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Lists of Heads of Government and Heads of State

Did Somebody Order More Fashions Made Sacred Monarchs?
What do you mean, "No"? Too bad.

Part 5: The Grand Flamingo of the South

The Kings of All Peru, Their Most American Majesties, by the Grace of God (House of Potosi -- 1830-present)
1830-1852: Joseph Maria I [1]
1852-1869: Joseph Maria II [3]
1869-1901: Michael I [5]
1901-1926: Joseph Emmanuel I [7]
1926-1946: Michael II [9]
1946-1972: Michael III [11]
1972-1981: Philip V [13]
1981-0000: Joseph Emmanuel II [14]
0000-0000:
Joseph Maria Louis Hector Paul Michael Philip Ferdinand, Prince of Potosi
0000-0000: Maria Carmen Josephine Louisa Eleanor Ignatia, Duchess of Callao

Royal Consorts of Peru (1830-present, by birthright style)
1830-1852: Lady Anna Sophia Figueroa Rovires [2]
1856-1869: Lady Dolores Merino de Santa Rosa y Carbajal [4]
1869-1893: Lady America Altamirano Rubio [6]
1901-1926: Princess Rosa of Pernambuco (House of Olinda) [8]
1926-1946: Princess Margaret of France (House of Bourbon) [10]
1946-1952: Princess Francisca of Pernambuco (House of Wittelsbach) [12]
1981-2000: Princess Felicity of Maranhao (House of Ericeira)
0000-0000:
Archduchess Gabriella Jacomina Isabella Raphaela Augusta Maria Immaculada, Princess of Venice (House of Hapsburg)

[1] José María Echeverría Ximénez, a wealthy creole of merchant stock from Upper Peru, was the great hero of the War of Peruvian Independence. A Peruvian patriot, he led the Peruvians to many victories and defeats - but mostly victories - against their Spanish overlords. He emerged into prominence from both his writings and his valor in battle, first rising to General of the Southern Department and then to Captain-General of the entire Grand Army of the Americas. When the Spaniards finally withdrew in 1827, abandoning Peru to try desperately to keep their grasp on New Spain as it also slipped through their fingers, Echeverría remained at the head of the most powerful force in South America, which had been forged in the fires into an army of the whole Peruvian Nation -- despite being made up of people from the various disparate parts of the formal viceroyalty. Nevertheless, local militias which had never been part of the Grand Army took up arms to defend their separate "countries", the country's African slaves liberated themselves by flight into the jungles to form their own freedom-fighting principalities once again and the heirs of the old Incan lords smelled the blood in the water.

In 1828, the Cortes of Lima proclaimed Echeverría "Dictator for the Settlement of the Peruvian Nation" at his own urging, giving him broad civil and military power to restore a unified nation. With Echeverría's allies dominating the Convention of All Cortes called in Lima in 1829, it became inevitable that Echeverría would take the Peruvian Crown abandoned by the Habsburgs. Popular with a wide swathe of the Creole and Mestizo populations, he was the only man with any chance of holding Peru together, and so, on 1 January 1830, he swore an oath to defend and protect the Peruvian nation before the Cortes of Lima.

The king spent the next three years of his reign setting the realm in order on the battlefield and constitutionally, establishing a series of local Cortes in different parts of Peru - a formalization of the structure which had been created during the War of Independence - with a Supreme Cortes in Lima to represent the interests of the whole kingdom. Though he tried to force all of the former viceroyalty to accept his new realm and constitution, he was ultimately forced to concede the independence of New Granada (and, in practice, that of Venezuela, though that country acknowledged him as king in name only until his death, when the Republic of Venezuela was formed officially), as well as broad autonomy for Quito, which acknowledged him as king but refused to submit to the Peruvian charter of government and the Supreme Cortes in Lima.

After settling his dominions, the King set policies to try to encourage the immigration of disaffected Catholics from the old states of Europe, but always found himself undercut by the more prominent, more liberal and more welcoming New Spanish Republic. The king deeply resented New Spain as it grew from strength to strength, asserting its authority in the Philippines and establishing a sphere of influence not only in New Granada - which piqued him on its own - but across the newly independent Anglo commonwealths and princely states of North America, while Peru was still hemmed in by England and Portugal on its frontiers. Though a powerful man in battle, and the perfect man to cut the Gordian knot when needed, the liberality of his writings were merely given lip service while he ruled the nation, and his Peru was fundamentally a deeply conservative state that seemed to exist only to justify New Spain's policy of seemingly ever-increasing radicalism. For twenty-two years, Joseph Maria sat on his throne and settled his kingdom -- but it would take a different man to make Peru a nation, and not merely the collected dominions of Joseph Maria.

[2] Anna Sophia of Peru was a youth throughout the struggle for Peruvian independence, and played a small, but significant, role supporting her mother in running a waystation for messengers travelling back and forth through the country for the militias and Grand Army. The daughter of a Creole landowner near the oldest bastion of Spanish dominion in South America, four of the future queen's six older brothers served as officers under Captain-General Echeverría during the War for Independence, and it was through their influence that when it became necessary for the lifelong bachelor to marry a daughter of Lower Peru and secure a dynasty, Anna Sophia was his choice. She accepted his proposal, and married the Peruvian dictator five months before he would be made the King of All Peru.

Though less than half her husband's age, Anna Sophia was a formidable woman who was the match of the king in more than one way. She did not tolerate her husband's previous tendency toward collecting lovers, brooking no rival for his affections -- and, though his reputation suggests that when on campaign he was less than faithful to his wife, he remained a dutiful husband in Lima and when they travelled together to other Peruvian cities. Many in Lima disparaged her, and foreign diplomats were often scathing toward her in their missives back to Europe, as she had an assertive, even combative personality that rivaled only her husband's, and she would engage in open arguments with him regarding both public and private matters in front of his court and his council, regardless of the audience. Nevertheless, the king not only tolerated, but encouraged, his wife's attitude -- and, whatever headaches their contention may have brought to her husband's court, the advantages were obvious: the couple had nine children together, all of whom survived to adulthood.

In 1854, after her husband's death she founded and patronized Women's Institute of Lima, inspired by the similar institutes that had been formed in New Spain before the traditional universities had admitted women, and used her influence to promote liberal, natural and theological education for women of the higher racial castes in Peru. She invited Ignacia Bescós Ybaigurén to Lima from Mexico to run the Institute, leading the South American Period of the zenobian philosopher's oeuvre in the mid to late 1850s. However, despite her broad endorsement of liberal thought in a Peruvian context, she was still relentlessly conservative by the standards of a woman from New Spain, and the women fell out in 1859, and Bescós returned to Mexico. Anna Sophia was a virulent supporter of racial caste throughout her life, and opposed the abolition of slavery -- she had to be forced by her own son's state policy to admit women below the castiza racial caste into the institute.

Despite falling increasingly behind the times, "the Queen" without qualification continued to refer to Anna Sophia long after her husband's death, and she remained a powerful force at the royal court in Lima until her death in 1886.

[3] Joseph Maria II was just shy of his twentieth birthday when he took the throne of Peru at his father's death. Raised as Prince of Potosi from his birth, his father reared him to the throne, hiring the best tutors he could from Europe with near-extravagant wages in silver and training him in the royal art, raising him to think of himself as a king-in-waiting. Unlike his father, who had seemed a liberal man forced to conservatism by circumstance, Joseph Maria II was a convinced conservative, which endeared him to the creole elites who were the backbone of the state, but quickly caused the usual promise of a new king on the throne to sour; people who had held high hopes for a new, young and vibrant king bringing change were inevitably disappointed.

The king's policies unofficially entrenched the existing racial caste system which kept the creoles in command, and he broadly got along with a Cortes that was dominated by the creole aristocracy, to the detriment of poor creoles and even wealthy castizos, much less the lower racial castes. Most of all, though, was the continuing dependence of Peruvian agriculture on Black slavery, and Peruvian mining on the Indio racial caste, which both buckled under the kingdom's oppressive continuation of the old policy. Though the supply of new slaves had ended during his father's reign, as England, France and Portugal cracked down on the slave trade as they became more invested in building up their interests in Africa, and England, which had made the River Plate free soil decades ago, imposed both diplomatic and economic pressure on Peru that increasingly pressed the issue.

The king and most of the Cortes had little incentive to end a system which had empowered them, but the King's weakness - his conservativism being subverted by even his own mother - enabled liberalism to firmly establish themselves and voice their strenuous objection to the Peruvian status quo. Finding allies even among the most noted grandees of the Peruvian Cortes, the liberals - especially in the Peruvian military, which was far less dominated by the traditional creole aristocracy - became increasingly radicalized against the status quo, with increasing opposition to the King's government in the form of stoppages and embargos against the government, which led the king to crack down using the same local militias which had once plagued his father.

Pressure on the king reached a breaking point in 1869, when business in the capital ground to a halt as creole, castiza and mestizo opponents of the king first stopped work and then, when militias were brought in from the countryside to suppress them, rioting began. In response to the king's clear inability to control the situation, the military deployed into Lima against the militias, moved on the palace, dissolving the Cortes and detaining the king. Three days later, Joseph Maria II signed documents of abdication on behalf of himself and his children; they were taken, under guard, to a Peruvian naval vessel, which delivered them to a pensioned-off exile in France, where he would live out his days traveling the width and breadth of Europe, and living in a chateau outside Aix-en-Provence, where he died in 1909.

[4] Dolores of Peru was a woman who much matched her husband in both outlook and temperament -- indeed, she was, if anything, more conservative. Her father, a count and grandee of Peru, was a leader in the regional council during the war of independence, and a powerful landowner in his region, and she was raised as such -- not new ground for a Queen of Peru, even at this stage. However, despite coming from such a similar background to her mother-in-law, their personalities were quite different, and the two queens constantly clashed over the royal household. The Queen almost always won in these clashes; and not the one who was Queen of Peru in title.

Queen Dolores became an increasingly withdrawn figure in a court and household that she, in theory, ran; she seemed to be the perfect society woman, someone who could be respected as a stately queen in her age, but she was constantly living in the shadows of more prominent and more active ladies, and not just her mother-in-law. She retreated into near-seclusion with her maids at times, and was constantly distant from her husband. When her husband abdicated, and their family went into exile, Dolores found her life transformed much for the better, as she far preferred the life of a pensioned noblewoman about town with a small, quiet circle of her own, far away from the bustling court of her husband's family in Lima.

[5] Where his brother had been prepared for the life of a king, King Michael had been raised to the life of a soldier. Noted for his aptitude for sport from a very young age, his father intended that he be trained to support his brother as king, to be the sword of Joseph Maria II's will across the realm. However, still being quite young when his brother took the throne, King Michael ended up being brought up into adulthood among the liberal ideas of the Peruvian officer corps; though disproportionately creole, far fewer of their number were hidalgos than those who surrounded his brother, and, unlike his brother, he was constantly exposed to the castiza and migrante officers in their number, as well as to the largely mestizo rank and file. His brother accelerated his promotions, and it was not long before he held the rank of general, and the role of liaison between his brother and the army. Though a loyalist for longer than much of the officer corps - and, due to personal loyalty to him, he kept the army in check for a long time - his brother's mismanagement of the realm ultimately became too much for him, and when a cadre of liberal officers approached him in 1869 as the protests turned to riots, Michael agreed to lead the coup d'etat against his brother. After his brother's abdication, he was proclaimed him King of All Peru to cheering of the people of Lima. The army acted quickly against the militias surrounding the capital, which hamstrung the response of his brother's loyalists to the coup -- apart from a brief, abortive uprising near Trujillo, King Michael's accession was a fait accompli.

King Michael abrogated the Charter of Government, and summoned a new Cortes elected by a much broader spectrum of the population than had been eligible to elect the old one to approve with little discussion a charter written up by the king's secretary, who was soon to become the Count of Tacna. The new charter gave the king broad power to bring the powerful creole landowners to heel. In 1871, using this power, he issued the Royal Emancipation Decree, which dictated that, from 1 January 1872, no man or woman would be born in slavery, and would be released from any obligation of labor to their parents' owners on reaching their twenty-first birthday. Before the date came, a general uprising began among the hidalgos, but, mindful of the lessons of Virginia's civil war over the issue, King Michael's agents had already infiltrated the loose-lipped conspiracy -- the Hidalgos' Uprising was strangled in the cradle in most of the country, apart from the northernmost reaches of Lower Peru proper and Quito, where military formations lasted for about eight months in the former, and three years in the latter.

The retribution for revolt was swift and brutal, with mass confiscations of land and executions for men foolish enough to not quickly surrender to the King and his forces. None found themselves exempt; one in four Peruvian grandees found themselves stripped not only of their titles, but their nobility, many were exiled, and the King's own brother-in-law, the Count of San Felipe and his only son - who had also taken up arms - were executed publicly for treason, among others. By the end of the reprisals, two thirds of the productive land in Quito were royal lands, as well as regions across the country where revolts had been stopped and confiscations taken out on only the leaders. Outside of Quito, most of the land was distributed to landless military officers through a system of division and purchase which encouraged a more decentralized, individually weaker but large and cross-racial hidalgo class that was personally loyal to the king. King Michael ruled alongside his military allies, summoning the National Cortes only as often as required by the new charter, and, though its elections were open and its debate was free, it had limited influence over policy. Quito's local Cortes was dissolved for the rest of his reign and the region came under his direct rule, and the other regional Cortes were kept on a tight leash by the army and the King's agents. In 1884, he issued the Royal Revised Emancipation Decree, bringing slavery to an immediate end - the last territory on the American mainland to abolish slavery - though former-slaves were subjected to peonage to pay off the cost of their freedom to their former owners as happened in other parts of the Americas -- and, due to the confiscations, many of these peons owed their debt to the Crown.

The King openly encouraged a benign liberalism we would today consider to be proto-democratic, openly emulating New Spain and trying to create an environment of innovation and discovery as existed in their northern rival, and moving toward reducing the importance of the racial castes as New Spain already had. He reorganized and centralized administration to weaken the distinctions between the different parts of the country -- apart from Quito, which became in practice a separate royal fief, and, by the end of his forty-two year reign, no one could question that Peru was a powerful, dynamic state with its own nationhood, well on the way toward being South America's answer to New Spain.

[6] America of Peru was a retiring figure by nature, rather than necessity as her sister-in-law was. The daughter of an obscure hidalgo from the southern frontiers of Peru, and sister of one of King Michael's contemporaries early in his military career, Queen America seems to have been a liberal more due to her tendency to go along with her husband and her mother-in-law for the sake of peace in the household rather than out of any serious conviction. At the urging of her husband, she became involved in the founding of women's schools, particularly in the underserved southern reaches from which she came, but her role was ever symbolic, rather than dynamic as her mother-in-law.

A devout Catholic, more so than most of the royal family in these times, one of Queen America's few independent initiatives was the total revival and reconstruction of the Cathedral of St. John the Apostle in Lima, which had fallen into disrepair since Peruvian independence had sapped resources that traditionally would have gone to the Church. After the cathedral's revival, Queen America undertook a project at the behest of the Archbishop to do similar restoration work at Lima's other parish churches and chapels. She became increasingly pietist in her religious outlook as time went on, and likely would have broken with the royal family's new penchant for liberalism had she ever had the initiative to do so. When her mother-in-law died, she continued as she had been, surrendering the role of head of the royal household and the women at court to her daughter and, ultimately, her daughter-in-law.

She died in 1894, predeceasing her younger husband. The Queen America Church Restoration Fund, initially created from her considerable estate, continues to be a charity run by members of the royal family to restore Catholic places of worship throughout Peru, particularly in deprived urban and remote areas.

[7] Joseph Emmanuel I came to the throne at the age of 40, already an experienced statesman and competent military officer. He had been raised by a military father toward a life in the military, himself, until he became Prince of Potosi when he was eight, and the priorities of his education shifted. As he grew up, Joseph Emmanuel I became a convinced liberal by contemporary standards in the vein of his father. More radically, he was openly dismissive of the "Hapsburg castes", and spoke before the Cortes of Lima as what he called a "Convinced American" on the question of racial castes, and openly called for the abolition of the legal aspects of the racial caste system, pointing to Spain's increasingly bull-headed refusal to abolish slavery in its remaining American territories as all the evidence needed to show the destructive, degrading aspect of racial caste system. The very first foreign visit the prince undertook as an adult was as part of a delegation to Mexico, and the second - and much more controversial - was to Ayiti.

Upon becoming king, Joseph Emmanuel's first act was to forgive the debts of all the peons whose contracts were owned by the royal family, dividing up vast parts of the royal haciendas into a mixture of large plantations based upon contract labor and smaller, divided farmlands made into tenancies taken up by the Black Peruvians as family holdings, with usually the same families providing both sets of laborers. Though the material conditions took a long time to genuinely improve, it was finally legal for these Black families to instead choose to leave for the cities or the Amazon frontier to make a new life for themselves. He further imposed a new Charter of Government on Quito, clearly and permanently setting it outside of the authority of the Cortes of Lima, which legally abolished the concept of racial caste. The Cortes in Lima reasserted itself in response, as conservative forces in Cortes tried to reverse what they saw as the damage the new king had already done, but it was to little avail -- all that he had done had been firmly within the royal prerogative, and the incomes the King derived from Quito made it incredibly difficult for the Cortes to hurt the king financially and force him to the table without badly hurting their own constituents. The king also, quite wisely, held back on forcing changes on the rest of Peru, and it was hard to complain of royal tyranny -- as the admittedly sweeping changes he had made were still both smaller in scope and in effect than those which the Cortes had waved past from his father.

When the backlash of their loss of the Philippines War brought the First New Spanish Republic crashing down, the newly proclaimed King of New Spain's new, hyper-conservative order caused an outward flow of political refugees from the country, the lion's share of whom made their way south to Peru, now seen as a bulwark of liberalism by many instead of a mere second-rate imitator -- or, perhaps, a second-rate imitation was preferable to what Severino was now offering them in Mexico. He took enormous pains to integrate the New Spaniards into the country, as well as complete Peru's realignment into the French circle now that New Spain had burned its bridges with its closest European partner. Joseph Emmanuel and Severino of New Spain became fierce rivals personally, neatly matching the traditional rivalry between the two greatest native American states.

The King's attempts to firmly abolish racial caste were his political undoing, as his efforts vastly alienated the Indians, who saw their own protections and traditions as being preserved in part by the structures of the racial caste system. His attempts to break the Indians' traditional power blocks in order to fully "Peruvianize" them provoked a medium-scale insurgency in the rural and mining regions of Lower Peru, which gave an opening to Platinean settlers who began to move further and further past the Peruvian frontiers to take advantage of the chaos, and hampered the state's finances considerably. All the eggs were laid for the next stage of Peru's long history, but they would not hatch during Joseph Emmanuel's lifetime.

[8] Rosa of Peru was the liberal-minded fourth daughter of King Thomas I of Pernambuco; educated in New Spain at the Pontifical University of St. Charles Borromeo as the king ingratiated himself with America's great power, she took the lessons of the liberal professors there to heart when she returned to Pernambuco, and beyond when she was promised to the heir to the Peruvian throne to secure Pernambuco on both nation's good lists. The pair were poorly matched, in terms of their personality, and they often clashed - and not in the relatively beneficial way that the first King and Queen did - but their shared political and social values kept them together on political projects.

Queen Rosa became close and lifelong partners with her sister-in-law, Princess Consuelo of Peru, who never married and so remained in her brother's court throughout her life; they shared many of the same values and both were passionately in favor of the King's liberal projects across the board and both were fierce zenobians. In all but name, the two shared the role of leader of the royal household and of Lima's noble society. Conservatives and other opponents in court would jeer - but always behind closed doors - that it seemed more like the Queen was married to the princess than to her brother.

Queen Rosa took on the patronage of the Women's Institute, and ultimately worked to combine its faculty and resources with the University of Peru in Lima, creating a coequal, coeducational institution along the lines of her own alma mater, and she became patron of the Queen Anna Sophia Faculty of Letters which was formed within the combined university. She further sponsored three young ladies in their application to join the Royal Military Academy at Cañete in 1921 which, after significant debate at court and in the Cortes, was permitted; among them was Lady Rosario Moreno de Calama y Morales de la Serena, who is considered to be the first woman to graduate from an established military academy in the world and receive an officer's commission.

Queen Rosa survived her husband by only a few years, and died only a few days after Princess Consuelo. Today, after much dispute between both contemporaries and historians, it is now broadly accepted that the pair were romantically linked, and mutual dislike but shared political interest caused the King and Queen to overlook one another's constant infidelity in the public eye -- though the royal family still strongly rejects this assertion.

[9] Michael II came to the throne at a crucial moment in modern Peruvian history; his father's death, though not unexpected, caused a significant shift in American affairs. Not long after he came to the throne, he seemed to go against the bellicose reputation he had developed in the Cortes as Prince of Potosi by conceding the existence of the racial caste system in negotiations with the more powerful Indian leadership, and, echoing a development that could be found in other parts of America, he offered the Indians permanent representation in the Cortes and explicit constitutional protection of their indigenous status. The compromise rankled many radicals -- and displayed Michael II's conservative bent, but also his broadly pragmatic governance principles. Shortly after agreeing the treaty, though, he proved his reputation was well-earned, as he sent in the Peruvian Army to drive out Platinean interlopers in the southern reaches. The ongoing fight between Platinean and Peruvian settlers was escalated by the entry of the army, and soon the army began to take part in the same sort of retaliation strikes that had characterized the low-level conflict between Platineans and Peruvians for the past century. After a short time, Peruvian soldiers burned an Anglo-Platinean village to the ground well inside the Platinean frontier while in uniform.

King Michael refused to pay reparations, and so England declared war over the disputed territories. The war quickly escalated, with Peru receiving unofficial support from France, and the full might of the English Army and Navy were brought to bear against Peru. However, the English had expected the sort of battle they'd been fighting in Africa and in Asia -- and not that which came from facing a fully-established American power. The jungles and mountains of South America proved an incredible hindrance to the English, and, though England was more powerful at sea in theory, England's navy had to maintain a global presence -- Peru could bring a concentration of force that prevented England from making full use of their powerful navy. The war quickly became unpopular in Europe, and England sued for terms, and Michael considered the conflict a short, victorious war. However, River Plate erupted into revolt at England's "betrayal" of the colony's interests, and soon Peru was fighting a high-level insurgency in the concessions which England had made while England struggled to take back control of its wayward colony. King Severino offered his support, and, soon, was involved in his own border conflict with the English colony in Oregon, which quickly became a whole new war, and Peru was now aligned with England against their first and greatest rival.

The long, grueling war pushed Peru to its limits, but Michael - who was far more charismatic than his father - held the country together as they fought on to final victory against their opponents. New Spain was cowed, River Plate was back under Peruvian control -- and the disputed territories were indisputably part of Peru in 1938. The victory was Peru's finest hour, as Peruvian force of arms had secured its borders, and had defeated New Spain in battle, both in sea and on land, seemingly showing itself to be a power on the same scale as New Spain. King Michael was ascendant, while King Severino's regime began to crumble in Mexico. Unfortunately for Peru, its new allies in England were badly weakened by the war, which led to the great power going down to defeat in the Great Baltic War, which forced both England and France to begin their long withdrawal from their colonial empires in the face of the ascendant power of Poland-Lithuania.

Though the glory was fleeting, Michael II had brought Peru to glory nonetheless, and when he died of cancer in 1946, he was proclaimed by many to be the greatest king the realm had ever seen. Plazas across the country were renamed in his honor, and a monument to his glorious victory was erected at the heart of Lima.

[10] Margaret of Peru was the daughter of both worlds, a Daughter of France who was also a scion of the Bescós family from her mother; the marriage between her and King Michael II came as Peru realigned itself to France in the aftermath of Severino's seizure of power in Mexico, and the symbolism did not go unheeded by the community of New Spanish refugees that had begun to settle in to Peru. Margaret was an intensely political woman, who did not shy from becoming directly involved in the issues of the day, both as Princess of Potosi and then as the royal consort at the head of the royal household. She advocated fiercely for her mother's countrymen at court.

Margaret spent most of her time as Princess of Potosi focused on charity work, trying to bring food, fuel and shelter to the deprived of Peru's industrializing cities, and support to people in the villages at the outermost reaches of the jungle. A democrat in her sympathies, rather than a radical, she as much as many others in the Peruvian political scene helped to develop the foundation for the democratic ideology - and, thus, the Peruvian Democratic Party - that would become dominant in the country in the second part of the twentieth century. Through the long war with River Plate, and then New Spain, she pressed on the nobility to make proportional sacrifices to achieve victory from the side of her husband, and for those with much to do without so that those with little would have enough, and lead the other classes by their example -- a foundational element of Democratic ideology as it had emerged in Western Europe at the turn of the century.

The reframing of conservatism in Peru happened almost overnight as the King increasingly leaned on his consort as the human face in answer to the self-denial policies he enacted to keep up the funding for Peru's oversized army and navy, and, as charismatic as her husband was, she took on that role with a steady hand. She was by far the most interventionist consort Peru has ever had, and she, arguably as much - and perhaps more than - her husband helped to shape the country that Peru would be in the years to come.

She long outlived her husband, and remained a prominent voice in court and - unofficially - for the Democratic Party for nearly half a century after her husband's death. In 1951, she remarried a widower, Juan Echeverría de Ayacucho y Montalvo, Marquis of Ayacucho, a junior cadet of royal family descended from Joseph Maria I's youngest son, and retired elected statesman of the Cortes, being married to him until his death in 1982. She died in 1984, well in line with the traditional record Bescós dynastic traditional female longevity, though not quite matching her mother's record.

[11] King Michael III came to the throne following his father's untimely death in 1946 during a time of global transition, with Peru seen as an emerging great power in its own right and ascendant in the Americas. It was only a month after Severino of New Spain had been shot by an impromptu firing squad in Mexico's central square. Across the ocean, amid Poland's vicious reprisals against its clients who had rise up against its dominion in the aftermath of the Fifth Defenestration of Prague, England found itself beaten back from the Baltic, while the last reigning scion of the House of Brandenburg watching helplessly from her palace in Whitehall as the Polish flag flew from Berliner Schloss. In this new world order, though, Peru stood triumphant. At least, for now, it did. Many Peruvians of New Spanish ancestry - and original New Spaniards - left the country to return to the embrace of the Second Republic, and King Michael initially offered moral and financial support to the republicans, but he was mostly rebuffed; resentment for Peru, having the audacity to defeat America's natural leader in a war, was rampant and expressed in the revanchist dreams of even some of the most die-hard republicans, and so Peru left New Spain to lick its wounds alone.

Meanwhile, Michael faced increasing calls from his own people for a new, regularized constitutional order, and to set aside his namesake's constitution by fiat. As someone who was, like his mother, a democrat by inclination, he was willing to negotiate, and, in 1949, he summoned a Constituent Assembly from across Peru to resettle the constitutional foundations of the realm. Including representatives from every part of Peru - including Quito - and every racial caste, along with representatives of the Church and commissioners from the Crown the Constituent Assembly spent two years at its work. In the end, they produced the modern Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom of Peru, which attempted to address the many flaws of Peru's existing order, answer the complaints of subjects of all racial castes, classes and political persuasions, as well as provide for the different political and social situations across the far-flung kingdom. Representatives from Quito quit the convention halfway through 1950, and so they were excluded from the final settlement, but the new constitution received widespread support in the rest of Peru's regions, and, following a national referendum, Michael III promulgated it on 1 January 1952, settling the state with a two-chamber Cortes which represented the interests of the grandees, the large, widespread hidalgo class, and the leaders of the Indian tribes across the country, as well as the wider interests of the Peruvian nation through an broad lower house.

After the death of the Queen in childbirth, and the death of their only child a few months later, the same year, King Michael became withdrawn from government for several years due to his grief, which gave significantly more influence to the President and Royal Audience selected by the Cortes. Even after returning properly to the reins, King Michael was often far more conciliatory to the elected government than had been expected by most under the new constitutional order. Apart from the King's natural sphere in military, defense and foreign affairs, many royal prerogatives were surrendered to the advice of an Audience made up of both the Lords and Delegates of the realm. By the early 1960s, the new constitution was a clear success, and Peru had successfully transitioned into the form of constitutional monarchy which had become the norm in France, England, China and other powers with which Peru found itself aligned.

King Michael came back to the forefront of policy in 1966 as the New Granadan Civil War began (as the War of Platinean Independence had remained studiously contained in-borders by both England and the ultimately victorious republic), and spilled over both into the traditional royal domain of Quito and into Peru proper, as well as into Maranhao, Venezuela and New Spain. In 1968, the king began a full-scale military deployment into New Granada, technically neutral but clearly aligned toward the Lozanistas, in the borderlands near Peru and Quito. New Spain and its Venezuelan allies quickly responded with their own deployment into the northern and eastern parts of the republic, and, by 1970, the interventionist soldiers had begun shooting at one another, carefully never acknowledging the provenance of the casualties coming home. In 1972, the shooting became formal when Peruvian troops crossed the border accidentally into New Spain proper during an operation in northern New Granada, and Peru once again found itself at war with its rival. King Michael was ready to be tested as a wartime ruler, but he never would be; he died suddenly only weeks after New Spain declared war, and he left Peru in its hour of need in the hands of his brother.

[12] Francisca of Peru was yet another Pernambucan princess in the court of Lima, but the match, while politically acceptable to all sides, was one of mutual interest; Francisca had come to Lima to study at the University of Peru, and, out of courtesy, had been invited to present at court -- where, not too long after, she became drawn to the young Prince of Potosi. Despite the contrast in their personalities, the pair became increasingly enamored with one another, and soon, at the request of both parties, negotiations for marriage began between the two states, which concluded with the couple's happy union.

Francisca, unlike her husband, was incredibly studious, and continued her university studies even after her engagement to the Prince, and, ultimately, even after their marriage. Fascinated by natural philosophy, the princess spent much of her time both in her engagement and the early years of her marriage, traveling to the most remote parts of South America, and wrote several noted papers on gradual speciation via adaptive survival in the Amazon which are still cited today. She continued to publish occasionally after her husband took the Peruvian crown, but did so under the legal pseudonym "Lady Carolina Villabaja y de la Cruz", and these later works were far less notable.

The couple at first struggled to conceive, and then Francisca had usually problematic pregnancies, usually ending in miscarriage or stillbirth; they only had one son, Michael, Prince of Potosi, shortly after her husband became king. Her final pregnancy, in 1952, ended in stillbirth, with the queen dying - according to the Peruvian legal courts - as a result to malpractice by the royal physician, who intervened with Francisca's midwives during the difficult birth. Though, as a studious and quiet woman, she was not widely loved by the people, she was much mourned by the royal family, nobles and associates who knew her personally -- especially the King, for whom her death was a particular blow from which it is widely considered that he never recovered.

[13] King Philip V, though not the Prince of Potosi, had been his brother's heir since the tragic death of his nephew in 1952, and, as the years went by, it became increasingly clear that Michael III had no inclination toward remarriage. Though never officially made Prince of Potosi, Philip was referred to regularly as "my eventual successor" by the king from 1961, and so his coming to the throne was not a surprise. The circumstances, however, were -- the former king dead very suddenly, and New Spain on the march, the widowed o who had long been king in waiting was now the man of the hour.

Unfortunately for Philip, Peru was woefully unready for a modern war. Having been forced toward demobilizing simply to keep the state's finances in order, the preceding decades had seen Peru's military become increasingly aged, increasingly backward, while New Spain once again had sunk its resources into building its armies and navies ever the greater and stronger, well on the way to becoming the supreme great power it is today. The full might of New Spain being brought down on New Granada - despite the coup that took their Venezuelan allies out of the war - quickly put Peru on the backfoot, and, after eighteen months of fighting, Peru had been completely driven out of New Granada, and New Spanish soldiers were fully operational on Quito soil, embarrassing Peru by making a prominent royal hacienda their headquarters. Peru's attempts at deception were no match for New Spain's growing air reconnaissance capabilities, and the Peruvian navy was, by the end of 1973, unable to operate more than a few hundred miles from their ports, with foreign trade nearly cut off by the encroaching New Spanish.

It grated on Philip but, ultimately, it became impossible for him to go on -- with the agreement of the Royal Audience and Cortes, he sued for terms. New Spain issued outlandish demands including the complete annexation of Quito into New Granada, which outraged the King and Cortes and prompted a blanket refusal and led to a resolution by the Cortes to fight to the bitter end to protect Peruvian soil. However, this became unnecessary, when France, China and the Hapsburg realms jointly issued an ultimatum to New Spain directing them to accept status quo ante, with a Cozzolinista government established in Bogota under guidance from New Spain. The consuls in Mexico begrudgingly agreed to the terms, and an uneasy peace was restored between the two states.

Philip ruled after the war for the better part of a decade, but his reign was overshadowed by the aftermath of the war in New Granada. The people and the army resented the defeat, and many blamed the king for the failure, despite his having quite literally inherited the situation from his brother. Philip successfully demanded greater military funding from the Cortes and began a vast reorganization of the Peruvian military along the centralized lines adopted by England the preceding decade, much as the bicameral Cortes had been modeled on the English Parliament, and many English officers on every level - probably most notably today, then-Captain Amelia Ferguson of Ayrshire, of His Majesty's the Royal Hussars, now known as the Savior of Paris for her undertakings in the Global War - were invited to Peru to help remake it for the next war. For there would be another war -- Peru's national honor, after all, demanded it.

Philip's health rapidly deteriorated as he got older, though, and it was little surprise when he passed away in his sleep due to his medical condition in 1981, having reigned Peru only nine years.

[14] Joseph Emmanuel II came to the throne as Peru geared up for yet another war, but, never a military man, the new king was not particularly keen on the amount of military expenditure that his father and uncle had geared up over the preceding decades. Fearful of the growing social disorder and unrest in the country, only barely lidded by the country's joint hatred of New Spain, he oriented his rule more toward social and political reform, answering calls from parts of society that had often been left unheard in the mad preparations for what was to come, and seeking to restore a level of normalcy to Peru. He met with the leaders of the industrial, agricultural and domestic labor alliances - which had never been powerful in Peru despite the prominence of the Democratic Party - over the increasing squeeze on the most vulnerable Peruvians as money went to machines of war. At their urging, he called for a formalization of the state-funded hospital structure administered by the Catholic Church, and, within his power as sovereign, began to require alliance contracts for companies and families that provided services to the Crown.

When he tried to initiate legislation in this direction in the Cortes, and the Cortes resisted, in 1986 the king summoned an extraordinary Constituent Assembly to consider - and, very quickly, approve - the implementation of universal suffrage in Peru proper, which changed the composition of the House of Delegates to one which was more amenable to Joseph Emmanuel's democratic legislative initiatives, and, slowly, new taxes were approved to expand access to social services across the realm -- though, to Joseph Emmanuel's distaste, the military budget continued to grow apace.

The reluctant warmonger of Lima watched in despair as, in spite of his efforts, even the labor alliances were driven first and foremost by resentment for New Spain, and the wish for a new victory against a great power which had objectively - and, to the king, obviously - eclipsed Peru once more, as it had even begun to eclipse the European powers themselves. While most Peruvians saw New Spain as their permanent rival, the eyes of Mexico were only ever fixed on their only equal among the powers of the Earth -- China, which had by now fully integrated into its administration what New Spain saw as its own rightful Philippine islands.

When the Global War, despite Joseph Emmanuel's fruitless efforts, inevitably came, it was Quito and Northern Peru which would suffer, as they and New Granada became one of the most contested fronts of the war. Peruvians by the thousands of every racial caste, of every class and every status died in the relentless slaughter of the North Front, while Peru barely held off the unending day-and-night bombing raids on Santiago and Charcas as the Platineans, Brazilians and Sao Pedrans threw themselves fruitlessly at Peru's southern frontiers. By 1997, New Spain began a campaign of terror-bombing against Lima and other central Peruvian cities, dropping petroleum jelly and alchemical-air bombs in an attempt to force Peru out of the war -- but, as elsewhere, this only hardened their will as New Spain was soon reversed across the Peruvian frontier and back into New Granada, with Bogota taken by a Peruvian-Venezuelan force in 1998.

They withdrew to status quo borders, however, in 1999, as the war ended. When Acapulco vanished in an instant, the world had been changed forever.

In the seventeen years since the uneasy peace was signed, Joseph Emmanuel has been forced to wait and be watchful, as money he wishes would go to social programs is instead built for Chinese and English troops stacked on the heavy fortifications that tripwire Peru's northern and southern frontiers. With no armageddonic weapons of its own, and two hostile armageddonic powers on either frontier, Peru is left desperately waiting, desperately hoping, desperately dependent upon her allies for her safety, for her independence, watching helplessly as her Venezuelan partners drive a near-insurmountable wedge in the alliance system that keeps the world from blowing itself into smithereens.

But then, Peru has always lived in the shadow of New Spain. It's the Europeans that really need to just get used to it.
 
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A list which breaks apart if you look at it for too long:

1949-1953: Thomas Dewey (R-NY)/Earl Warren (R-CA)

1948: Harry Truman (D-MO)/Alben Barkley (D-KY), Strom Thurmond (SD-SC)/Fielding Wright (SC-MS)

1953-1959: George Marshall (D-VA)/Lyndon Johnson (D-TX)
1952: Thomas Dewey (R-NY)/Earl Warren (R-CA)
1956: Thomas Dewey (R-NY)/William E. Jenner (R-IN)

1959-1961: Lyndon Johnson (D-TX)/VACANT

1961-1963: George Bush (R-CT)/Richard Nixon (R-CA)

1960: Lyndon Johnson (D-TX)/Averell Harriman (R-NY)

1963-1965: Richard Nixon (R-CA)/VACANT
1965-1969: Richard Nixon (R-CA)/Nelson Rockefeller (R-NY)

1964: George McGovern (D-SD)/John Byrnes (D-WI)

1969-1973: Lyndon Johnson (D-TX)/Ted Kennedy (D-MA)
1968: Nelson Rockefeller (R-NY)/Cecil Underwood (R-WV), Joseph Mitchell (CAP-NY)/Ezra Taft Benson (CAP-UT)
1972: Barry Goldwater (R-AZ)/James Pierce (R-NY)

1973-1974: Lyndon Johnson (D-TX)/Tip O'Neill (D-MA)

1974-1977: Tip O'Neill (D-MA)/Hubert Humphrey (D-MN)

1977-1981: Jack Olson (R-WI)/John Lomenzo (R-NY)

1976: Tip O'Neill (D-MA)/Alan Cranston (D-CA)

1981-1989: Paul Newman (D-CA)/Cyrus Vance (D-NY)
1980: Jack Olson (R-WI)/John Lomenzo (R-NY)
1984: John Lomenzo (R-NY)/Lynn Morley Martin (R-IL)

1989-1993: Cyrus Vance (D-NY)/Charles Ravenel (D-SC)
1988: Terry Brandstad (R-IA)/John Chafee (R-RI)

1993-2001: Vincent Cianci (R-RI)/Christine Todd Whitman (R-NJ)
1992: Cyrus Vance (D-NY)/Charles Ravenel (D-SC), Ross Perot (I-TX)/James Stockdale (I-CA)
1996: Alan Cranston (D-CA)/Gary Hart (D-CO), Ross Perot (RE-TX)/Pat Choate (RE-MA)

2001-2009: Cyrus Vance Jr. (D-NY)/Charles Duncan Jr. (D-TX)
2000:Christine Todd Whitman (R-NJ)/Arlen Specter (R-PA)
2004: Bob Corker (R-TN)/Charlie Crist (R-FL)

2009-2017: Marco Rubio (R-FL)/Orin Hatch (R-UT)
2008: John Kerry (D-MA)/Cynthia McKinney (D-GA)
2012: Howard Dean (D-VT)/Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)

2017-2021: Michael Avenatti (D-NY)/Jay Inslee (D-WA)
2016: Christine Todd Whitman (R-NJ)/Asa Hutchinson (R-AR)

2021-: Orin Hatch (R-UT)/Nikki Haley (R-SC)
2020: Michael Avenatti (D-NY)/Jay Inslee (D-WA)
 
Paramount Leaders of the People's Republic of China:
1949-1976: Mao Zedong (CCP) (Mao Zedong Thought)

1976-1978: Hua Guofeng (CCP) (The Two Whatevers)
1978-1987: Deng Xiaoping (CCP) (Socialism with Chinese Characteristics)
1987-1999: Zhao Ziyang (CCP) (Socialism With A Human Face)

1999-2005: Bao Tong (CCP) (People's Reform)
2005-
2008: Wei Jingsheng (CCP-New Democrats) (New Chinese Democracy)

President of the People's Republic of China:
2008-: Han Dongfang (New Democrats)

2008 def: Wei Jingsheng (CCP-Reform), Ai Weiwei (Independent), Wen Jiabao (CCP-Conservative)
 
Temple would organise the infamous 'Ireland and Socialism' discussion between Proinsias De Rossa and Michael D. Higgins, the 'Future of Socialism' which included heavy weights like Gerardo Iglesias and a surprisingly spritely Enrico Berlinguer and future Chinese leader Zhao Ziyang.

I'm going to need you to expand on what year we're at, and what exactly has happened to Zhao Ziyang since the PoD.
 
I'm going to need you to expand on what year we're at, and what exactly has happened to Zhao Ziyang since the PoD.
So the debate was in 1985, Zhao Ziyang provides some discussion points from a TV link about Chinese Socialist Reformism. He eventually becomes paramount leader in 1988 after helping Deng Xiaoping defeat the Conservatives in the Party structure and reforms the Chinese Government further.

Essentially the world is one where EuroCommunism/Communist Reformists are more successful for a variety of reasons.
 
1930's American Dictatorship Version #521,328

Nothing to see here folks, Fascist soft-touch dictatorship in the United States. The thing almost collapses when the Dictator kicks the bucket in 1949 but both the great rival and the empty suit VP are swept away when the Secretary of State and President's son come to power. America's "Neutrality" serves to keep Latin America under the thumb and to make peace with the Anti-COMINTERN fascist powers as they march across China, the European Colonies and the Russian Steppe. 1968 In France finds a pretty close counterpart in 1968 in this United States and the latest Empty Suit VP, this one the heir to a New York Political-and-Bootlegging fortune comes to power as an unlikely reformer.

1929-1933: Herbert C. Hoover / Charles Curtis (Republican)
1928: Alfred E. Smith / Joseph T. Robinson (Democratic)
1933-1937: Harry F. Byrd, Sr. / vacant (Democratic)
1932: Alfred E. Smith (Democratic), Herbert C. Hoover / Charles Curtis (Republican)
1937-1949: Eugene Talmadge / Paul V. McNutt (Democratic)
1936: William E. Borah / William F. Lemke (Unionist), Alfred M. Landon / H. Styles Bridges (Republican)
1940: Herbert C. Hoover / Hamilton Fish III (Republican), Floyd B. Olsen / Miriam A. M. “Ma” Ferguson (Unionist)
1944: Huey P. Long / John W. Brickner (Unionist-Republican)
1948: Huey P. Long / Earl Warren (Unionist-Republican)
1949: Paul V. McNutt / vacant (Democratic) [Disputed]
1949: Huey P. Long / Earl Warren (Republican-Unionist) [Disputed]
1949-1953: Herman E. Talmadge / vacant (Democratic) [Acting, Disputed in 1949]
1953-1961: Herman E. Talmadge / W. Averell Harriman (Democratic)

1952: Robert A. Taft / Henry A. Wallace (Unionist-Republican)
1956: Earl K. Long / Margaret Chase Smith (Unionist-Republican)
1961-1965: Herman E. Talmadge / George L. Rockwell (Democratic)
1960: Herbert H. Humphrey / Henry C. Lodge, Jr. (Unionist-Republican)
1965-1968: Herman E. Talmadge / Albert A. Gallo, Jr. (Democratic)
1964: Adlai E. Stevenson II / Claire Booth Luce (Unionist-Republican)
1968-1969: Albert Gallo, Jr. / vacant (Independent)
 
2001-2002: George W. Bush / Dick Cheney (Republican)
2000: Al Gore / Joe Lieberman (Democrat)
2002-2002: Dick Cheney / vacant (Republican)
2002-2009: Dick Cheney / John McCain (Republican)
2004: Howard Dean / Bob Graham (Democrat)
2009-2013: Jeb Bush / Chris Christie (Republican)
2008: Hillary Clinton / Evan Bayh (Democrat)
2013-2014: Jeb Bush / Tom Cotton (Republican)
2012: Barack Obama (replaced Paul Wellstone) / Russ Feingold (replaced Barack Obama), Donald Trump / Mark Cuban (Independent)
2014-2015: Tom Cotton / vacant (Republican)
2015-2021: Tom Cotton / Lindsey Graham (Republican)
2016: Michael Bloomberg / Joe Lieberman (Democrat), Bernie Sanders / Chokwe Lumumba [imprisoned (United Left)
2021-2023: Pete Buttigieg / Bob Menendez (Democrat)
2020: Tom Cotton / Mitch McConell (Republican)
2023-2025: Pete Buttigieg / vacant (Democrat)
2025-2033: Marco Rubio / Elliot Abrams (Republican)
2024: Pete Buttigieg / Kyrsten Sinema (Democrat), Robert Reich / Kshama Sawant [ineligible] (United Left)


Following the assassination of Dubya the United States becomes less democratic as it invades Iraq and Iran. Jeb! Bush, who ran on being the young brother of the late GWB, barely defeated Hillary Clinton and seemed like a welcome change initially, but he didn't relax any laws regarding free speech and the wars in the Middle-East continued. When the Great Recession started in 2011 the Republicans seemed to be doomed. When it turned out that Chris Christie had accepted illegal donations the Democrats under Wellstone were looking at a 400+ EC victory. This all changed when Wellstone passed away under suspicious circumstances and Trump started polling in the double digits. Ultimately no party managed to get the required 270 Electoral Votes, but the Republicans in congress handily gave Jeb! his second-term. Jeb! was on his way to Brazil with Air Force One when contact was suddenly lost. The young Tom Cotton went from congressman to president in less than four years. Less of a Jeb! and more of a Cheney he announced the second war on terror as the USA 'liberated' Venezuela. A divided opposition with Democrats who tried to run from the center with former Republican mayor Bloomberg and SoS under Jeb! Joe Lieberman. The left of the party's protests against this decision were not heard and they drafted the firebrand socialist Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders. The 2016 election saw the lowest turnout in history as voting laws were once again made more strict and most Americans just lost hope in the democratic process.

Cotton's second term was an absolute shitshow to say the least as the US once again entered a recession and political rights were lessened. The Democrats entered the election for the first time without having a clear front-runner. Years of being in opposition also considerably weakened the Democrats' bench considerably. Ultimately it would be the young populist mayor of South Bend, Indiana Pete Buttigieg that won the nomination. The Democrats at first had no hope of winning the election, but as the recession worsened and more and more American soldiers died in faraway countries like Yemen and Venezuela even the 'silent majority' turned against Cotton and the Republicans. Bernie Sanders also promised not to run against the mayor from Indiana. The Republicans tried to salvage what they could, but to no avail as Buttigieg won the election with 299 EC. Several lawsuits followed as Buttigieg's majority was lowered to 275. When it became clear that Buttigieg would be the next president the Republican congress passed dozens of laws restricting the powers of the president and promised to stop his ''radical socialist agenda''. Buttigieg was elected with high hopes, but he was faced with obstruction every step he took. When congresswomen Barbara Lee was imprisoned under dubious allegations he tried to pardon her. The Supreme court however ruled 7-2 that only with the approval of 50+ senators a president could pardon someone. They also ruled 6-3 that only 55% of the Senate is needed to impeach the president. His VP wasn't safe either. Menendez was impeached by the House and the Senate under slightly less suspicious circumstances to increase the pressure on Buttigieg. McConell was clear; set one wrong step and Speaker Libby will become the 48th President. Buttigieg tried to govern more moderately, but this only infuriated his own base that elected him.

It was a little surprise to anyone when Rubio received 354 EC. America's first Cuban-American president promises to return honor back to the united States as he talked about the horrors of the communist regime in Cuba. The 'liberation' of the island seems inevitable, but it is unclear how powerful Rubio exactly is. The powers that were taken away from the president weren't handed back to him and even most experts don't exactly know who calls the shots in Washington D.C.
 
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I Want To Get Off Mr Eden's Wild Ride
1955-1957: Sir Anthony Eden (Conservative)
def 1955: (Majority) Clement Attlee (Labour), Clement Davies (Liberal)
1957-1959: Sir Anthony Eden (Loyalist Conservatives)
1959-1959: Admiral Louis Mountbatten (Temporary Military Administration)
1959-1963: Hugh Gaitskell (Labour)
def 1961: (Majority) Rab Butler (Anti-Eden Conservative), Dick Crossman (Independent Labour), Bob Boothby (Loyalist Conservatives), Frank Owen (Liberal), Stanley Evans (Pro-Eden Labour)
1963-1966: George Brown (Labour)
1966-1975: Nigel Birch (New Conservative)
def 1966: (Majority) George Brown (Labour), Jennie Lee (Independent Labour), Enoch Powell (Loyalist Conservatives), Violet Bonham Carter (Liberal)
def 1971: (Grand Coalition with Labour) Tony Greenwood (The Third Way: An Independent Britain), Denis Healey (Labour), Enoch Powell (British People's Party), Eric Lubbock (Liberal)

1975-1977: Tony Greenwood (The Third Way)
def 1975: (Non-Alignment Alliance with British People's Party and Liberals) Nigel Birch (New Conservative), Enoch Powell (British People's Party), Denis Healey (Labour)
1977-1980: Colonel David Stirling (Independent)
1980-1990: David Stirling (National Salvation Movement)
def 1980: (Minority) Boycott Election (The Third Way), Ian Gilmour (Democratic Alliance)
def 1985: cancelled

1990-1991: Major Patrick Wall (National Salvation Movement)
1991-XXXX: Ralph Miliband (Socialist Coalition)
def 1991: (Majority) Michael Keith Smith (Britannia), Michael Heseltine (Democratic), Keith Nelson (CPGB), Patrick Wall (National Salvation)

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Melvyn Bragg: Hello, I'm Melvyn Bragg, and welcome back to the Culture Review. We have three first-rate guests lined up for you tonight, and first up is Professor Matthew Kneale, who is here to talk about his new book Exile From The Garden: How Anthony Eden Shaped Modern Politics. Professor Kneale, what would you say the central message of your book is?

Matthew Kneale: There is a famous maxim that the right man in the right place can change history forever. Anthony Eden provides an equally apposite corollary: the wrong man in the right place can change everything as well...

MB: Yes, you take a fairly harsh line on Eden in your book, don't you... What would you say about the way that recent portrayals of Eden have depicted him, monstered in The Throne and humanised by dissident academics?

MK: Well, obviously depictions of Eden as a cackling baby-eater are ahistorical and hardly worth discussing, but I take issue with the claim that those seeking to smooth off his edges are 'dissident'. Indeed, it has become almost fashionable in some circles, as we come up to the sixtieth anniversary of Suez, to paint Eden as a victim of circumstance--some even claiming that any Prime Minister in his shoes would have felt obliged to demonstrate that Britain still had power. This is patently absurd.

It is conceivable that most alternative PMs in 1955 would have decided to pressure Nasser into giving back the canal--Morrison, for example, was a major cheerleader of Eden's efforts. It is less likely, however, that any other leader would have continued with said military intervention for four years, in the face of massive international pressure from both sides of the Cold War--Khruschev even, at one point, considered threatening Britain with missile bombardment before being persuaded to reconsider by General Zukhov--and increasingly chilly public opinion as more and more British young men left their blood on Egyptian sands.

Some less ambitious revisionist takes have far more substance to them. It was indeed true that, by 1956, Eden was increasingly dependent on Benzadrine due to his acute cholangitis, and as such shouldn't be considered fully responsible for his actions. However, not only is it clear that Eden would have gone to war without drugs, such an argument is less an exoneration of Eden and more a condemnation of the wider government apparatus. If, as many political diaries attest, by late 1958 Eden was taking around 2 grams a day, sleeping for less than four hours each night, and wracked by muscle tremors and psychosis, why on Earth weren't his decisions challenged sooner?

MB: He was challenged, though, wasn't he? The party split? Mountbatten interfered?

MK: Yes, the thing about the Anti-Eden Conservatives was that, besides a few principled figures like Nutting, their opposition was rather too little and too late. Butler, for example, might have smothered the war in its crib, had he been sterner in his opposition earlier on, but history repeated himself and just like in '38 he only began opposing evil once it became worth his career to do so. Still, he jumped ship at least. Others with private doubts, like Selwyn Lloyd, stayed with Eden to the end--Lloyd largely because by this time he was as steeped in blood as Eden himself.

As for Mountbatten, his intervention was a frankly tactless blunder. The last days of the Eden ministry were a complete chaotic jumble, with moderates trying to talk Eden round to de-escalation and the hardliners predicting boots in Cairo by Christmas, and the government hamstrung by rebellion and unable to do anything. In this fevered atmosphere, all sorts of bizarre things were being thrown around. It's unlikely that serious plans were actually drawn up to postpone the general election if there was a vote of no confidence, any more than Nasser was to be paid reparations--something which was thrown at the peace faction by the hardliners. Nevertheless, the rumours of British democracy being under threat was enough for the first Sea Lord to join with American forces in actually threatening it.

The Mountbatten coup--and it was a coup, no bones about it--could have easily spiralled into dictatorship. Indeed, we have records of Clark Clifford trying to persuade Mountbatten to extend military rule to "ensure stability". Luckily for Britain, Mountbatten saw his intervention, dramatic though it may have been, with military policemen escorting the PM out in handcuffs, as being a mere temporary blip, and quickly installed the Leader of the Opposition as PM. And luckily for Mountbatten, Gaitskell was perfectly willing to work with the US on Soviet containment. In a lot of ways, Mountbatten's coup was a perfect storm, much like the disaster of Eden's premiership--a lot of details lined up to make it successful. And it still paved the way for Stirling's junta two decades later.

MB: Which of course is the main theme of your book--but surely Stirling's assumption of power was in part a response to political realities of the time?

MK: Yes, and those political realities were just as much indirectly shaped by Eden as Stirling was! The only thing that was more a product of Suez than Stirling was the governing coalition he usurped. A mutual dislike for American dominance and a desire for Britain to go its own way--whether that meant joining with Desai and Tito or with Salan and Franco--was the only thing that prevented Greenwood and Powell from not going at each other's throats. On every issue bar foreign policy their two parties were opposed, and the fact that an anti-NATO right-wing party was even viable was entirely a result of Eden!

Before British forces pushed into Suez, anti-American feeling marked one out as a radical leftist, either of the peacenik or bearhugger variety. But with Mountbatten's coup, suddenly a right-wing narrative of continued imperial dominance if only the Yanks hadn't stabbed Eden in the back was palatable to the general public. These views quickly began to trickle into Parliament, led by those who had held them for decades. On the Left, the opposite slowly began to take shape--Gaitskell owing his Premiership to Langley meant that those Labour MPs who were unable to stomach American foreign policy jumped ship to a new designation, allowing for an odd sabre-rattling social democracy to become the official position of the old party. The Grand Coalition of 1971 would have seemed insane 20 years before, but Labour had changed enough in the meantime that it made sense. Foreign policy, not the economy, now defined British politics.

The Stirling junta didn't destroy this definition, it just made it so that a pro-NATO position was almost completely nonviable. The major political parties we have today--a broad leftist alliance, a populist sabre-rattling right, and a centre to centre-right small-l liberal third party--can all trace their heritage back to the alliances formed in the Seventies as a reaction to the events of the Eden ministry. And it's more than just the parties, there's a reason why I called my book Exile From The Garden. It's not just a bad pun on Eden's name, it's in recognition of the fact that, once Britain had consumed that apple of knowledge, had learnt that its interests weren't NATO's interests, there was no going back. It is unlikely that any politician today will have the sheer influence on the future that one drug-addled imperialist had in 1956.

MB: Thank you Professor Kneale, that was very interesting. Guests still to come include a slam poet from Croydon, an expert on Ancient Sumerian petroglyphs, and a devotee of edible mushrooms...but first, Lloyd Hoggart is here to talk about the life of former Labour cabinet minister, master of St Edmund's College, and my predecessor as host of this programme, Norman St John-Stevas...
 
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I Want To Get Off Mr Eden's Wild Ride
1955-1957: Sir Anthony Eden (Conservative)
def 1955: (Majority) Clement Attlee (Labour), Clement Davies (Liberal)
1957-1959: Sir Anthony Eden (Loyalist Conservatives)
1959-1959: Admiral Louis Mountbatten (Temporary Military Administration)
1959-1963: Hugh Gaitskell (Labour)
def 1961: (Majority) Rab Butler (Anti-Eden Conservative), Dick Crossman (Independent Labour), Bob Boothby (Loyalist Conservatives), Frank Owen (Liberal), Stanley Evans (Pro-Eden Labour)
1963-1966: George Brown (Labour)
1966-1975: Nigel Birch (New Conservative)
def 1966: (Majority) George Brown (Labour), Jennie Lee (Independent Labour), Enoch Powell (Loyalist Conservatives), Violet Bonham Carter (Liberal)
def 1971: (Grand Coalition with Labour) Tony Greenwood (The Third Way: An Independent Britain), Denis Healey (Labour), Enoch Powell (British People's Party), Eric Lubbock (Liberal)

1975-1977: Tony Greenwood (The Third Way)
def 1975: (Non-Alignment Alliance with British People's Party and Liberals) Nigel Birch (New Conservative), Enoch Powell (British People's Party), Denis Healey (Labour)
1977-1980: Colonel David Stirling (Independent)
1980-1990: David Stirling (National Salvation Movement)
def 1980: (Minority) Boycott Election (The Third Way), Ian Gilmour (Democratic Alliance)
def 1985: cancelled

1990-1991: Major Patrick Wall (National Salvation Movement)
1991-XXXX: Ralph Miliband (Socialist Coalition)
def 1991: (Majority) Michael Keith Smith (Britannia), Michael Heseltine (Democratic), Keith Nilsen (CPGB), Patrick Wall (National Salvation)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Melvyn Bragg: Hello, I'm Melvyn Bragg, and welcome back to the Culture Review. We have three first-rate guests lined up for you tonight, and first up is Professor Matthew Kneale, who is here to talk about his new book Exile From The Garden: How Anthony Eden Shaped Modern Politics. Professor Kneale, what would you say the central message of your book is?

Matthew Kneale: There is a famous maxim that the right man in the right place can change history forever. Anthony Eden provides an equally apposite corollary: the wrong man in the right place can change everything as well...

MB: Yes, you take a fairly harsh line on Eden in your book, don't you... What would you say about the way that recent portrayals of Eden have depicted him, monstered in The Throne and humanised by dissident academics?

MK: Well, obviously depictions of Eden as a cackling baby-eater are ahistorical and hardly worth discussing, but I take issue with the claim that those seeking to smooth off his edges are 'dissident'. Indeed, it has become almost fashionable in some circles, as we come up to the sixtieth anniversary of Suez, to paint Eden as a victim of circumstance--some even claiming that any Prime Minister in his shoes would have felt obliged to demonstrate that Britain still had power. This is patently absurd.

It is conceivable that most alternative PMs in 1955 would have decided to pressure Nasser into giving back the canal--Morrison, for example, was a major cheerleader of Eden's efforts. It is less likely, however, that any other leader would have continued with said military intervention for four years, in the face of massive international pressure from both sides of the Cold War--Khruschev even, at one point, considered threatening Britain with missile bombardment before being persuaded to reconsider by General Zukhov--and increasingly chilly public opinion as more and more British young men left their blood on Egyptian sands.

Some less ambitious revisionist takes have far more substance to them. It was indeed true that, by 1956, Eden was increasingly dependent on Benzadrine due to his acute cholangitis, and as such shouldn't be considered fully responsible for his actions. However, not only is it clear that Eden would have gone to war without drugs, such an argument is less an exoneration of Eden and more a condemnation of the wider government apparatus. If, as many political diaries attest, by late 1958 Eden was taking around 2 grams a day, sleeping for less than four hours each night, and wracked by muscle tremors and psychosis, why on Earth weren't his decisions challenged sooner?

MB: He was challenged, though, wasn't he? The party split? Mountbatten interfered?

MK: Yes, the thing about the Anti-Eden Conservatives was that, besides a few principled figures like Nutting, their opposition was rather too little and too late. Butler, for example, might have smothered the war in its crib, had he been sterner in his opposition earlier on, but history repeated himself and just like in '38 he only began opposing evil once it became worth his career to do so. Still, he jumped ship at least. Others with private doubts, like Selwyn Lloyd, stayed with Eden to the end--Lloyd largely because by this time he was as steeped in blood as Eden himself.

As for Mountbatten, his intervention was a frankly tactless blunder. The last days of the Eden ministry were a complete chaotic jumble, with moderates trying to talk Eden round to de-escalation and the hardliners predicting boots in Cairo by Christmas, and the government hamstrung by rebellion and unable to do anything. In this fevered atmosphere, all sorts of bizarre things were being thrown around. It's unlikely that serious plans were actually drawn up to postpone the general election if there was a vote of no confidence, any more than Nasser was to be paid reparations--something which was thrown at the peace faction by the hardliners. Nevertheless, the rumours of British democracy being under threat was enough for the first Sea Lord to join with American forces in actually threatening it.

The Mountbatten coup--and it was a coup, no bones about it--could have easily spiralled into dictatorship. Indeed, we have records of Clark Clifford trying to persuade Mountbatten to extend military rule to "ensure stability". Luckily for Britain, Mountbatten saw his intervention, dramatic though it may have been, with military policemen escorting the PM out in handcuffs, as being a mere temporary blip, and quickly installed the Leader of the Opposition as PM. And luckily for Mountbatten, Gaitskell was perfectly willing to work with the US on Soviet containment. In a lot of ways, Mountbatten's coup was a perfect storm, much like the disaster of Eden's premiership--a lot of details lined up to make it successful. And it still paved the way for Stirling's junta two decades later.

MB: Which of course is the main theme of your book--but surely Stirling's assumption of power was in part a response to political realities of the time?

MK: Yes, and those political realities were just as much indirectly shaped by Eden as Stirling was! The only thing that was more a product of Suez than Stirling was the governing coalition he usurped. A mutual dislike for American dominance and a desire for Britain to go its own way--whether that meant joining with Desai and Tito or with Salan and Franco--was the only thing that prevented Greenwood and Powell from not going at each other's throats. On every issue bar foreign policy their two parties were opposed, and the fact that an anti-NATO right-wing party was even viable was entirely a result of Eden!

Before British forces pushed into Suez, anti-American feeling marked one out as a radical leftist, either of the peacenik or bearhugger variety. But with Mountbatten's coup, suddenly a right-wing narrative of continued imperial dominance if only the Yanks hadn't stabbed Eden in the back was palatable to the general public. These views quickly began to trickle into Parliament, led by those who had held them for decades. On the Left, the opposite slowly began to take shape--Gaitskell owing his Premiership to Langley meant that those Labour MPs who were unable to stomach American foreign policy jumped ship to a new designation, allowing for an odd sabre-rattling social democracy to become the official position of the old party. The Grand Coalition of 1971 would have seemed insane 20 years before, but Labour had changed enough in the meantime that it made sense. Foreign policy, not the economy, now defined British politics.

The Stirling junta didn't destroy this definition, it just made it so that a pro-NATO position was almost completely nonviable. The major political parties we have today--a broad leftist alliance, a populist sabre-rattling right, and a centre to centre-right small-l liberal third party--can all trace their heritage back to the alliances formed in the Seventies as a reaction to the events of the Eden ministry. And it's more than just the parties, there's a reason why I called my book Exile From The Garden. It's not just a bad pun on Eden's name, it's in recognition of the fact that, once Britain had consumed that apple of knowledge, had learnt that its interests weren't NATO's interests, there was no going back. It is unlikely that any politician today will have the sheer influence on the future that one drug-addled imperialist had in 1956.

MB: Thank you Professor Kneale, that was very interesting. Guests still to come include a slam poet from Croydon, an expert on Ancient Sumerian petroglyphs, and a devotee of edible mushrooms...but first, Lloyd Hoggart is here to talk about the life of former Labour cabinet minister, master of St Edmund's College, and my predecessor as host of this programme, Norman St John-Stevas...

Tremendous work!
 
US answer to to my PM Cummings list.

2005-09: John Kerry/John Edwards (Democrat)
2004: George Bush/Dick Cheney (Republican)
2009-12: John McCain/Walter Jones (Republican)
2008: John Kerry/John Edwards (Democrat)
2012-17: Walter Jones/Mitch Daniels (Republican)
2012: Hillary Clinton/Jack Reed (Democrat)
2017-21: Rudi Gulliani/Jeff Sessions (Republican)
2016: Evan Bayh/Penny Pritzker (Democrat)
2021- : Keith Ellison/Pete Buttigieg (Democrat)
2020: Rudi Gulliani/Jeff Sessions (Republican)
 
As a follow up to my list of PMs list for a federal UK here, I present the heads of government of the nations, regions and great cities of the UK. As you can see this is all fairly set since the 1920s, with the only new devolved administration being Cornwall, which was recognised as its own nation in 1999. England was not given nationhood by itself because of its demographic dominance and was instead divided into regions. The 'Great Cities' are basically the cities large enough to successfully lobby to be hived off from other devolved institutions for various reasons. Other large cities, like Dublin, Birmingham and Manchester etc. are mostly the capitals or administrative centres of their devolved administrations.

In terms of powers, the devolved assemblies have responsibilities for local police, education and public housing (albeit in all cases within a Westminster-created framework), among other things. In addition, the Irish and Scottish governments have responsibility for Irish and Scottish law. All devolved assemblies are a unicameral assembly which have elections every 4-7 years (exact regulations regarding timing vary) with a cabinet and First Minister being appointed by the local Lord Lieutenant (usually a minor member of the Royal Family, with the exception of Ireland where it is often a local Irish judge or notable) in the same manner to the monarch appointing the PM in Westminster. Although the exact title of the First Minister does differ (especially in the nations they often formally have a local Celtic title) but their powers are basically the same. The major exception are the Great Cities, where instead of a First Minister and Lord Lieutenant they have directly elected Metropolitan Mayors and an Assembly elected at fixed four-year intervals. The First Ministers/Metropolitan Mayors can send a fixed number of representatives to the Senate in Westminster (the replacement for the House of Lords), who serve at the First Minister's/Metropolitan Mayor's pleasure.

Hope that makes sense. If you think I've screwed up somewhere then let me know. I've not worked out the leaders of the opposition and the precise makeups of the government but where there are long tenures then rest assured that there is lots of constituting and reconstituting of coalitions. (Also, for those you who found the idea of Charles Haughey as British PM a bit much, how about David Trimble, Bertie Ahern and Enda Kenny all serving in the same cabinet?) Pre-emptive apologies for the sheer length...

Heanavek Stannator of Cornwall
May 1999 - May 2011: Andrew George (Liberal)
May 2011 - June 2015: Sarah Newton (Unionist)
June 2015 - June 2019: Andrew George (Liberal)
June 2019 - : Steve Double (Unionist)

Taoiseach of Ireland
April 1916 - February 1931: Joseph Devlin (Irish Parliamentary)
February 1931 - November 1932: W.T. Cosgrave (Nationalist)
November 1932 - September 1934: James Craig (Irish Unionist)
September 1934 - November 1938: Arthur Maxwell (National Coalition)
November 1938 - April 1939: James Craig (Irish Unionist)
April 1939 - February 1948: Henry Dockrell (National Coalition)
February 1948 - June 1951: William Norton (Labour)
June 1951 - June 1954: Basil Brooke (Unionist)
June 1954 - March 1957: James Everett (Labour)
March 1957 - August 1963: Basil Brooke (Unionist)
August 1963 - March 1973: Liam Cosgrave (Unionist)
March 1973 - July 1977: Brendan Corish (Labour)
July 1977 - June 1981: Charles Haughey (Unionist)
June 1981 - March 1982: John Hume (Labour)
March 1982 - December 1982: Garret FitzGerald (Unionist)
December 1982 - March 1987: John Hume (Labour)
March 1987 - December 1994: Albert Reynolds (Unionist)
December 1994 - June 1997: Dick Spring (Labour)
June 1997 - September 2002: David Trimble (Unionist)
September 2002 - May 2008: Bertie Ahern (Unionist)
May 2008 - March 2011: Enda Kenny (Unionist)
March 2011 - June 2020: May Lou McDonald (Labour)
June 2020 - : Leo Varadkar (Unionist)

Heid Meinister of Scotland
October 1924 - May 1929: Harry Hope (National Coalition)
May 1929 - October 1931: Arthur Henderson (Labour)
October 1931 - June 1949: Walter Elliot (National Coalition)
June 1949 - March 1958: John Hope (Unionist)
March 1958 - August 1962: Arthur Woodburn (Labour)
August 1962 - June 1971: Gordon Campbell (Unionist)
June 1971 - September 1975: Willie Ross (Labour)
September 1975 - October 1980: David Steel (Liberal)
October 1980 - July 1984: Russell Johnston (Liberal)
July 1984 - September 1986: Michael Ancram (Unionist)
September 1986 - May 1994: John Smith (Labour)*
May 1994 - October 2000: Donald Dewar (Labour)*
October 2000 - May 2003: Jack McConnell (Labour)
May 2003 - May 2007: David McLetchie (Unionist)
May 2007 - August 2013: Gordon Brown (Labour)
August 2013 - May 2018: Michael Gove (Unionist)
May 2018 - : Jim Murphy (Labour)

Prif Weinidog of Wales
October 1924 - March 1933: Goronwy Owen (National Coalition)
March 1933 - July 1945: Gwilym Lloyd George (National Coalition)
July 1945 - December 1946: Lewis Jones (National Coalition)
December 1946 - December 1954: Jim Griffiths (Labour)
December 1954 - October 1957: Megan Lloyd George (Unionist)
October 1957 - March 1979: Cledwyn Hughes (Labour)
March 1979 - October 1989: Elystan Morgan (Labour)
October 1989 - May 1993: Barry Jones (Labour)
May 1993 - December 2009: Alun Michael (Labour)
December 2009 - December 2018: Carwyn Jones (Labour)
December 2018 - : Nia Griffith (Labour)

First Ministers of East Anglia
May 1926 - July 1935: Hilton Young (National Coalition)
July 1935 - April 1947: Geoffrey Shakespeare (National Coalition)
April 1947 - September 1950: Sidney Dye (Labour)
September 1950 - January 1963: Harwood Harrison (Unionist)
January 1963 - May 1971: Harmar Nicholls (Unionist)
May 1971 - May 1988: Jim Prior (Unionist)
May 1988 - May 1997: John Garrett (Labour)
May 1997 - April 2005: Bill Rammell (Labour)
April 2005 - June 2012: Eric Pickles (Unionist)
June 2012 - June 2017: Kelvin Hopkins (Labour)
June 2017 - : David Gauke (Unionist)

First Ministers of Mercia
May 1926 - December 1931: Walter Higgs (National Coalition)
December 1931 - August 1946: Peter Bennett (National Coalition)
August 1946 - February 1956: John Mellor (National Coalition, Unionist (after June 1949))
February 1956 - July 1958: Herbert Bowden (Labour)
July 1958 - December 1966: Enoch Powell (Unionist)
December 1966 - September 1978: Maurice Foley (Labour)
September 1978 - May 1998: Eric Varley (Labour)
May 1998 - October 2002: Geoffrey Robertson (Labour)
October 2002 - June 2005: Stephen Byers (Labour)
June 2005 - June 2010: Alan Duncan (Unionist)
June 2010 - June 2017: Vernon Coaker (Labour)
June 2017 - : Sajid Javid (Unionist)

First Ministers of North East England
May 1926 - January 1958: Charles Trevelyan (National Coalition, Unionist (after June 1949))
January 1958 - July 1973: Andrew Cunningham (Labour)
July 1973 - October 1976: James Boyden (Labour)
October 1976 - April 1987: Gordon Adam (Labour)
April 1987 - April 1991: Peter Vanneck (Unionist)
April 1991 - April 1999: Nick Brown (Labour)
April 1999 - : Martin Callanan (Unionist)

First Ministers of North West England
May 1926 - January 1931: Theodore Carr (National Coalition)*
January - February 1931: Donald Howard (National Coalition)
February 1931 - December 1945: Levi Collison (National Coalition)
December 1945 - January 1950: Gustav Renwick (National Coalition, Unionist (after June 1949))
January 1950 - February 1958: Alex Hargreaves (Labour)
February 1958 - April 1959: Edward Spears (Unionist)
April 1959 - October 1980: William Whitelaw (Unionist)
October 1980 - April 1985: Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Unionist)
April 1985 - September 1999: Margaret Beckett (Labour)
September 1999 - August 2011: Robert Atkins (Unionist)
August 2011 - February 2018: Andy Burnham (Labour)
February 2018 - : Saj Karim (Unionist)

First Ministers of South East England
May 1926 - February 1928: Ernest Lamb (National Coalition)
February 1928 - September 1935: Bertram Falle (National Coalition)
September 1935 - June 1950: Arthur Marsden (National Coalition)
June 1950 - May 1969: Lionel Heald (Unionist)
May 1969 - May 1991: Diana Elles (Unionist)
May 1991 - October 1994: Arthur Bottomley (Labour)
October 1994 - January 2013: Peter Skinner (Labour)
January 2013 - : Annelise Dodds (Labour)

First Ministers of Wessex
May 1926 - November 1927: Francis Mildmay (National Coalition)
November 1927 - November 1928: Walter Ayles (Labour)
November 1928 - March 1933: Robert Bruford (National Coalition)
March 1933 - January 1945: Robert Bernays (National Coalition)*
January - September 1945: George Davies (National Coalition)
September 1945 - September 1953: Tom Horabin (Liberal)
September 1953 - December 1958: David Eccles (Unionist)
December 1958 - December 1966: Robert Grimston (Unionist)
December 1966 - January 1991: Henry Plumb (Unionist)
January 1991 - April 2005: Caroline Jackson (Unionist)
April 2005 - May 2011: Neil Parish (Unionist)
May 2011 - : Molly Scott Cato (Green)

First Ministers of Yorkshire and the Humber
May 1926 - April 1933: George Muff (Labour)
April 1933 - December 1946: Thomas Dugdale (National Coalition)
December 1946 - May 1955: James Milner (Labour)
May 1955 - May 1959: Thomas Dugdale (Unionist)
May 1959 - December 1961: James Milner (Labour)
December 1961 - September 1969: Denis Healey (Labour)
September 1969 - February 1976: Alice Bacon (Labour)
February 1976 - June 1990: Robert Battersby (Unionist)
June 1990 - October 1998: John Prescott (Labour)
October 1998 - October 1999: Norman West (Labour)
October 1999 - March 2003: David Bowe (Labour)
March 2003 - February 2013: Timothy Kirkhope (Unionist)
February 2013 - : Richard Corbett (Labour)

Metropolitan Mayors of Belfast
June 1921 - October 1929: Edward Carson (Irish Unionist)
October 1929 - June 1933: Dawson Bates (Irish Unionist)
June 1933 - June 1945: Crawford McCullagh (National Coalition)
June 1945 - June 1953: H. Montgomery Hyde (National Coalition, Unionist (after June 1949))
June 1953 - June 1957: Jack Beattie (Labour)
June 1957 - June 1965: Martin Kelso Wallace (Unionist)
June 1965 - June 1973: Stratton Mills (Unionist)
June 1973 - June 1981: Gerry Fitt (Labour)
June 1981 - June 1989: Cecil Walker (Unionist)
June 1989 - June 1997: Martin Smyth (Unionist)
June 1997 - June 2005: Peter Robinson (Unionist)
June 2005 - June 2009: Alex Maskey (Labour)
June 2009 - June 2013: Naomi Long (Liberal)
June 2013 - June 2017: Nichola Mallon (Labour)
June 2017 - : Sammy Wilson (National)

Metropolitan Mayors of London
May 1924 - May 1928: George Hume (National Coalition)
May 1928 - May 1932: William Ray (National Coalition)
May 1932 - November 1940: Herbert Morrison (Labour)
November 1940 - May 1948: Charles Latham (Labour)
May 1948 - May 1964: Isaac Hayward (Labour)
May 1964 - May 1968: Bill Fiske (Labour)
May 1968 - May 1972: Desmond Plummer (Unionist)
May 1972 - May 1976: Reginald Goodwin (Labour)
May 1976 - May 1984: Horace Cutler (Unionist)
May 1984 - May 1992: Andrew McIntosh (Labour)
May 1992 - May 2000: Pauline Green (Labour)
May 2000 - May 2004: Ken Livingstone (Labour)
May 2004 - May 2008: Ken Livingstone (Socialist)
May 2008 - May 2016: Boris Johnson (Unionist)
May 2016 - : Sadiq Khan (Labour)

Metropolitan Mayors of Merseyside
May 1924 - December 1928: Archibald Savage (National Coalition)*
December 1928 - May 1932: Warden Chilcott (National Coalition)
May 1932 - May 1946: Reginald Purbrick (National Coalition)
May 1946 - May 1966: Tom Brown (Labour)
May 1966 - May 1986: Simon Mahon (Labour)
May 1986 - May 1998: John Evans (Labour)
May 1998 - May 2010: Mike Storey (Liberal)
May 2010 - : Joe Anderson (Labour)
 
Only thoughts that immediately come to mind is I think the regions are a bit too modern in England. 1920s Yorkshire would definitely not include North Lincolnshire, and this is a period where you've got Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham all sitting on county boundaries and so likely to be split off as separate things. I also can't help but think that if London is being given devolution here as the County of London, it's more likely that we see an administration for the Home Counties (probably including Oxfordshire), a small East Anglia and an enlarged Wessex that includes Hampshire.
 
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