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What would a 1980s Tony Benn premiership look like?

That does seem an angle for a AH story. Tony Benn is a polarising figure, loved and loathed, "PM Benn" would be proposed as a triumph of socialism by some and "scruffy at the Cenotaph, sells us out to the Argies" by five different Dominic Sandbrook AH articles; "Benn is restricted by the system around him and the many, many unfortunate events coming our way, what people hope for/fear simply doesn't happen", there's something in that.

It's really the most likely outcome that there's just the same process as OTL, with an appalling period for Labour, but not terminal, and he gets to own it much more than he does IOTL, which he really should tbh given the 83 manifesto was effectively the product of his lordship over the home policy committee and how damaging the 81 deputy leadership lunge was to the party's standing.

It's probably worth me noting that he did come close to being elected as deputy under the first outing for the electoral college, and the Benn-favourable activist juntas in CLPs would certainly carry over in good part into a leadership election under the electoral college's first try in an ATL, albeit one similar enough to ours. That's a structural advantage he has. The problem of course is that 1981 was taking place at a time when the right were in an extremely bad position within the party, in terms of morale, credibility, and simple warm bodies, with it taking place after the SDP split. So the 1981 result is probably a high point and in a situation where he would be running against a leader of the right, he can only really can go down, not up. He wouldn't do as well in the MPs section and he almost certainly wouldn't do as well in the constituencies section. It's possible a leader of the right could seriously fall out with the unions but they'd probably fall roughly similarly to OTL.

And in an open contest under a first outing for the college, the unions and the MPs sympathetic to the left are going to devote their energies to more credible candidates. He wouldn't have won in a 83 contest if he'd kept his seat for example, and not just because the college was becoming more democratised.
 
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