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WI: Benn's Alternative Economic Strategy becomes Labour Party policy

Would a Bennite government also seek an exit from NATO and nuclear disarmament?

When it comes to the AES proposal, I know the economic measures were intended to be temporary, but I can easily seeing them being extended again and again, as once you go full autarkist reintegration into the world economy involves a lot of pain (as the former Eastern Bloc found out after capitalism was readopted, and what Greece would have found out had it gone Full Grexit and protectionism).

Frankly, I expect a long-term AES would lead to a prolonged stagnation for the British economy, with relatively low unemployment due to protectionism, but with the rest of Western Europe, the US, Japan etc. powering ahead of it incomewise. The closest example I can think of is modern Belarus compared to Poland, the Czech Republic, etc.

All in all, not the most rosy scenario.
 
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@Comisario - any prospective Italian party leaders/PMs who might support Benn’s AES from the outside?
I don’t think I would be wrong in saying that there’s essentially none. The only place from where support would come from would be the PCI, but they were already reforming their attitude to the Common Market by the mid-1960s and had basically come to terms with the institutions of Europe by the time Berlinguer was in power. Specifically, the trade benefits and regional development money was so important to Italy that its parties could not fathom life outside of it.

Because the AES is built on a rejection of the EEC, I think Italian politicians would actually be the ones holding the door open and waving goodbye to the British. I can’t think of any potential Italian leader who would back Benn up and risk creating rifts inside the Community.
 
Frankly, I expect a long-term AES would lead to a prolonged stagnation for the British economy, with relatively low unemployment due to protectionism, but with the rest of Western Europe, the US, Japan etc. powering ahead of it incomewise. The closest example I can think of is modern Belarus compared to Poland, the Czech Republic, etc.

All in all, not the most rosy scenario.

That seems most likely to me as well. And then we get a 'brain drain' too.

However, with that whole "relatively low unemployment" part, protection of traditional jobs, and (presumably) democracy and civil liberties, does the AES start to look attractive to the Eastern block as an alternative way to reform? What looks drab to wealthy nations might look like a nice stable way to be for others. The UK might finally be moving away to, I dunno, zeoliberalism or turboliberalism or lost-galaxy-liberalism, while the AES is making its way across the world.

(And then when there's an inevitable economic downturn, New-AES advocates!)
 
I think the starting premise of this thread is wrong on two counts: Heath winning in '74 doesn't offer a very satisfactory point of divergence away from the post-war consensus in either party.

Heath winning a majority and then being deposed Because Reasons is... odd. Now, expectations management was poor going into that election, and a lot of neutral media types thought, a bit similar to 2017, that we were headed for a big fat Tory majority; but if Heath actually returns with a majority, he's going to be okay for the remainder of the parliament. Quite apart from the mechanism not actually being there to depose a Tory leader, even in the more permissive environment in the decades since it's a hard, hard thing to outright depose a PM. Mrs T, after all, got chucked on essentially a technicality of the rules, not on losing per se.

A political point, perhaps, but I think that parliament is better for Heath on a majority than Wilson's OTL fag-end government. The Industrial Relations Act, probably in a modified form, and prices and incomes continuing, and the government having more room for manoeuvre on inflation than Labour had, that likely means no IMF; but Heath's boom and the global situation, those are big drag factors.

No mythology around the unions bringing down the gubmint, that's a pretty huge divergence away from Thatcherism.

Equally, in Labour, you're dealing with a situation which is much less fraught than five years later in OTL. Five years less of the left growth we got after 1970; and I think without his loyalist Cabinet minister experience, Foot is either unviable or at least not the favourite in the subsequent leadership election. Most likely it's Callaghan. Benn? Forget it.

I'm surprised that there's not any kind of context here around Benn's AES being in reaction to a crisis of Labour as a social democratic force, not any kind of reaction to the right. That doesn't happen ITTL. He's still going to be arguing for command economics etc, but the autarkic weirdness, that's not really going to be an issue without Labour presiding over the county under siege from global capital IMF loan.

And I think that's the route down the boulevard people want here; Just as the failure of the 1970-1974 gubmint was a formative thing in the Tories, I think that the more exposure Labour has in government during economic crisis offers the most potential for some kind of big Labour break with the post-war consensus.

Labour being in power for the entirety of a much more crunchy seventies, that's maybe the route here.

I agree with what you said about there needing to be a wider shift elsewhere - one of the massive props to Thatcherism IOTL was the presence of Reagan doing Very Similar Things in America which made everything she was doing seem sensible,

I don't think this is true, and I think the goals involved, the focuses, were actually pretty different.

The big first term move and one of the biggest, most experimental - and IMO, worst - aspects of the Thatcher gubmint, though it's elided in mythology today, namely the 1981 budget, that's completely independent of the Gipper's neophyte administration.

Just as in OTL with Healey-period Labour, there was in any case the beginnings of a mood-shift in the Dems; Carter ran a very moderate, deregulating administration; and Jerry in California had, after a tax revolt, taken up the mantle of being a tax-cutter.

There's a chance that if Ford had won in 1976, a Dem who wins in 1980 is either a full-blown Down Under-style neoliberal type, and at minimum, they're going to be heavily pressured by that tendency.
 
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Labour being in power for the entirety of a much more crunchy seventies, that's maybe the route here.
One idea might be the Tories winning 1964 which leads to a Labour landslide in 1969. A Wilson defeat might embolden the Labour Right more though, so maybe Brown wins 1963? After that, the failure of the consensus in the early/mid-70s combined with party-pressure from below preventing an application to the EEC (or Wilson gets rejected) toxifies the Left/Right split further? If Wilson asks for the IMF loan, Callaghan is the one stained with asking global capital for a bailout, Healey alienates one too many MPs, and Foot comes out on top?

There's a chance that if Ford had won in 1976, a Dem who wins in 1980 is either a full-blown Down Under-style neoliberal type, and at minimum, they're going to be heavily pressured by that tendency.
A moon-beam carves a balanced-budget amendment onto the Constitution.
 
A moon-beam carves a balanced-budget amendment onto the Constitution.
When I first joined the AH community I was working on this big and bloated TL about President Moonbeam that never came to fruition (thank god), but I found out during my research that a few members of Reagan's kitchen cabinet (IIRC it was Joe Coors and William Smith) championed his balanced budgeting austerity while Governor, which is funny considering that the majority of them were diehard members of the California GOP.
 
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