better presidentially, enough to deadlock the EC in 1856, and Fillmore is selected as a compromise over Frémont. Fillmore attempt to sooth tensions but his hopes of doing so are dashed by the Dred Scott decision, and his party begins to splinter due to same lack of infrastructure as OTL. 1860 sees many Northern Know Nothings bolt to the Republicans, but Sam Houston's insurgent "Union At Any Cost" campaign deadlocks the College for the second consecutive election. Many Republicans view Guthrie's victory as a "Second Corrupt Bargain", and an angry Chase storms to victory in 1864, setting the stage for a Civil War...
 
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"Seward's back, and he's pissed"
Was originally going to be Lincoln, though it felt too convergent
No I get it but that requires a degree of party unity that didn't exist before they'd taken the white house. Lincoln would be too convergent but I'd honestly go with Seward and Chase in that instance.
 
This started out as a collaborative list, and grew somewhat in the telling. Enjoy!

Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

1918-1924: H. H Asquith (Liberal)
def 1918: (Majority) Andrew Bonar Law (Conservative leading Unionist Coupon with Liberal Unionists, NDLP, and Irish Union), Joe Devlin (Irish Parliamentary Party), William Adamson (Labour), W. T. Cosgrave (Sinn Fein) [abstained], Henry Page Croft (National)
1924-1927: Winston Churchill (Liberal)
def 1924: (Minority with "Official" Labour confidence and supply) Leo Amery (Conservative leading Unionist Coupon with Liberal Unionists and Irish Union), Arthur Henderson ("Official" Labour), David Kirkwood ("Independent" Labour), W. T Cosgrave (Sinn Fein) [abstained], Joe Devlin (Irish Parliamentary Party), Horatio Bottomley (John Bull)
1927-1931: Maurice Hankey (Unionist)
def 1927: (Majority) Winston Churchill (Liberal), David Kirkwood (Independent Labour), Murray Sueter (National Coupon--Anti-Waste League and John Bull), Arthur Henderson (Labour), W. T Cosgrave (Sinn Fein) [abstained], Mary MacSwiney (Ireland Awake)
1931-1932: Eric Geddes (Unionist)
1932-1934: James Maxton (United Labour)
def 1932: (Coalition with Ireland Awake and "Popular" Liberals) Eric Geddes (Unionist), Jack White (Ireland Awake), Archibald Sinclair (Liberal), R. B. D. Blakeney (National Defence League), Horace Crawfurd ("Popular" Liberals), W. T. Cosgrave (Sinn Fein) [abstained], Horatio Bottomley (Independents for Bottomley)
1934-1935: Eric Geddes (Unionist leading National Government with National Defence League, Ulster Volunteer Force, National Liberals, and "Patriotic" Labour)

Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom of Great Britain

1936-1938: Samuel Hoare (Unionist leading Emergency Government with National Liberals, Democratic Defence League, and National Labour)
1938-1942: Manny Shinwell (Labour)
def 1938: (Coalition with Worker's) William Benn (Progressive), Samuel Hoare (Constitutionalist), John Maclean (Worker's), G. D. H. Cole (Co-Operative League), Raymond Asquith (Liberal), John Hargrave (The Soil), Noel Pemberton Billing (New Politics for Britain), John Beckett (National Labour), Robert McIntyre (Scotland Arise!), Jocelyn Lucas (Continuity Unionist) [prevented from taking seats], Ernest Hooley (Independents for Bottomley)
1942-1947: Edgar Lansbury (Labour)
def 1942: (Minority with Co-Operative League confidence and supply) William Beveridge (Progressive), J. R. Campbell (Worker's), Guy Aldred (Co-Operative League), W. S. Morrison (Constitutionalist), Rolf Gardiner (The Soil), Robert McIntyre (Scotland Arise!), R. J. Russell (Liberal)
def 1944: (Majority) Megan Lloyd-George (Progressive), Oliver Stanley (Constitutionalist), Guy Aldred (Co-Operative League), J. R. Campbell (Worker's), Oliver Brown (Scotland Arise!), H. J. Massingham (The Soil)



Epilogue: Sic Transit Gloria

Historians widely regard Asquith as one of the greatest Liberal Prime Ministers. He got Great Britain through the gruelling struggle of the First Great War, managed to achieve a final victory over the House of Lords, and, after the 1915 Rising was quashed harshly, managed to finally achieve Gladstone's dream and obtain Home Rule for Ireland. Despite largely being a figurehead due to advancing age, his post-war term was the apogee of classical liberalism, as tariffs were universally lifted and the Land Value Tax signed into law. Of course, an apogee, no matter how shining, implies a fall.

With Asquith announcing his retirement before the next election, having served for longer than anyone other than Pitt the Younger and Walpole, it was clear who the successor was. Churchill was popular, Churchill was influential, and most importantly, Churchill was aggressive in asserting his position in cabinet, and champing at the bit to achieve high office. However, when the election rolled around, Churchill was denied a majority, partly due to Ireland--the resumption of voting saw many soldiers stationed there turning out for the Irish part of the Unionist Coupon--and partly due to sheer voter fatigue with regards to the Liberals. With the IPP, dying its strange, slow death, not having enough seats to push the Liberals over the line, Churchill was forced to go to Labour, nor for a coalition--he wouldn't let those Spartacists into Cabinet!--but for a confidence and supply deal.

This was a mistake. Labour was no longer content to be a Liberal lapdog--the left of the party, backed by increasingly militant trade unions and fed-up working men, was tired of being taken for granted. After Henderson agreed to the confidence and supply, David Kirkwood led a group of radical MPs out of Labour, taking most of the Independent Labour Party's apparatus with them. Suddenly, Churchill's majority was slim. The government pushed on for three years, managing to get support from Unionists on conservative measures, support from the IPP on devolutionist measures, and even occasionally capturing the support of Bottomley and his merry band of populists. When the King passed away from septicaemia, Churchill went into the dissolution confident--voters would surely remember what the Liberals had done for them, and at least the rabble-rousers and German agents in Independent Labour would be gone. Unfortunately for Churchill, his confidence proved unfounded.

Maurice Hankey won out in one of the most inevitable elections of all time--people were so tired of the Liberals that they would have voted for a pot of shrimps--and was forced to deal with an increasingly unstable Britain. Strikes were becoming increasingly common, nationalists and unionists clashed in Irish streets, and various ultra-conservative groups in the UK were advocating increasingly harsh measures against 'enemy agents'. Hankey tried his best to keep a lid on things, helped along, sort of, by the various radical left-wing groups in Parliament. The post-election reunification of Labour under an explicitly revolutionary platform, and the entry into Parliament of a group of Sinn Fein defectors unhappy with the party's conservatism and Collins' dictatorial style behind the scenes, frightened many moderate Liberals into voting with the government. Things were ticking along in a fairly stable manner until, in the spring of 1930, the American stock market bubble popped, and events spiralled out of control.

Hankey, even if he had survived, would not have been able to deal with the crisis. His conservative solution, predicated on tariff reform and business stimulation measures, had very little effect on the economy, short or long term. Increasing poverty radicalised many, and political violence started to become a regular occurrence not just in Ireland, but in mainland Britain, with National Defence Legionnaires, Socialist Protection Brigade members, and stranger groups such as the Kindred of the Soil clashing with the police and each other in city streets. Rumours of a general strike were omnipresent, causing Blakeney's group to threaten 'drastic action to maintain a regular flow of supplies'. It is unlikely that Hankey would have been able to douse the flames, even if an anarchist's bomb, thrown during a state visit to the Russian Republic, removed him from office terminally. Geddes, who as Home Secretary was viewed as having the most independent experience, carried on for a year before he went to the country for legitimacy, and received a rather nasty shock.

The government of Maxton was not as revolutionary as many feared it to be. Relying on for his support a small group of Gladstonian liberals, Maxton would have been unable to abolish capitalism by fiat, hang the King from a lamppost, grind every Irish Protestant into a fine paste, or any of the other charges laid at his feet by the press. However, what he could accomplish was still worryingly radical to many, and the reveal, in April of 1934, of plans to nationalise the coal industry without compensation was the last straw for many of his enemies. A month later, boots marched down Whitehall, in what the man on the wireless assured was not a coup, but merely a former PM taking charge, Cincinnatus-like, 'for the duration of the present crisis', with the backing of some business leaders, military leaders, and 'civic-minded patriots in the Opposition parties'. Many disagreed with this analysis of the situation, and were less than pleased by the new 'National Government'. Among them were those ministers who escaped from what would later be called the Battle of Downing Street. Thus began the period referred to as The British Disturbance.

The Disturbance was not exactly a civil conflict, but something more akin to a protracted occupation on the mainland and a constant guerrilla war in Ireland. The various street-fighting groups morphed gradually into paramilitary guerrillas, and fought a slow war of attrition against the National Government, with some radicals helped along the way with plausibly deniable aid from abroad. Captured guerrillas, along with prominent civil opponents of the National Government, were sent to the various 'work camps' in the Highlands, on Salisbury Plain, or in Snowdonia 'for the duration of the crisis'. The situation in Ireland, meanwhile, was rapidly becoming untenable for the National Government. After a year of defeats as the veterans of the 1915 Rising taught a new generation, Geddes was prepared to officially pull out. Blakeney, by now a major power within the government, then decided it was time for the National Defence Legion to put down another traitorous Prime Minister. The exact timeline of events following the Christmas Coup and the death of Geddes are still unclear, but by March of 1936, Hoare had formed a relatively moderate government, Kit Poole had to try and keep his 32 county Irish Republic together, and Field Marshal Fuller had gone rogue with most of the Defence Legion and a sizeable portion of the Army.

Some conservative historians have criticised Hoare's subsequent actions, but there was frankly no other option if he wanted to beat Fuller and his National Government, and frankly the deal worked out with the Democratic groups was relatively moderate--the King was retained, and much of the Empire besides India, even if the House of Lords became an elected senate. After two years of street-fighting and ambushes, Fuller surrendered at Portsmouth and Hoare ended the State of Emergency, in preparation for the first elections under universal manhood suffrage. Benn's Gladstonian movement, inheriting much of the Liberal vote share despite the existence of a nostalgic remnant Liberal party, managed to form the opposition. Hoare's rebranded Unionists (with a name intended to evoke democracy) had a decent showing, and a multitude of small parties managed to gain entrance to parliament in the general chaos. Despite all this, the outcome was never really in doubt. Labour was back, even if the UGCR-supporting Worker's Party was propping them up, and Shinwell was going to reshape Britain.

While the Shinwell government has many great achievements to its name--the British Healthcare Service, the New Towns, the state pension--the one most relevant to this discussion is the Foot Inquiry. Set up as a multipartisan commission by the government, and led officially by Progressive grandee Dingle Foot, the role of the commission was to investigate the deeds of the National Government, and who was implicated in them. When the report dropped, public outcry over the tales of brutality and slaughter revealed forced many resignations--the two main parties, descended from resistance groupings, got off relatively lightly, but the Constitutionalists were decimated, and the minor parties descended from the National Government's 'patriotic Opposition members' were all but wiped out. All was not well on the foreign front, however-- there was increasing concern over Shinwell's friendliness towards the Ratsrepublikens, and his tacit support of their actions in Switzerland. It was agreed after a heated five-hour meeting, in which Shinwell allegedly gave Bevin a black eye, that he would stand aside for a less pro-German candidate in the next election, on the condition that this successor would be a man who would continue the rest of his agenda.

The former Mayor of Poplar was selected from an array of Labour Senators as a compromise left-wing candidate, partly in the memory of his departed father. His first act was to call an immediate election, gambling that the Foot Inquiry would put his opponents on the back foot, so to speak. Presiding over the most left-wing Parliament in British history, with the only parties of the Right being the floundering Constitutionalists and the bizarre eco-nationalists in The Soil, still was not enough for a majority. The Co-operative League worked well with the new government, agreeing willingly to welfarist proposals provided they were tempered with increased worker ownership. Unfortunately, Aldred was intransigent on the one area Lansbury was selected to carry out change in--foreign policy. His firm pacifism clashed heavily with the new government's desire to contain Germany, and after two years of Aldred balking every time an attempt was made to increase the British defence budget, Lansbury held another election in an attempt to get rid of him. After the dust had settled, despite the impact of Britain's first female Leader of the Opposition and the resurgence of the Constitutionalists on a platform of 'property-owning democracy', Lansbury became the first Prime Minister to gain re-election since Asquith--ironically in the same election that his former party slipped out of Parliament for the last time.

--Extract from Lightning in the Brain: The Life and Career of Herbert Asquith, by Eric Bartlett​
 
The Greatest Honor History Can Bestow...
[Part 1 of an ongoing series]

Unknown Unknowns
[Part 2 of an ongoing series]

1981-1989: Donald Rumsfeld/Daniel J. Evans (Republican) [6]
'80 def. A. Noam Chomsky/Barbara Ehrenreich (New), Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr./James B. Hunt (Democratic)
'84 def. Joe Biden/Philip Burton (Democratic), A. Noam Chomsky/Ramsey Clark (New)

1989-1993: Lee Iacocca/James B. Longley (Independent) [7]
'88 def. Chuck Robb/Toney Anaya (Democratic), Jack Kemp/Frank D. White (Republican), John Sweeney/LaDonna Harris (New)
1993-1995: Booth Gardner •/Bob Kerrey (Democratic) [8]
'92 def. Nicky Rowe/Pat Saiki (Republican), Bernard Sanders/Hilda Mason (New)
1995-1996: Bob Kerrey/Vacant (Democratic) [9]
1996-1997: Bob Kerrey/Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (Democratic)
1997-: H. Ross Perot/Bill Schuette (Independent endorsed by Republican)
'96 def. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend/Robert Kerr III (Democratic), Christie Whitman/Ray Metcalfe (Republican Moderate)

[6] For eight years in power, Americans often seem to forget Donald Rumsfeld. He wasn't a figure of hate like Agnew or Schlesinger, he wasn't beloved like Iacocca or even Dole, he was just sort of there for eight years. The grey, boring, Midwestern Navy veteran and career politician came across more like an accountant than a politician, and his proclamations that there was no alternative to cutting taxes to stimulate the economy and cutting funding for welfare to fight inflation and get America back to work carried the ring of unavoidable truth rather than political statements, no matter what the economists said. And even though the 1980s saw some very significant events at home and across the world, none of it seemed to stick to Rumsfeld, for good or for ill.
"Donaldnomics" was the watchword of Rumsfeld's first term. Not social issues - even despite Phyllis Schlafly's campaigning, the Equal Rights Amendment was ratified with little comment from the White House, and one of Rumsfeld's Supreme Court nominees was the swing vote to invalidate anti-sodomy laws. Not foreign policy - after Vietnam, Greece, and Panama, most Americans wanted to leave the rest of the world well enough alone, and the administration was happy to oblige them on that, outside of "international market politics" like trade and the IMF. But the main priority of the administration was dealing with the recession.
Did Donaldnomics work? It's hard to say. The economic crisis of the late '70s was more or less over by 1984, but the recovery was more concentrated in some regions than others - many analysts have credited it more to the rise in oil prices as al-Ikhwan carried out a campaign against Saudi oilfields in their quest to topple the House of Saud and Iraq tried to consolidate authority after a messy palace coup by invading Iran, or to the Digital Revolution allowing companies like Electronic Data Systems, MITS, and Tesuji to create the Silicon Mountains of Colorado and New Mexico and the Silicon Plains of the I-35 corridor. Other analysts have pointed to Galbraith's inflation hawkery - destructive in the short term, but allowing the economy to regain its footing after he and his President were out of office. Still others have pointed to simple reversion to the mean.
But it's undeniable that the economy did, in fact, recover. By 1984, the United States was squarely in the middle of an economic boom, feeding off both similar booms in places like Michel Poniatowski's France, Edgardo Sogno's Italy, and third world trading partners like V. P. Singh's India and Widjojo Nitisastro's Indonesia, as well as the Latin American debt crisis. While regions of the country that did not share as much in the economic upturn, such as the deindustrializing Midwest and Northeast, turned out for Joe Biden in the 1984 elections, and Chomsky's second run for the Presidency won more states (though fewer votes, electoral or otherwise) than four years earlier, Rumsfeld still won a second term by a strong margin, though not the landslide of 1980.
His second term, though, did not go especially well for him or the country. The economy kept growing steadily in many regions, but the relaxation of trade began to create discontent amidst deindustrialization and the decline of labor unions. As radical AFSCME President Gerald McEntee led a coalition of about a dozen unions out of the increasingly establishment-friendly AFL-CIO, forming the United Labor Action Council, more independent actions began to proliferate - wildcat strikes on freight rail lines, protest trucks completely blocking off state capitols, family farmers raiding grain elevators and in one case even bombing a shipment of Argentine beef.
Immigration also became a flashpoint, with the establishment consensus shared by both Democratic leadership like Biden and the Rumsfeld administration - citizenship for "skilled" immigrants, temporary visas and benign neglect of violations for "unskilled" - facing criticism from both the left and the right. The left, embodied in people like Noam Chomsky and UFW President Philip Vera Cruz, criticized the consensus on the grounds that it allowed the victimization of workers in the United States and abroad. More conservative - or even quasi-left populist - voices criticized it for undercutting native-born Americans and fostering the sort of multiculturalism Schlesinger had warned about.
But by far the most significant event or policy of Rumsfeld's second term was the "East Asia Crisis". The name is a misnomer, as the crisis was made up of a number of essentially unrelated issues in places stretching from the Kuril Islands to the Indonesian island of Timor. The causes were myriad, but they stemmed mostly from a central tension - time was running out for the American-backed autocratic regimes that dotted the region, from Kim Jae-gyu's Republic of Korea to Wang Sheng's Taiwan to Toh Chin Chye's Singapore.
This manifested in a few ways - Singapore had frequent protests by leftist groups like the Singapore Radical Students' Union and Communist Party of Malaya, while Taiwan skirmished with the People's Republic of China over borders in the Strait. Indonesia and the Philippines dealt with separatists in Timor and primarily-Moro areas of Mindanao, while the Marcos regime also dealt with student and labor oppositions, assassinating opposition leader Jovito Salonga on American soil in 1985. Japan engaged in a settlement program of its disputed territories, and Prime Minister Koichi Tsukamoto began to openly talk about revising Article 9 and expressing skepticism about Japanese war crimes, backed by a wide variety of conservative shinshūkyō.
But the most significant place, to American eyes at least, was Korea. The long-standing authoritarian regime there, led by former KCIA head Kim Jae-gyu after a 1981 coup d'etat, was facing increasing dissent - both from below, particularly in the form of student protest movements that occasionally boiled over into mass movements like the Gwangju Uprising, and from within the regime as figures within the government and security services jockeyed for power and influence. The bête noire of the regime was North Korea, which was facing its own difficulties - increasing economic issues had sparked a coup against longtime leader Kim Il-sung by Minister of Armed Forces O Jin-u, and the instability of the O regime had led to increased uncertainty, as well as attempts to make the South and its American allies a unifying force by making it seem like a clear and present danger. For the South Korean part, its military intelligence served a similar role - inflated reports on the threat from the North were to the advantage of the intelligence services within the military, the military within the government, and the government within the nation. Something was going to give at some point.
The opportunity came with the state funeral for Ismail of Johor, the 90-year-old Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia. As Kim and a number of other top officials, as well as American ambassador William Clark, taxied toward Subang International Airport, a (suspected) North Korean agent shot a grenade toward the airplane. Kim lost an eye but survived, but Clark and a number of high officials did not. South Korea responded by aggressively patrolling the Northern Limit Line, sinking a North Korean ship that came too close within a week. The Second Korean War began in fits and starts throughout June 1986, and the United States officially joined a month later.
American involvement in KWII, as those fond of acronyms called it, was not very extensive. South Korea was not South Vietnam - its military was basically competent, and American involvement was mostly limited to advisory roles, naval patrols, and high-altitude bombing. Still, with the midterms so close, the administration pursued and received a declaration of war against the unpopular North Korea.
That came back to bite him. Sure, the Republicans won the midterms - between them and Senator Ross Perot, a pro-tech and anti-free-trade independent who caucused with them, they had control of both houses of Congress. But as South Korean troops inched toward Pyongyang, it became clear that the war was going to be something of a quagmire. Worse, news filtered back of the atrocities committed by U.S. allies - South Korea's suppression of home-front dissent in the Chungnam massacre, the assassination of Hsu Hsin-liang and crowds of his supporters at Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, Singapore's secret prison on Pulau Blakang Mati - and American complicity.
In the end, the Istanbul Accords - providing a framework to bring about a unified, democratic, Korea, albeit not a vision that quite came to fruition in the thirty years since they were signed - were a major part of the Rumsfeld legacy. But even as Secretary of State Kirkpatrick became Time's Woman of the Year, Rumsfeld's chosen successor in New York Senator Jack Kemp was fighting two very strong challengers, both Texan.
Nicky Rowe, the incumbent Governor of Texas, had seen American policy in East Asia up close over the span of two decades, from being a prisoner of war in Vietnam to being shot at in the Philippines. A Cold Warrior comfortable with the notion of American Empire, he nonetheless saw the Rumpatrick Doctrine as a breaking of promises to defend and foster democracy and human rights - else, what were our servicemen fighting for?
Senator Perot had a different criticism. The Rumsfeld administration had pursued free trade treaties across the world - with Canada and, after the breakup of the European Economic Community, constituent countries such as France and successor organizations such as the Nordic Council. This was controversial, particularly in deindustrializing areas of the Midwest and Northeast.
Conventional wisdom tells us that either one of them would have won if the other one hadn't run, but they cannibalized each others' votes and allowed Jack Kemp to lock the nomination up by a whisker.

[7] But it was not Chuck Robb, the Democratic candidate, who reaped the Republicans' misfortune. The former Virginia Governor, son-in-law of Lyndon Johnson, and Vietnam War veteran did well in the election - despite a hearty challenge by civil rights hero and former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young which faltered over foreign policy, Robb cruised to the Democratic nomination, but was undone by allegations of infidelity and cocaine use.
John Sweeney, the New Party candidate, looked like he had a chance for a brief moment. The SEIU president and McEntee ally had ideas on internationalist foreign policy, labor rights, and a generally progressive, even democratic-socialist, policy opposed to the centrist "New Current" of the Democratic Party. But the New Party had problems of its own, ranging from tensions over race and immigration to attempts at entryism by Transcendentalists like Mike Tompkins. The Sweeney campaign was the high-water mark of the party, but it only won three states in the end.
No, the victor, like George Washington before him, was tied to no political party, at least not openly. Lee Iacocca took an unusual path to the Presidency - the son of Italian immigrants, he rose through the ranks at Ford from an entry-level engineer to management before moving laterally to Chrysler and saving it from the hole it was in in the late '70s. A public figure and celebrity, someone who had started from modest means and made his way to the top of American business, Iacocca was widely viewed as a natural future President.
The only problem was, he didn't really want to be. Comfortable in his business, he kept his politics generic and to himself. He came out of his shell during the Gavin-Iacocca Commission, where he co-chaired a federal commission on modernizing American industrial policy - the report that commission wrote was an unexpected bestseller in 1981, all stark prose and calmly authoritative criticism and clear suggestions. And then the Rumsfeld administration ignored it, seemed to take special glee in tearing it up with its free trade treaties and its movements to break the back of labor unions at home and abroad, even as Solidarity stood in front of Red Army tanks in Gdansk and Warsaw.
When he was approached in 1987, he was non-committal. With so many crises across the globe, it didn't seem like the right time for a novice. The mooted candidacies of Morton Downey, Jr., the arch-conservative television host who seemed, at least for a time, to be the kind of madman with enough of a chance to be plausibly dangerous, and Larry McDonald, the Bircher congressman who had held a seat in Northwest Georgia as an independent for several terms, changed that. Iacocca came to the conclusion that, if there was a demand for an outsider independent, he might as well harness it and keep it out of the hands of the truly dangerous.
He set a trickle of news to keep people interested and quietly build the infrastructure for a run before jumping in in early 1988. He immediately took a lead and never really looked back, winning in November on an unusual coalition of the booming Mountain West and the deindustrializing Rust Belt, plus Florida. The lame duck period was harder than that of most administrations - he had no party machinery, no bench of people to draw on for appointed positions - but he made do.
In office, his record was substantial. On foreign policy, he was perhaps the only President with the credibility and perception to pursue "strategic withdrawal" in East Asia without being accused of weakness, bringing about talks between the Koreas, as well as between the People's Republic of Singapore and its government-in-exile in Sydney. Japan was a harder problem, but the general tensions in the region, as well as the populist rhetoric of the Tsukamoto government in specific, had led to an economic slowdown anyway - an internal party coup removed Tsukamoto, and Iacocca threw new Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi a bone by shuttering the American bases on Okinawa. There was, of course, China, but since its chaotic 1970s the country had mostly turned inward, except for the negotiations regarding Hong Kong and some saber-rattling over Taiwan and Indian borders in the Himalayas.
But as the American presence waned in East Asia, it waxed in the Middle East. After the Yom Kippur War and Agnew's decision to provide only token aid (putting paid to American justifications for the occupation of Greece in the process), Israel had come to the conclusion that American assistance could not be counted upon even in case of grave danger. Rumsfeld's assistance in the Balata Uprising and subsequent war in Lebanon went some way to countering that, but the election of Likud hardliner Yitzhak Shamir with the support of far-right leader Meir Kahane brought about renewed concerns of Israel becoming a rogue state, a prospect more frightening due to Israel's unofficially-announced possession of nuclear weapons.
To the south, Saudi Arabia's war against al-Ikhwan was winding down, but the group had merely changed their tactics. Instead of striking at oil refineries or the Saud family itself, it turned to blackmail and extortion to try to accomplish political goals on the Peninsula, while sending aid to forces fighting elsewhere - for example, Palestine, or New Basmachi rebels against the Soviets in Central Asia, or rebels against the new Iranian puppet government in Iraq, or irregulars in Kashmir and Sri Lanka fighting the Indian occupations. In 1989, partly as a test of American resolve, al-Ikhwan carried out something the United States couldn't ignore - while on a routine refueling stop in Mumbai, the USS Kinkaid was attacked by suicide bombers, nearly sinking the ship.
The Middle East conflict was a major issue of the Iacocca presidency. Colin Powell, Secretary of the Army during the Second Korean War and the new Secretary of Defense, sought to pursue a multilateralist strategy, aided by Sultan Qaboos of Oman, Prime Minister Peter Shore of the United Kingdom, and Prime Minister Indrajit Gupta, India's first leader from a left-of-center party. He also saw assistance from more unexpected directions - the Soviet Union especially, as the reformist Aitmatov Clique sought an end to the Cold War - and, perhaps more pressingly, to their own domestic unrest in Central Asia. The newly elected General Secretary Eduard Shevardnadze and the new ceremonial President, author Chinghiz Aitmatov, sought greater liberalization, democracy, and decentralization at home, as well as peace abroad - counterintuitively, they pursued that aim by coordinating with American actions in the Middle East. The talks between Secretary of State (and former President) Melvin Laird and Shevardnadze in Gothenburg, Sweden, became known to future pop-historians as "the day the Cold War ended".
"Victory" in the Cold War would be the greatest legacy of the Iacocca presidency. But domestic affairs would also be a concern. Iacocca's industrial policy was an odd duck - it seemed to have something for everyone, creating the Industrial Labor Relation Boards which increased union power by binding entire industries to commitments made through collective bargaining but which also prevented unions from playing employers against one another and more thoroughly banned wildcat strikes.
Economically, he worked with Federal Reserve Chair Martin Feldstein to prevent the economy from overheating and reduce geographic inequality. Skeptical of deficits and encouraged in that skepticism by Feldstein, Iacocca cut spending significantly, both on the military and (to a lesser extent) on domestic welfare. He also modestly raised taxes - particularly on extracting finite resources like aquifers, and especially on the oil industry. One inadvertent effect of those policies was to split the environmental movement - the administration supported reducing auto emissions, factory pollution, and overall oil production, but its public works projects ticked off conservationists by flooding valleys with dams, cutting highways and airports through wilderness, and encouraging sprawl.
Immigration was another major issue of the Iacocca presidency, especially as refugees and economic migrants left trouble spots across the world, from post-Kaepang North Korea to divided Sri Lanka to Lebanon. In what is perhaps the darkest mark on Iacocca's record, he punted on the issue, refusing to decisively address it or meaningfully break from - or, for that matter, shore up - the 1980s consensus.
Perhaps he would have in his second term. But after a single term, Iacocca was less concerned about the fate of America under the leadership of others than he had been in 1988. In early 1992 - before the Iowa Caucuses, but well after the foreshortened fields of candidates in both parties had developed, with heavy hitters in both parties refusing to run against a wildly popular President - President Iacocca declared that he would not seek, nor would he accept, a second term.

[8] House Minority Leader Al Gore. Senator Michael Dukakis. Governor Kathleen Brown. Even former nominees Joe Biden and Chuck Robb, plus wild efforts to bring in former President Schlesinger and former Vice President Carter, or to tempt the incumbent VP James B. Longley back into the Democratic fold. All of these people were subject to concerted efforts to bring them into the race, and not a single one did.
Instead, the Democratic National Convention in Detroit, Michigan saw Senator Booth Gardner win the nomination, very nearly by acclamation. It was an odd journey for Gardner - heir to a timber fortune, the Senator had served as Governor in the late '70s and early '80s, first coming to the attention of national Democrats by winning re-election in the wave year of 1980. Those observers soon saw his tenure in the Governorship, in which he established a state health insurance program, protected and enforced the protection of hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness, and created the first state-level ordinance prohibiting discrimination against gay and lesbian employees, leading to his gaining a reputation as the most progressive Governor in the United States.
Elected to the Senate to succeed the retiring Warren Magnuson two years after leaving the Governorship, Gardner continued his progressive record, becoming known for a 16-hour filibuster against a bill that would have dramatically increased the scope of domestic surveillance programs and for shepherding the Collective Bargaining Reform Act through the Senate over the Democrats' "New Current" leadership and the objections of conservative Republicans. He did all this - and rocketed to the Democratic nomination over idiosyncratic longtime gadfly Mike Gravel and calm, centrist, pathbreaking Pennsylvania Governor William Gray - with a voice compared to "Elmer Fudd on helium" and a personal manner that even his closest allies called unusual.
And then he won. His opponent, Nikki Rowe, was a formidable competitor, but bad blood within the Republican party and concerns over his undistinguished record in Texas hurt his campaign in a way that all the trumpeting of his military experience in the world couldn't correct for. And Gardner's progressive credentials peeled off relatively moderate New Party members, leaving Senator Bernie Sanders to win only his home state and openly propose a merger of the two parties - meanwhile, Senator Paul Wellstone, elected two years earlier, joined the Democratic caucus soon after the election.
The Gardner presidency has been polarizing to Americans from the start, a factor that to some extent is irrespective of political affiliation. For good or for ill, he certainly accomplished a lot in his single term. Foreign affairs was a major preoccupation of his administration. He turned Iacocca's desultory attempts at negotiating German reunification into standing roundtable talks, although those took a while to come to fruition. With the aid of UN Secretary-General Raul Manglapus, himself a symbol of democratization in the Philippines, he helped bring an end to civil wars in Nigeria and Nepal, and negotiate many other wars from even beginning. In Latin America, he is known and respected for promoting a "New Good Neighbor Policy", and particularly for taking steps to normalize relations with Cuba, albeit unsuccessfully, and pressing the Mexican government into recognizing the democratic election of Luis Álvarez, PAN candidate, over the PRI establishment. In East Asia, intersecting streets in the Xiamen International Peace City are named for Gardner and Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, who helped bring about peace and mutual recognition between Taiwan and mainland China - Holbrooke and then-Presidents Li Peng of China and Lin Yi-hsiung of Taiwan won the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize for that accomplishment.
He looms large in domestic policy as well. While his dreams of a comprehensive bill protecting the rights of romantic and sexual minorities foundered on the rocks of the fact that not even most Democrats supported the idea, he did end discrimination against HPTA individuals in civilian government posts and expand hate crime laws to protect them. Education reform was another major focus of his Presidency - he worked with Congress to overhaul primary and secondary school funding in America, establish nationally standardized exams to measure progress, and improve and expand postsecondary education, especially for smaller and more urban schools. While the Comprehensive Education Quality and Access Reform Act has had its critics, especially for its focus on standardized testing, it remains a major part of the educational ecosystem.
But his largest achievement on the domestic front was the Health Security Act, known to most Americans as GardnerCare. Imposing price controls on health insurance and an employer mandate to provide it, as well as funding state-level health providers and providing certain grants to access healthcare, particularly long-term care, the HSA was a truly radical shift, one Gardner (and his newly-minted Secretary of Healthcare Martha Griffiths) fought tooth-and-nail for in Congress, only narrowly passing by scuttling a planned public option. Like CEQARA, the HSA has come under criticism both for how far it went and how much further it, perhaps, could have gone. But universal healthcare, albeit neither complete in what it covers nor publicly administered, was still a massive achievement.
In the 1994 midterm elections, the House of Representatives flipped to the Republican Party for the first time in more than four decades. Gardner took the opportunity to turn his attention to something supported by both himself and Republican leaders like former Presidential nominee Jack Kemp. Throughout the Cold War the American line had been that if the Soviets opened up to capitalism, the West would welcome them with open arms. Shevardnadze now sought to test that, attempting to bring about free trade between the United States, the Soviet Union, and if possible other nations. It has since been argued that the proposal was wholly or in part insincere, a ploy to make the Americans seem untrustworthy and bolster the credibility of the Soviet government. But if it were a ploy, it was a ploy that worked.
Gardner backed it from the get-go, but didn't count on the depths of public opposition to it. It came from many corners - visceral anti-communists who saw any proposal by the Kremlin as inherently suspect and the treaty as a possible Trojan Horse for price-dumping, protectionists worried about the implications for American jobs, and people concerned about giving up American supremacy and shoring up the Soviet government among them. Overnight, Ross Perot became one of the best-known and best-regarded politicians in the United States. And as Shevardnadze effigies and Gardner dartboards spread across America's streets and living rooms, the President fought even harder for the agreement, holding summit after summit, broadcasting PSAs to the American people, and pressing harder for some sort of treaty rather than a mere executive agreement.
Like Wilson before him, what happened in that effort made the state of the President's health a major issue. Throughout his Presidency, Booth Gardner was known for some odd physical movements in public appearances, but most people chalked that up to his general idiosyncracies. It was only a few people who noticed, at first, how he tended to keep his hands stilled on desks and tables, how when he didn't, they sometimes trembled and made odd circular motions with the fingers and thumbs. It wasn't common, after all. Just something he did a few times on the campaign trail, and a bit more in the presidency.
His family and closest colleagues urged him to go to the Physician to the President about it, but there was always so much to do. Too many bills that needed to be passed, too many fires that needed to be put out. In retrospect, Gardner said in interviews, this was denial, trying to avoid the problem. What we do know is that he was diagnosed with Parkinson's syndrome sometime in early 1995.
He did consider resigning, even drawing up the paperwork for it, but he came to decide that he could stick it out for a bit longer. Executive dysfunction was a common symptom, but not one he had experienced, on or off medication, and the physical symptoms he could deal with - had been dealing with, without even knowing it, for years. Besides, there was too much to do - the Arctic Trade Zone Agreement, ending the Cold War, all the domestic policy reforms there were. It wouldn't be fair to put that on Kerrey, and he suspected that, perhaps, the more hawkish Kerrey would be received worse than he was.
Only a few people knew for sure. Kerrey, his family, the Vice President and a few key members of the Cabinet and Congress, some top White House staff. And then there were the conspiracy theorists - some people who saw in Gardner the same symptoms they had seen in their own relatives, others conservatives looking for something, anything, that would end the Gardner experiment. This got all the way to the ears of the press, who asked a few pointed questions of the White House, but they managed to be just non-committal enough to stay within the bounds of truth, if not honesty.
But on the campaign trail it was getting too much to bear. As Gardner shuffled to the lectern in Georgetown, as he slurred in interviews with his face like a mask, as his hands shook and he occasionally stopped, feet rooted to the ground, frozen like a deer in headlights, he came to the conclusion that he simply couldn't go on.
He did not give a televised resignation address, suspecting that were he to do so the emotion of the moment would get to him. In his written address, he spoke of having Parkinson's, of wanting to spend the remaining years of his life with his family. Of having let down the American people by waiting so long to get checked out and to resign. But also of his hope that the new President Kerrey would work to build peace and prosperity abroad and at home.

[9] Bob Kerrey was a lame duck virtually on the day of his inauguration, and probably would have been even if he had run for a second term. A two-term former governor of Nebraska, he had been a dark-horse choice for the Vice Presidency, and with a young and apparently healthy President it seemed unlikely that he would rise any farther than that. And then the President turned out to have MS.
His Presidency did not become much more auspicious after its beginning. At least Kerrey was spared being questioned by Congress for his role in the "cover-up" - Speaker Lawrence Hogan Jr., son of the Larry Hogan who had helped undermine the Agnew presidency in the '70s, stonewalled such attempts by the more cussed members of his caucus. But he couldn't keep the dream of Gardner's New World Order alive.
The first sign of trouble was in Vietnam. Postwar reunification had been, in the terse words of President Rumsfeld, "a bitch", with tensions between the North and South still remaining a major factor in Vietnamese politics. President Gardner had attempted to reach out to Vietnam - crucially, not only to the then-ruling Nationalist Democratic Party (in Vietnamese, Quốc Dân Chủ Đảng) of the South, but also to the Socialist Party of the North. The elevation of Kerrey to the Presidency upset those delicate efforts due to the simple fact of Kerrey being who he was, a Vietnam War veteran hailed as a hero in the United States and considered a war criminal by the North. Even many members of the QDCĐ opposed him, and when Lê Đức Anh, the hardline Communist Shadow Minister of Defense, was elected Prime Minister, it was with the support of schismatic QDCĐ members.
On the other end of the post-Communist world, Yugoslavia was in crisis. Tito had died ten years previously, and his successors Džemal Bijedić, Branko Horvat, and Janez Drnovšek had proven much less able to hold the nation together. Before his resignation, Gardner had worked to put together roundtable talks to avoid war, but those talks broke down, despite holdover Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke's better efforts. Holbrooke's resignation in protest over Kerrey's "apparent disinterest" in continuing the Gardner doctrine severely weakened Kerrey's position.
At home, things were not much better. The economy, which had boomed under Iacocca and Gardner, was beginning to plateau - partly due to the chaotic and unexpected end of the Gardner presidency undermining investor confidence, and partly due to a sort of "death by a thousand cuts" in the words of Paul Krugman, as disparate industries such as air travel, energy, and finance came to their own crises. While the economy had not quite reached a recession, and indeed, according to many economists, was merely growing at its long-term average rate after a period of unusual expansion, the "Kerrey Shock" was an unwelcome development for many Americans, including the President.
The dramatic proving-right of conspiracy theorists also its own effects - anti-establishment figures like Jack Gargan and Larry McDonald, who had promoted conspiracy theories in the past, gained a public following and more power in the House. Perhaps more troublingly, other, more radical, conspiracy theories arose, propagated on the growing Hypernet. A supporter of The Great Awakening, a far-right conspiracy accusing the Kennedy family (including former Governor of Maryland and newly-appointed Vice President Kathleen Kennedy Townsend) of running world politics behind the scenes to maintain their international sex-slave-trafficking ring, assassinated John F. Kennedy Jr. in Manhattan, while supporters of another theory attempted to storm the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco, succeeding in firebombing the parking garage.
Perhaps the greatest anti-establishment figure in the United States was Ross Perot. By now a three-term independent Senator from Texas, he had planned to retire back when it looked like Gardner would serve two terms as President, leaving his seat open in 1996. But the ignominious end of the Gardner presidency and the shambolic nature of the Kerrey era changed his mind somewhat. He elected to run for President - both as an independent effort and by running in the 1996 Republican primaries.
Somewhat surprisingly, it worked. Perot swept the first tranche of primaries, helped by his better-organized outside effort and oodles of Silicon Plains cash. By the time the Convention came around, Perot was able to dictate terms to the Republican Party, helped by a convention walkout over proposed pro-tariff planks and some of Perot's supporters' ties to conspiritarians and militia groups. Christie Whitman's new Republican Moderate ticket arose out of that walkout, but the end result led to the Republican Party backing Perot to the hilt, with a few fig-leaves such as the nomination of Michigan Governor Bill Schuette as Perot's running mate.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the chosen successor of still-respected former President Gardner in the absence of Kerrey's run, was the first woman to win the nomination of a major political party, and shared the honor of being the first woman to win a state with Whitman (who won in Alaska and Delaware). But she did not become the first female President, despite a number of polls early in the election suggesting she might be able to pull it off, despite the first results on Election Night suggesting a close race, as northeastern states turned out for Townsend in full force. But the Midwest was good for Perot, and the South very good for him. It was clear well before midnight that Perot would be the next President of the United States.
On January 6, 1997, a mere two weeks before the inauguration, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by nearly a quarter of its value. A few hours later, the panic spread to markets in Australia and East Asia, and from there west with the sunrise. The "Perot Panic" had begun.
 
While the Shinwell government has many great achievements to its name--the British Healthcare Service, the New Towns, the state pension--the one most relevant to this discussion is the Foot Inquiry. Set up as a multipartisan commission by the government, and led officially by Progressive grandee Dingle Foot, the role of the commission was to investigate the deeds of the National Government, and who was implicated in them. When the report dropped, public outcry over the tales of brutality and slaughter revealed forced many resignations--the two main parties, descended from resistance groupings, got off relatively lightly, but the Constitutionalists were decimated, and the minor parties descended from the National Government's 'patriotic Opposition members' were all but wiped out. All was not well on the foreign front, however-- there was increasing concern over Shinwell's friendliness towards the Ratsrepublikens, and his tacit support of their actions in Switzerland. It was agreed after a heated five-hour meeting, in which Shinwell allegedly gave Bevin a black eye, that he would stand aside for a less pro-German candidate in the next election, on the condition that this successor would be a man who would continue the rest of his agenda.
I think putting Shinwill and Bevin in a room together was bad idea to begin with; Shinwill with the hot head and ability to expertly slap/punch people, Bevin with his alleged anti-semitism and ability to annoy people (not as bad as Morrison though). It was bound to end with Bevin being decked.

Also I'm guessing Attlee, Morrison and co were sent to work camps, it seems likely that would happen. Nice little list there, shame about Maxton, I bet his ghost haunts Downing Street complaining that the Labour Government isn't left wing enough.
 
Also I'm guessing Attlee, Morrison and co were sent to work camps, it seems likely that would happen.

Atlee himself is the subject of a lot of war movies for leading a mass escape from Camp 17 in the Highlands, and has since gained an important position in the Secret Service. As a junior minister, Morrison managed to escape the Battle of Downing Street alive, was arrested a month later, freed a year later, and is currently on the verge of retirement as Minister for Public Works in the Lansbury Cabinet.
 
1977-1981: Gerald Ford / Howard Baker (Republican)
1976: Hubert Humphrey / Terry Sanford (Democratic), Eugene McCarthy / Various (Independent)
1981-1989: Jerry Brown / William Proxmire (Democratic)
1980: Howard Baker / Jack Kemp (Republican), Larry McDonald / John K. Singlaub (Independent)
1984: Jack Kemp / Anne Armstrong (Republican)

1989-1993: Larry McDonald / Jack Lousma (Republican)
1988: Birch Bayh / Toby Moffett (Democratic) , Charles Mathias / Paul Tsongas (Liberal)
1993-: Geraldine Ferraro / Sam Nunn (Democratic)
1992: Larry McDonald / Oliver North (Republican)

“...Tomorrow is the state funeral of former President Ferraro, the first female President of the United States. All this week we've be talking to women in politics about what the Ferraro Presidency meant for women, the world and themselves. With me in the studio today we have commentator and former editor of the Washington Post Janet Cooke, Counsellor to the President Neera Tanden, and former Supreme Court Justice Carla Hills."

Good evening to you all."
 
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A Ship of Fools

2017-2021: Joe Biden / Elizabeth Warren (Democratic)
2016 def. Donald J. Trump / Joni Ernst (Republican)
2021-2029: Tucker Carlson / Joe Walsh (Republican)
2020 def. Joe Biden / Elizabeth Warren (Democratic)
2024 def. Kamala Harris / Seth Moulton (Democratic), Mark Ruffalo / Zephyr Teachout (Independent)

2029-0000: Nicole Galloway / Cory Booker (Democratic)
2028 def. Joe Walsh / Josh Hawley (Republican), Mark Ruffalo / Letitia James (People's)

ITTL Biden runs in 2016 and comes out on top in a struggle with Hillary, narrowly defeating a surprisingly strong Trump in November's election. Unfortunately Biden turns out to be as gaffe prone in office as on the campaign trail, and as the President seems increasingly "tired and confused" the economy begins to slip into a recession. Biden prevaricates throughout his term on serious reform, and Vice President Warren publicly criticises some of the administration's more "business friendly" policies as the Democrats slip further in the polls. Without a Democratic congress Biden achieves very little and, seeming betrayed by the Democrats once again, the white working class flee en masse to support the candidacy of populist GOP pundit Tucker Carlson who manages to take up the Trumpist banner to defeat Joni Ernst, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Nikki Haley, Rick Scott and almost every other Republican officeholder in a second nightmare primary.

Mark Ruffalo's quixotic independent campaign against the "capitulation of liberal Democrats to the right, to a neoliberal economic system, and to complacency in the face of the climate emergency" keeps the left divided and the Tucker train on track through 2024 and a popular vote loss: in those eight long years Carlson reshapes American politics. The long-promised Democratic myth of a great demographic change ushers in a new party system as Missouri Governor Nicole Galloway sweeps to victory on the back of middle class white Americans in the North and on the West Coast, African Americans in Georgia and South Carolina, and Hispanics in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The New GOP's domination of the Rust Belt and a surprise win in New Hampshire are the coup de grace of the Tucker Carlson project, but in an election characterised by an energised Democratic Party (at least at the Presidential level) this counts for little, even as the Republicans keep the Senate and House.

The America of the 2030s is now truly one of two nations. The nation of the "heartland" and that of the "melting pot": the traditional white working class allied with the financial backers of the GOP against the new captains of the tech industry allied with ethnic minorities. Despite the attempts of former Vice Presidential candidate Seth Moulton to take the Democratic nomination on a platform of appealing to the "Trumpist" core the Democrats and the Republicans are drifting further and further apart, completing the same realignment to a system characterised by an ultranationalist right wing populist party against a party of the liberal elite as seen in France and Britain. The 2032 election is set to be extremely competitive, and presumptive Republican nominee, Arkansas Senator Leslie Rutledge, is no doubt hoping that Mark Ruffalo will launch a third bid for the Presidency, or endorse someone else to do so in his place. Indeed, the Galloway administration has been widely criticised for what has been dubbed "pandering" to Senator Gabbard in order to prevent her from running.

As Americans gear up for yet another clash between two increasingly different and hostile peoples within one country, many look back fondly to the quaint days of Obama and Biden of great and principled Republican and Democratic statesmen and women like Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton.
 
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland
1955-1957: Anthony Eden (Conservative)

1955: (Majority) def. Hugh Gaitskell (Labour), Jo Grimond (Liberal)
1957-1959: Bernard Montgomery, Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (Independent, then 'National' Conservative)
1958: (Majority) def. Hugh Gaitskell (Labour), Harold Macmillan ('Democratic' Conservative), Jo Grimond (Liberal)
1959-1965: Frederick Bennett (National Conservative)
Feb. 1963: (Minority) def. George Brown (Labour), Harold Macmillan (New Democratic Alliance - Democratic, Liberal)
May 1963: (Majority) def. George Brown* (Labour), Harold Macmillan (New Democratic Alliance - Democratic, Liberal)

1965-1968: George K. Young (National Conservative)
1968-1972: Patrick Gordon Walker (Labour)

1968: (Coalition with New Democrats) def. George K. Young (National Conservative), Anthony Greenwood ('Independent' Labour), Henry Brooke (New Democratic)
1972-1976: Peter Howard (National Conservative)
1972: (Majority) def. Henry Brooke (New Democratic), Anthony Greenwood (Independent Labour), Patrick Gordon Walker* (Labour)
1976-1981: Jeremy Thorpe (New Democratic)
1976: (Coalition with Social Democrats) def. Peter Howard (National Conservative), Bob Edwards (Independent Labour), Roy Jenkins (Social Democratic)
1981-1983: William McKelvey (Independent Labour)
1981: (Majority) def. Jeremy Thorpe (New Democratic), Margaret Thatcher (National Conservative), Colin Mitchell (National League), Roy Jenkins (Social Democratic)
1983-1986: Jeremy Thorpe (New Democratic)
1983: (Coalition with Social Democrats) def. William McKelvey (Independent Labour), Margaret Thatcher (National Conservative), Alan Clark (National League), Bill Rogers (Social Democratic)
1986-1993: Anthony Meyer (New Democratic)
1986: (Coalition with Social Democrats) def. William McKelvey (Independent Labour), Geoffrey Howe (National Conservative), Alan Clark (National League), Bill Rogers (Social Democratic)
1990: (Coalition with Social Democrats) def. John Moore (National Conservative), John Prescott (Independent Labour), Alan Clark (National League), Bill Rogers (Social Democratic)

1993-1994: Gillian Shephard (New Democratic-led coalition with Social Democrats)
1994-2002: John Moore (National Conservative)

1994: (Majority) def. Gillian Shephard (New Democratic), Michael Meacher (Independent Labour), Richard Body (National League)
1999: (Majority) def. Chris Patten (New Democratic), Michael Meacher (Independent Labour), Peter Hain (Social Democratic), Richard Body (National League)

2002-2011: Ann Widdecombe (National Conservative)
2003: (Majority) def. Chris Patten (New Democratic), Tony Banks (Independent Labour), Peter Hain (Social Democratic), Jeffrey Titford (National League)
2007: (Coalition with National League) def. David Willetts (New Democratic), Clare Short (Independent Labour), Peter Hain (Social Democratic),
Jeffrey Titford (National League)
2011-2014: David Willetts (New Democratic)

2011: (Coalition with Social Democrats) def. Ann Widdecombe (National Conservative), Clare Short (Independent Labour), Mark Oaten (Social Democratic), William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth (National League)
2014-2016: Jeremy Browne (New Democratic-led coalition with Social Democrats)
2016-Incumbent: George Galloway (Independent Labour)

2016: (Majority) def. Jeremy Browne (New Democratic), Gareth Bennett (National League), Robert Goodwill (National Conservative), Nicola Sturgeon (Social Democratic)

Suez was a turning point for British post-war politics. Whilst the intervention had initially proven popular, that support soon disappeared; guerrilla warfare was not something the British Army had trained to combat itself against and the ships returning home with the dead & maimed bodies of servicemen soon turned the tide for the British populace. Still committed to the righteousness of his cause, but facing opposition from all sides, including parts of his own cabinet, and health scares, Eden resigned as PM. However, rather than advise Her Majesty to send for his Chancellor and prospective successor Harold Macmillan, the outgoing prime minister instead advised to invite a man who could turn defeat into victory; the hero of El Alamein, Bernard Montgomery. Nominally outside of party politics and leading from the House of Lords no less, ‘Monty’ proved to be as decisive and divisive a national leader as he had a wartime commander. Suez was ultimately a gamble too far; more money was lost into the desert warfare, despite aid from their French and Israeli allies and after a year & a half, the intervention was deemed a ‘success’ by much of the press media when Nasser was toppled in a coalition-supported coup.

Returning to the polls, the Conservatives were divided over Suez and the increasingly rightward direction the government had undergone under Monty. Whilst it seemed that Labour could snatch a win, it too was facing its own battle for the ideological soul as the social democratic Gaitskellites duelled against the democratic socialist Bevanites. In the end, more Tories favoured the devil they knew in Monty than the maverick Macmillan. Although he would retire from office in little under a year after the 1957 general election, Bernard Montgomery has reinforced the strongly social conservative views he held upon the government and the country at-large. For almost ten years afterwards, the UK found itself under a deeply racist and insular government that would strongly crackdown on crime, social deviancy, whilst maintaining strong traditions of military & national pride. National Conservatism seemed to stay however the economy slowly began to falter; George Kennedy Young’s attempts to revitalise the economy by relaxing the strong statist system in place proved costly as unemployment skyrocketed. Rumours of a planned coup should Tony Greenwood’s Independent Labour Party take office were put to bed when a hung parliament would force the two remnants of the pre-Suez consensus to form a government together.

Patrick Gordon Walker would be the last Labour UK Prime Minister; the four-year Labour-NDP government would see a change in attitude to the white-minority regimes that had previously been supported by Westminster and increased social spending after years of cuts under the National Conservatives. Ultimately, it would not last; trade union reform was met with hostility from the TUC leadership and a series of strike would bring the economy from growth towards recession. The Nat Cons were back in power under Peter Howard, but with a different take than they previously had. Howard sought to bring a strong Christian message to his government in a move away from the nationalist paternalism of Monty, Bennett, and Young. Social spending was once again facing cuts, but tax incentives were now offered to businesses and companies to support their employees. Howard even sought to bring cooperation between the unions and businesses; his attempts at workplace democracy nearly succeeded only to be killed off thanks to a backbench rebellion that saw the attempt scrapped. With the unions reigniting their war against an uncooperative government, Howard fell as Walker had before him.

Jeremy Thorpe would come to symbolise the late 1970s and early 1980s to many; a time of social liberalism and economic reform for Great Britain. The Trade Union Reform Act would penalise smaller unions against striking, though benefit larger unions who could afford the industrial tribunal costs. The Race Relations Act 1977 and the Sexual Offences Act 1978 would respectively see the end of legal discrimination against non-white citizens and the decriminalisation of homosexuality. A cultural revolution may have been sweeping the country, but it was carefully guided by businesses and their allies in both the NDP and SDP. Whilst many were enjoying the social liberation, it was not reflected in the economy which still favoured the high-earners rather than those at the bottom. A series of financial scandals involving government officials would rock the political establishment and risk bringing the government down entirely. Whilst it would cost government ministers and even cabinet ministers, including the President of the Board of Trade, their jobs, the government stood until the end of its tenure. That frustration would be realised though. In a shock result, the left-wing Independent Labour Party managed to win the 1981 election with a working majority of six.

McKelvey and the ILP had one of the most radical election manifestos in modern British history; a major redistribution of wealth from the top to the bottom, an overhaul of the NHS and welfare state, denuclearisation, renegotiations over Britain’s place in NATO – all concern for the established order of politics. Of course, none of this would come to be. Within a year, McKelvey’s majority was lost thanks to terminal illness, fatal accidents, and resignations – every by-election would see narrow victories for the opposition parties and accusations of fraud. Nevertheless, when the vote of no-confidence came, the government fell, and new elections were held. Thorpe was propelled back into office and continued his work as before. Britain’s trajectory from a state of social conservatism and fiscal paternalism was transformed into one of liberalism and compassionate capitalism. The European Communities Act 1987 under Anthony Meyer saw the UK, alongside Ireland and much of Scandinavia, join the economic powerhouse of the European Community, allowing a flood of multinational companies and easing trade as tariffs borders were erased. But nothing lasts forever. The 1994 economic crash, brought about following the onset of violent & widespread insurrection in the United States, ended the economic good times. The Shephard government initially tried to pump money into the system, however the rise on taxes was not welcomed by the population and they made this known at that year’s election. After almost twenty years, the National Conservatives were back.

Led by the charismatic and telegenic John Moore, the National Conservatives began a swift and deep spending cuts alongside cutting taxes for individuals and businesses. Unemployment skyrocketed and the ILP were soon polling ahead of every party – a first since 1981. It wouldn’t last though; money began pouring in as companies sought to take advantage of the message that Britain was open for business and wasn’t asking many questions. Whilst the 1970s and 1980s were the age of social liberation, the 1990s were the time that taught many ‘Greed is good’. The Moore government did little to change the social policies of its predecessors; although there was no regression or repealing of social legislation, neither did the 1990s bring about the dream of small-government idealists. The country took a strong turn back to the era of Kennedy and Howard under Widdecombe though; education policy prohibited the teaching of homosexuality and LGBT rights were now curtailed. When the anti-immigrant National League joined the government, immigrants soon joined the list of victims facing legislative discrimination as there were even rumours of ‘voluntary repatriation’ (A previously longstanding but dropped League manifesto pledge). In the wake of such bad press, it was little surprise that Widdecombe would be voted out in 2011. The succeeding NDP-SDP governments were tepid in their economic reforms; although they did raise some taxes, the national (and world) economies were doing well and there seemed little need to change a system that was working well. Just in time for a fresh economic crash.

The 2012 banking crisis was global; no incumbent government was safe from its damages. The Moore consensus made many within the government anxious of undoing what had brought money to the UK only to see it potentially leave for friendlier states across Europe. Austerity was the new watchword and the government stood by it. Polling showed their popularity fall, only to dive deeper as personal scandal after personal scandal broke regarding not only cabinet & government ministers but also SDP leader Mark Oaten over his use of male prostitutes in office. So great was the scandal it even cost the prime minister; David Willets’ resignation speech was met with derision by satirists as he sought to blame no-one for the faults of his cabinet but neither take responsibility either. Whilst their respective successors did repair some of the damage done, it wouldn’t be enough to save any of them. By 2016, the economy was still weak, unemployment remained high, the population was angry at the seeming disconnect between the government and the population. In this time, they turned to the parties that capitalised on their frustration and desire to see change, in whatever form that took. This would not be the National Conservatives, who seemed to be treading water rather than promoting anything, but the National League and the Independent Labour Party. Over thirty years since William McKelvey had been elected as prime minister, his protégé George Galloway took office with a far safer majority in Westminster. The UK wanted change and it would get it.
 
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The Great White North(s)

1935-1948: Rickard Sandler (Social Democratic)
1948-1957: Per Edvin Sköld (Social Democratic)
1957-1963: Bertil Ohlin (Citizens')
1963-1968: Dag Hammarskjöld (Social Democratic)
1968-1979: Olof Palme (Social Democratic)
1979-1980: Ola Ullsten (Citizens')
1980-1984: Olof Palme (Social Democratic)
1984: Ingvar Carlsson (Social Democratic)
1984-1993: Bengt Westerberg (Citizens')
1993: Britt Mogård (Citizens')
1993-2003: Kjell-Olof Feldt (Social Democratic)
2003-2006: Erik Åsbrink (Social Democratic)
2006-2015: Sven-Otto Littorin (United)
2015-: Mårten Palme (Social Democratic)

1932-1946: William Lyon Mackenzie King (Liberal)
1946-1969: Jean Lesage (Liberal)
1969-1976: Pierre Trudeau (Liberal)
1976-1979: Réal Caouette (Social Credit)
1979: Joe Clark (Progressive)
1979-1982: Réal Caouette (Social Credit)
1982-1986: Pierre Trudeau (Liberal)
1986-1991: Allan MacEachen (Liberal)
1991-1994: Perrin Beatty (National Unionist)
1994-1996: Allan MacEachen (Liberal)
1996-2006: Jean Chrétien (Liberal)
2006-2014: Bernard Lord (National Unionist)
2014-: Ken Georgetti (Liberal)
 
Caygill Exercises or: If Roger Douglas Had Resigned

Governors of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand
1982 - 1984: Dick Wilks (Keynesian) [1]
1984 - 1988: Graham Scott (Caygillite) [2]
1988 - 1993: Donald Brash (Austrian) [3]
1993 - 2003: Alan Bollard (Orthodox) [4]
2003 - 2008: Mark Prebble (Orthodox)
2008 - 2011: Roger Kerr (Caygillite) [5]
2011 - 2018: John Key (Caygillite/Orthodox) [6]
2018 - 0000: Gareth Morgan (Keynesian/???) [7]

[1] Wilks was the last of the Muldoon-era Governors, and his tenure covered events including the wage-and-price freeze, the Closer Economic Relationship with Australia, and the Opposition's shift to a radical free-market policy under Finance spokesman David Caygill.

[2] Appointed shortly after Labour's landslide victory, Scott was everything the new Government aimed to be: fresh, enthusiastic, inexperienced, and committed to far-reaching reforms. Economic and monetary policy was turned on its head overnight, and Scott backed it all the way.

Then the '87 crash happened, and a resignation seemed like a good career move.

[3] Enter Donald Brash, whose solution to the problem was always, always, 'more market'. The RBNZ Act sanctified this gospel; the Reserve Bank was no longer concerned with ridiculous socialist policies like 'full employment', and the Governor would now concern himself with inflation over his statutory five-year term.

But New Zealanders' excitement at change had congealed into worry, as people had discovered that you could lose money on the stock market as well as make it. The change in government did little to reassure them, and indeed the continuing pain led to the hung Parliament of '93 which brought Winston Peters back into power as part of the fragile National-'led' coalition. In this brave new world a radical Reserve Bank simply would not do. The Treasurer leaned on the Board, a more suitable candidate was found, and Brash was 'encouraged' into a position with the High Commission, London.

[4] Bollard was a safe pair of hands who saw RBNZ through a period of tranquillity at the eye of a political storm. Thanks to a series of by-elections, defections, and jostling for position in the run-up to the first MMP election, New Zealand saw five governments in three years and an Asian financial crisis shortly after.

Amidst this chaos, a steady hand on the Official Cash Rate was welcomed by the business community, and the various National and Labour Governments applauded Wheeler's stewardship. By 2003 the post-Caygill order had crystallised, and the torch passed to an heir who would carry the light of neoliberalism forward.

[5] Kerr's appointment as Governor was a steady-as-she-goes affair, reflecting an incrementalist libertarian shade of opinion in the finance community owing to the rosy economic outlook of the 2000s. While not Brash by any stretch, Kerr's responses to the housing market crash were a good deal more liberal than even the PM had in mind, and would frustrate the policies of the incoming Seventh Labour Government until he resigned from illness partway into his term.

[6] Kerr's deputy was another orthodox follower of the Caygillite consensus, who helped to ensure that the new National Government's more hands-off approach to the Christchurch rebuild would be complemented by cheap borrowing to encourage property development, both in Christchurch and the swelling Auckland metropolis.

Then the ANZ thing blew up across the Tasman, and people started asking questions. Somebody did some digging, and found out about the Lehman Brothers thing, which led to the Bear Sterns thing, which led back to the Merrill Lynch thing, and after that hit the media, well, it all got pretty messy pretty fast.

The new Minister of Finance was rather insistent that the Reserve Bank do more than put the Governor on gardening leave, before the matter reached the courts.

[7] And so, after much horse-trading, soul-searching, and deal-making, the Board found a man from the outside. A maverick, certainly, but one who had managed NZ Super very well indeed. Morgan is still a bit of an unknown quantity, but he has endeared himself to the new Government with his frank personality and general alignment with their direction. Although his age means he will only get one term, Morgan is determined to take this chance to make his mark.

A not-so-non-partisan interim Governor, at a time when the most left-wing Labour government in forty years is trying to relay the foundations of the New Zealand economy? What could possibly go wrong?

And there it is; the driest list ever.
 
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39.Reubin Askew Democratic 1977-1981
40.Howard Baker Republican 1981-1989
Mario Cuomo Democratic 1989-1993
Collin Powell 1993-2001
Bill Bradly Democratic 2001-2009
Ted Cruz Republican 2009-2013
Harold Ford J.r. Democratic 2013-
 
Caygill Exercises or: If Roger Douglas Had Resigned

Governors of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand
1982 - 1984: Dick Wilks (Keynesian) [1]
1984 - 1988: Graham Scott (Caygillite) [2]
1988 - 1993: Donald Brash (Austrian) [3]
1993 - 2003: Alan Bollard (Orthodox) [4]
2003 - 2008: Mark Prebble (Orthodox)
2008 - 2011: Roger Kerr (Caygillite) [5]
2011 - 2018: John Key (Caygillite/Orthodox) [6]
2018 - 0000: Gareth Morgan (Keynesian/???) [7]

And there it is; the driest list ever.


Jesus, this is niche. I'm kind of in awe.

Presumably in the absence of Key and Brash, Rod Carr has gone into the National Party.
 
1957 - 1963: John Profumo (Conservative)

1963: Ernest Marples (Conservative)

1963 - 1973: James Callaghan (Labour)

1973 - 1976: Jeremy Thorpe (One-Nation Liberals)

1976 - 1978: Geoffrey Howe (One-Nation Liberals)

1978 - 1993: Peter Shore (Labour)


The shock of the Keeler Affair forces an early election and a national revolt against 'that sort of thing', and things are only made worse when the newly formed One-Nation Liberals, the party promising social liberalism and a reformed economy in the face of the socially conservative/left-economy Labour and very very conservative Conservatives, suffers from the Scott Affair. A version of Labour that's left on economy and right on social issues & nationalism becomes the 'party of government' in a Britain detached from Europe and seething with social tension.

Whether it all changes in the 1990s depends on if John Major's One-Nation Liberals can come to an accord with the left-wing Democratic Party and their leader, Tony Blair...
 
If Joe had survived w.w.2

36.Richard M. Nixon Republican Henry Cabot Lodge 1961-1965

Def. Joe Kennedy j.r. Democratic George Smathers 1960


37. Lyndon Baines Johnson Democratic Hubert Horatio Humphrey 1965-1969
Def, Richard M. Nixon Republican Henry Cabot Lodge 1961-1965

38. Nelson Rockefeller Republican John Tower 1969-1977
Def. Hubert Humphrey Democratic Terry Sanders 1968.
Def. Terry Sanders Democratic Wilbur Miles 1972
 
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Jesus, this is niche. I'm kind of in awe.

Presumably in the absence of Key and Brash, Rod Carr has gone into the National Party.
Cheers - I wanted to do a list with some kind of originality, so decided to go full wonk. Possibly I overcompensated and was too original.

Actually, now that you mention it, I can imagine Rod Carr as a Blunkett figure for the Nats.
 
(This list is based on a prompt by Mumby on AH.com, unfortunately it's in the test threads section, so only those with accounts can access it, but the whole initial prompt is reproduced here)


Extremism in defence of liberty

President of the United States of America

1977-1980: Jimmy Carter (Democratic)
1976 (with Walter Mondale) def. Gerald Ford (Republican)
1980-1981: vacant (Bipartisan Congressional Committee)
1981-1983: Kingman Brewster Jr. (Republican - Acting)
Appointed in 1981 by Congressional Committee
1983-1987: Alexander Haig (Nonpartisan)
1982 (with William Rucklehaus) def. Mike Gravel (Democratic), Pete Wilson (Republican), Fred Trump (Independent)
1987-1991: Alexander Haig (Law and Order)
1986 (with Barry Goldwater Jr.) def. John V. Tunney (Democratic), Pete Wilson (Republican)
1989 Oliver North appointed Vice President

1991-1995: Pat Buchanan (Law and Order)
1990 (with Mike Pence) def. Ted Turner (Independent), Denise Giardina (Mountain), John V. Tunney (Pacific), other minor local candidacies
1995-1996: Mike Gravel (United Citizens' Liberation Front)
1995 (with John McCain) def. Pat Buchanan (Law and Order)

President of the United States Congress

1996-2000: Mike Gravel (Citizens' Movement)
1996 (Majority) def. Oliver North (Law and Order), Ron Paul (Liberty), Kingman Brewster Jr. (Moderate), Denise Giardina (People's)
2000-2008: Ron Paul (Liberty)
2000 (Coalition with Moderates and People's) def. Mike Gravel (Citizens' Movement), Oliver North (Continuity L&O)
2004 (Coalition with Moderates) def. Mike Gravel (Citizens' Movement), Richard Carroll (People's)

2008-2009: Mike Gravel (Broad Left)
2008 (Coalition with People's) def. Ron Paul (Liberty), Blanche Lincoln (Moderate)
2009-2010: Rocky Anderson (Broad Left coalition with People's)
2010-2018: David Koch (Liberty)
2010 (Coalition with Moderate and National Populist) def. Rocky Anderson (Broad Left and People's)
2014 (Coalition with National Populist) def. Sandi Jackson (United We Stand), Kyrsten Sinema (People Power), David Frum (Moderate)

2018-0000: Barbara Haig (Stand Up America)
2018 (Minority) def. Kyrsten Sinema (People Power), Tulsi Gabbard ('Gravel' UWS), David Frum (Moderate and Liberals), Sandi Jackson ('Chicago' UWS), David Koch ('Right' Liberty)
2019 Executive Powers Act, limiting congressional control over the calling of elections



"The 1970s ended with a bang as the FALN successfully bombed both the Democratic and Republican conventions, killing not only the expected nominees of both parties but also a great deal of the line of succession and other competitors in the presidential race. For now, government has been directly assumed by Congress, running the nation through committee. With only a few short months til the presidential election, questions are being asked if it should even proceed with so little time for the selection of nominees and then campaign. Meanwhile the FBI has come under fire for its failures in pursuing the FALN - the attack was only a possible thanks to the supervision of Willy Morales, who escaped from prison despite having blown both of his hands off in a botched bomb building session prior to his apprehension. Charges have been quietly dropped against those responsible for the excesses of the notorious Squad 47 - in times such as these, a little excessive enthusiasm in the pursuit of law and order seems no bad thing. The vigilantism of Squad 47 finds a political voice in Al Haig's pledge to run for President and "carry forward Reagan's legacy."

(The initial prompt)

After a deadlock over a number of more eligible candidates (in particular Reublicans and Democrats are split over asking former President Nixon to step in), Ambassador to the UK and former Yale President Kingman Brewster Jr. is appointed Acting President by Congress, partly due to his success in managing civil disobedience. He presides over a delayed election in 1982 as two former non-entities spared by their non-attendance at the conventions duke it out for the presidency, only to be defeated by Haig, who enters late after his failure to secure the GOP nomination.

Haig's crackdown on domestic dissent is shocking and widespread, with paramilitaries openly endorsed by the White House, and the FBI reorganised with other elements into the vast and overbearing National Security Directorate. The people love it. Order is restored, and the "national nightmare" of the 1960s and 1970s comes to an end with financial deregulation, a return to military buildup, and the imposition of order. Left-wing politics are forced underground.

Haig wins again in '86 on his new Law and Order party's ticket, and though Vice President Goldwater resigns over a further crackdown on civil liberties, things continue apace. Martial Law is finally lifted in Puerto Rico in 1990 as the Cold War comes to a head with the collapse of the USSR and China into first nuclear war and then nuclear civil wars. The US turns inward as Eurasia is drowned in fire, and Haig takes advantage of a series of anti-Government bombings in California to further expand his power. When he steps down after two terms, his successor, Senator Pat Buchanan, is faced only by a handful of localist campaigns, chief amongst them those of Ted Turner and Denise Giardina (which win in New York and West Virginia respectively) and John Tunney (who narrowly fails to win in California).

Underground, however, the United Citizens' Liberation Front grows in the Buchanan years, and after the riots of '93, its leader, former Presidential candidate and political prisoner Mike Gravel announces his intention to run for President. In an election campaign characterised by clashes between Gravel's supporters and right-wing militias, the firebrand former Senator wins out and wins power. He brings sweeping reform to America, rolling back the security state and decentralising power. The second constitutional convention even transforms America into a parliamentary democracy.

But this new state is rocked by tension too, and its PR system produces a series of unstable coalitions alternating between leadership by Gravel's left libertarians and Ron Paul's rightist Liberty party. When both of these parties split into a "moderate" and "nationalist" faction (in Liberty's case) and a faction around former President Gravel and the corrupt Sandi Jackson (in the case of UWS) the populist green 'People Power' party and the successor to Law and Order (Stand Up America) emerge as the two largest parties. Now, with 39% of the vote and a plurality of the seats, Haig's daughter has formed a new government, and with the passage of an Executive Powers Act transferring power away from Congress, and a new 'National Security Act' currently doing the rounds, the old days of Haigist 'Law and Order' politics don't seem so far gone...
 
Intermountain Members of the Executive Council of Governors:

1975-1979: Cecil D. Andrus (D - ID)
1979-1983: Thomas Lee Judge (D - MT)
1983-1987: Richard Lamm (D - CO)
1987-1991: Richard Bryan (D - NV)
1991-1995: Cecil D. Andrus (D - ID)

1995-1999: Jim Geringer (R - WY)
1999-2003: Marc Racicot (R - MT)
2003-2007: Kenny Guinn (R - NV)

2007-2011: Dave Freudenthal (D - WY)
2011-2015: Matt Mead (R - WY)
2015-2019: Brian Sandoval (R - NV)
2019-: Mark Gordon (R - WY)
Regions.png
 
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