So, for this hypothetical scenario, let's say that ITTL, the United Empire Party- bankrolled by press barons Lord Rothermere (the hilarously appropriately named Harold Harmsworth, who owned the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Evening News, Sunday Dispatch and several other publications, who was at the time the 3rd wealthiest man in Britain- whom Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe had targeted during his three-month sojourn in Monte Carlo in 1927, and successfully convinced that the defeated nations had been badly treated by the Treaty of Versailles, with a group of active monarchists having even offered the crown of Hungary to Lord Rothermere himself, an idea that he purported seriously considered for a long time, and which was a contributing factor towards his whole-hearted open support for the Nazis and Fascism) and Lord Beaverbrook (owner of the Daily Express and Evening Standard), with Neville Chamberlain having been their favored figurehead (and successfully risen to power IOTL primarily due to their efforts)- proves even more successful, winning all four of the by-elections in London which it'd contested IOTL rather than just the first two.
IOTL, Neville Chamberlain told Baldwin that 'his research' (i.e, political backers) suggested that the Conservatives would lose the by-election if he remained leader; with the Daily Telegraph having switched its allegiances to support the UEP, and only The Times having remained loyal to Baldwin and the Conservative Party throughout. On hearing the news Baldwin had decided to resign, but at the last minute William Bridgeman, a close friend and former Home Secretary, persuaded him to postpone his decision until after the Westminster by-election, which the Tories wound up winning after the media's personal attacks on Baldwin had backfired. ITTL though, Baldwin's greater political losses DO lead to his resignation in March 1931, and his replacement as PM by Neville Chamberlain (more than 6yrs earlier than IOTL, and 'in the pocket' of the press barons and 'big business' which brought him to power in a borderline coup, especially of Harold Harmsworth), and the re-integration of the UEP into the mainstream Conservative Party.
This re-integration also sees the Tories adopt and enact most of the far-right policies which the UEP and Britain's oligarchs had lobbied for- including even lower taxation on the wealthy, imposing markedly higher tariffs on goods from outside the British Empire (along with offering preferential trade terms, with diminished tariffs, between countries within British Empire, to dissuade them from pursuing full independence), diminished spending on health and unemployment, and a more active and aggressive suppression of independence movements, especially in India- Lord Beaverbrook arguing as early as 1929 that "the Government is trying to unite Mohammedan and Hindu. It will never succeed. There will be no amalgamation between these two. There is only one way to govern India. And that is the way laid down by the ancient Romans... that is Divide and Rule".
The UEP's leaders had actively supported the Muslim League's calls to partition British India along religious lines, and they'd advocated doing so as soon as possible, as a prelude to awarding Muslim India and Hindu India Dominion status separately. And the bulk of the UEP's own draft proposal for the Statute of Westminster 1931 would be adopted and advocated by Oswald Mosley in his Mosley Memorandum IOTL, in return for Harmsworth's endorsement of his Fascist 'New Party'. Which if implemented, as most of it would've been ITTL (or attempted to be by TTL's British government), wouldn't have increased the sovereignty of the self-governing Dominions of the British Empire from the United Kingdom at all, but would instead have predominantly focused upon the progressive reduction of customs duties and the establishment of a true customs union across the British Empire, with the pound sterling as its universal currency, precipitating the reformation of the British Empire and its Dominions into an increasingly autarkic trading bloc, with a Keynesian Corporatist economic and political system (emulating that of Mussolini's Fascist Italy), which would still be governed over by the British government in London.
And in turn, this greatly increases the impetus behind the establishment of the Marxist left-wing 'Socialist League' faction of the Labour Party in 1932, led primarily by Stafford Cripps, G.D.H. Cole and Ernest Bevin. As such, the Socialist League garners considerably more support, which in turn invokes even more reactionary backlash from TTL's Harmsworth-backed oligarchic Conservative party than it did from Baldwin's Conservative Party IOTL- such that, when the Socialist League signs its letter in April 1933 urging the Labour Party to form a 'United Socialist Front 'against fascism with political groups such as the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Independent Labour Party, rather than the idea being summarily rejected at that year's party conference as it was IOTL, the idea invokes widespread, heated debate, and meets with widespread approval.
This approval among the party's members, and its supporters, for the establishment of a 'United Socialist Front' increases further still with the rise of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany, as well as the partitioning of India to establish not only the Buddhist Dominion of Burma, but an Islamic Dominion of Pakistan as well in TTL's Government of India Act 1935. And the ever-more tumultuous ideological struggle between TTL's markedly more Fascist-aligned Conservative Party and more openly Communist-aligned Labour Party, both pushing each other farther to the far right and far left respectively, comes to a head in 1936- with TTL's Harmsworth-backed Tory government (which would still most likely be led by Neville Chamberlain, ironically enough) actively providing military support to the military uprising in Spain against the left-wing Popular Front government, rather than merely sympathizing with them as they did IOTL, and acting in concert with Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Salazar's Portugal.
Spain's prime minister José Giral still sends his request to Leon Blum, the prime minister of the left-wing Popular Front government in France, for aircraft and armaments in July 1936, with the French government deciding to help and agreeing to send 20 bombers and other arms on 22nd July. But unlike IOTL, the even more aggressive and personal criticism of this move by the right-wing press in Britain isn't enough to convince Blum to backtrack and withdraw France's military aid to the Republican Peoples' Army- quite the contrary. With the previous few years of the British government loudly advocating the return of Alsace-Lorraine to Nazi Germany having greatly eroded Great Britain's standing with the French government, and pushed the French a fair bit further to the Left as well (though not so much as the British Labour Party), France's popular support for, and arms sales to, the Spanish Republicans only increases further as a result.
And super-charged by the widespread outrage at the government's policy in Spain, the Socialist League successfully effectively takes control of the British Labour Party, and said 'United Socialist Front' is established. In late 1936, this United Socialist Front joins forces with various trade councils and trade union branches to organize a large-scale 'Hunger March' on London (as IOTL, but with the whole machinery of the Labour Party being mobilized for the Hunger March and its attendant activities, rather than just its Socialist League sub-faction, making it far larger than it was IOTL, even larger than the National Hunger March of 1932- which itself was a bit larger than IOTL, with even more hysterical and alarmist media coverage of it, and a more brutal police dispersal of the rioting protestors, with several more injuries and some deaths).
And when these marchers reaches London in October 1936, with a crowd of over 200,000 people again meeting in Hyde Park, the even more hysterical portrayal of their march by the British media, and in the British parliament- as a fully-fledged Communist Uprising seeking to storm Buckingham Palace and overthrow the Monarchy- sees the British government using force to stop their anti-fascist petition from reaching parliament. And rather than merely calling upon the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to mobilize the largest police force he could, to be deployed against the marchers and their supporters (as they'd done in 1932), TTL's British government instead institutes martial law, in a manner akin to the Reichstag Fire Decree in Nazi Germany- mobilizing and calling in the Territorial Army to repel the United Socialist Front's Hunger Marchers by any means necessary, and summarily arresting the leaders and members of the USF (including those of the Labour Party).
This effectively eliminating the Tories' opposition, criminalizing the Labour Party along with all other participants in the United Socialist Front (including the trade unionists), and renders TTL's Britain a fully-fledged Fascist Axis member from this point onwards; with TTL's more leftist France (along with Poland, Greece and Mexico) being more closely aligned with the Soviet Union. However, even in spite of Axis Britain's military aid to the Nationalists, without the French being constrained by their obligation to adhere to a non-intervention agreement, and the continued appeasement of Nazi Germany (both of which were conditions imposed upon them by the British to retain their allegiance IOTL), TTL's Spanish Civil War culminates in a full-fledged French military intervention against a potential Nationalist victory in Spain, with the French invading via Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, and Spanish Morocco in early 1937, and swiftly lifting the Siege of Madrid.
So, what would happen next ITTL? Do you think that TTL's fascist (but even more isolationist) Great Britain, or any of the other fascist nations, would attempt to militarily intervene in the Spanish Civil War themselves against Popular Front France's own military intervention, and risk escalating the conflict into WW2 (barring some other shenanigans like a French-supported Spanish Republican assault against Gibraltar's naval dockyard and airfield, which'd be actively ferrying armaments and troops across the straits for Franco's Nationalists? And how likely or unlikely do you reckon that such an 'Attack on Gibraltar' would be ITTL)? If and when a bonafide WW2 does still happen ITTL, when and where do you think it'd be mostly likely to kick off? And how do you suspect TTL's WW2 would probably pan out?
IOTL, Neville Chamberlain told Baldwin that 'his research' (i.e, political backers) suggested that the Conservatives would lose the by-election if he remained leader; with the Daily Telegraph having switched its allegiances to support the UEP, and only The Times having remained loyal to Baldwin and the Conservative Party throughout. On hearing the news Baldwin had decided to resign, but at the last minute William Bridgeman, a close friend and former Home Secretary, persuaded him to postpone his decision until after the Westminster by-election, which the Tories wound up winning after the media's personal attacks on Baldwin had backfired. ITTL though, Baldwin's greater political losses DO lead to his resignation in March 1931, and his replacement as PM by Neville Chamberlain (more than 6yrs earlier than IOTL, and 'in the pocket' of the press barons and 'big business' which brought him to power in a borderline coup, especially of Harold Harmsworth), and the re-integration of the UEP into the mainstream Conservative Party.
This re-integration also sees the Tories adopt and enact most of the far-right policies which the UEP and Britain's oligarchs had lobbied for- including even lower taxation on the wealthy, imposing markedly higher tariffs on goods from outside the British Empire (along with offering preferential trade terms, with diminished tariffs, between countries within British Empire, to dissuade them from pursuing full independence), diminished spending on health and unemployment, and a more active and aggressive suppression of independence movements, especially in India- Lord Beaverbrook arguing as early as 1929 that "the Government is trying to unite Mohammedan and Hindu. It will never succeed. There will be no amalgamation between these two. There is only one way to govern India. And that is the way laid down by the ancient Romans... that is Divide and Rule".
The UEP's leaders had actively supported the Muslim League's calls to partition British India along religious lines, and they'd advocated doing so as soon as possible, as a prelude to awarding Muslim India and Hindu India Dominion status separately. And the bulk of the UEP's own draft proposal for the Statute of Westminster 1931 would be adopted and advocated by Oswald Mosley in his Mosley Memorandum IOTL, in return for Harmsworth's endorsement of his Fascist 'New Party'. Which if implemented, as most of it would've been ITTL (or attempted to be by TTL's British government), wouldn't have increased the sovereignty of the self-governing Dominions of the British Empire from the United Kingdom at all, but would instead have predominantly focused upon the progressive reduction of customs duties and the establishment of a true customs union across the British Empire, with the pound sterling as its universal currency, precipitating the reformation of the British Empire and its Dominions into an increasingly autarkic trading bloc, with a Keynesian Corporatist economic and political system (emulating that of Mussolini's Fascist Italy), which would still be governed over by the British government in London.
And in turn, this greatly increases the impetus behind the establishment of the Marxist left-wing 'Socialist League' faction of the Labour Party in 1932, led primarily by Stafford Cripps, G.D.H. Cole and Ernest Bevin. As such, the Socialist League garners considerably more support, which in turn invokes even more reactionary backlash from TTL's Harmsworth-backed oligarchic Conservative party than it did from Baldwin's Conservative Party IOTL- such that, when the Socialist League signs its letter in April 1933 urging the Labour Party to form a 'United Socialist Front 'against fascism with political groups such as the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Independent Labour Party, rather than the idea being summarily rejected at that year's party conference as it was IOTL, the idea invokes widespread, heated debate, and meets with widespread approval.
This approval among the party's members, and its supporters, for the establishment of a 'United Socialist Front' increases further still with the rise of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany, as well as the partitioning of India to establish not only the Buddhist Dominion of Burma, but an Islamic Dominion of Pakistan as well in TTL's Government of India Act 1935. And the ever-more tumultuous ideological struggle between TTL's markedly more Fascist-aligned Conservative Party and more openly Communist-aligned Labour Party, both pushing each other farther to the far right and far left respectively, comes to a head in 1936- with TTL's Harmsworth-backed Tory government (which would still most likely be led by Neville Chamberlain, ironically enough) actively providing military support to the military uprising in Spain against the left-wing Popular Front government, rather than merely sympathizing with them as they did IOTL, and acting in concert with Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Salazar's Portugal.
Spain's prime minister José Giral still sends his request to Leon Blum, the prime minister of the left-wing Popular Front government in France, for aircraft and armaments in July 1936, with the French government deciding to help and agreeing to send 20 bombers and other arms on 22nd July. But unlike IOTL, the even more aggressive and personal criticism of this move by the right-wing press in Britain isn't enough to convince Blum to backtrack and withdraw France's military aid to the Republican Peoples' Army- quite the contrary. With the previous few years of the British government loudly advocating the return of Alsace-Lorraine to Nazi Germany having greatly eroded Great Britain's standing with the French government, and pushed the French a fair bit further to the Left as well (though not so much as the British Labour Party), France's popular support for, and arms sales to, the Spanish Republicans only increases further as a result.
And super-charged by the widespread outrage at the government's policy in Spain, the Socialist League successfully effectively takes control of the British Labour Party, and said 'United Socialist Front' is established. In late 1936, this United Socialist Front joins forces with various trade councils and trade union branches to organize a large-scale 'Hunger March' on London (as IOTL, but with the whole machinery of the Labour Party being mobilized for the Hunger March and its attendant activities, rather than just its Socialist League sub-faction, making it far larger than it was IOTL, even larger than the National Hunger March of 1932- which itself was a bit larger than IOTL, with even more hysterical and alarmist media coverage of it, and a more brutal police dispersal of the rioting protestors, with several more injuries and some deaths).
And when these marchers reaches London in October 1936, with a crowd of over 200,000 people again meeting in Hyde Park, the even more hysterical portrayal of their march by the British media, and in the British parliament- as a fully-fledged Communist Uprising seeking to storm Buckingham Palace and overthrow the Monarchy- sees the British government using force to stop their anti-fascist petition from reaching parliament. And rather than merely calling upon the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to mobilize the largest police force he could, to be deployed against the marchers and their supporters (as they'd done in 1932), TTL's British government instead institutes martial law, in a manner akin to the Reichstag Fire Decree in Nazi Germany- mobilizing and calling in the Territorial Army to repel the United Socialist Front's Hunger Marchers by any means necessary, and summarily arresting the leaders and members of the USF (including those of the Labour Party).
This effectively eliminating the Tories' opposition, criminalizing the Labour Party along with all other participants in the United Socialist Front (including the trade unionists), and renders TTL's Britain a fully-fledged Fascist Axis member from this point onwards; with TTL's more leftist France (along with Poland, Greece and Mexico) being more closely aligned with the Soviet Union. However, even in spite of Axis Britain's military aid to the Nationalists, without the French being constrained by their obligation to adhere to a non-intervention agreement, and the continued appeasement of Nazi Germany (both of which were conditions imposed upon them by the British to retain their allegiance IOTL), TTL's Spanish Civil War culminates in a full-fledged French military intervention against a potential Nationalist victory in Spain, with the French invading via Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, and Spanish Morocco in early 1937, and swiftly lifting the Siege of Madrid.
So, what would happen next ITTL? Do you think that TTL's fascist (but even more isolationist) Great Britain, or any of the other fascist nations, would attempt to militarily intervene in the Spanish Civil War themselves against Popular Front France's own military intervention, and risk escalating the conflict into WW2 (barring some other shenanigans like a French-supported Spanish Republican assault against Gibraltar's naval dockyard and airfield, which'd be actively ferrying armaments and troops across the straits for Franco's Nationalists? And how likely or unlikely do you reckon that such an 'Attack on Gibraltar' would be ITTL)? If and when a bonafide WW2 does still happen ITTL, when and where do you think it'd be mostly likely to kick off? And how do you suspect TTL's WW2 would probably pan out?
