Alternate Wikibox Thread

[Oppo]

The momentum from AOC's primary victory ends up allowing for Nixon to defeat Cuomo by the same margin.

 

[Techdread]

 

[Callan]

Based on a list I did in the PMs and Presidents Thread:

John Connally was the saviour and destruction of Hubert Humphrey and the maker and unmaker of the modern Republican Party. His choice as Humphrey's running mate united Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy and the protestors outside the convention hall in anger but likely put Humphrey over the line in many key Midwestern states - the last time this would be necessary thanks to Birch Bayh's constitutional amendment. But as the slow process of withdrawal from Vietnam faltered and economic crises escalated, relations between president and vice president deteriorated over everything from medicare expansion to aid to South Vietnam. Ultimately, supreme court nominee Shirley Hufstedler was the final straw for the Vice President, who announced that he was leaving the Democratic Party for the Republicans a week after Gerald Ford was sworn in as Speaker of the House.

This move had been long-planned by Connally in co-ordination with Richard Nixon and fellow Republican power brokers, who smoothed his way to the Republican nomination over defective opponents like Ronald Reagan and John Volpe. The slow-motion collapse of the South Vietnam through 1972 doomed doomed Humphrey's chances of re-election. The Connally administration worked quickly to roll back as much as the Johnson-Humphrey legacy as possible, especially on issues of civil rights and the economy. The latter caused him much trouble. Inflation remained cripplingly high and the austerity budgets drawn up by White House economic advisor Alan Greenspan, "short-term pain for long-term gain" led to massive battles with congress. The faltering economy likely did more to make him a one-term president than the emerging corruption investigations, ones that saw the former president convicted of bribery and mail fraud in 1979's "trial of the century".

His successor was not as much of a break from Connally as Democrats wanted. The youngest ever President was a new kind of Democrat, one that accepted that the New Deal had had it's time and that this was the age of new ideas. While achievements such as the Department for the Environment, the Amtrak Express Network and Equal Rights Amendment are still with us, his aggressive pushes for deregulations, tax breaks and welfare cuts alienated, outraged and severely weakened many Democratic Party voter blocs. A return to growth, a popular intervention in the Iranian Civil War and ideological battles in the Republican Party (culminating in a respected, patrician, establishment senator being forced to put a bona-fide culture warrior on his ticket) secured President Brown's re-election. Many more achievements were made in his second term - most notably steering the collapsing Soviet Union towards something resembling a democratic state - but by 1985 his party was hollowed out.

Frank Rizzo was both a symptom and cause of his hollowing out. The tough-talking Mayor of Philadelphia had long sought outrage and terror from liberal commentators and politicians, and had been a regular critic of Jerry Brown even before he formally switched party affiliations in 1978. As middle America grew tired of the Playboy President and his seemingly hands-off approach to race riots and liberal extremists, Rizzo quickly became the darling of the Republican Party and it's frontrunner for the 1984 election. His bombastic rhetoric did not dampen down in office, frequently picking fights with Congress, liberal celebrities and foreign leaders alike, fighting a "war on terror" against left-wing and jihadist extremists across the world. After the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1986 he pushed through a series of bills that empowered law enforcement across America and roll back the frontiers of the state, the latter of which empowered governors sympathetic to Rizzo to clamp down on civil rights protestors and all manner of "subversives" with force. With crime rates falling economy still booming in 1992, Rizzo retired enormously popular.

His successor was far less fortunate. Despite Rizzo's popularity the 1992 election was a near tie for the entire election campaign. The long boom of the 1980s finally faltered and Rizzo Republicans became increasingly impatient with the business-minded president trying to raise taxes to slay the deficit His rapprochement with nations previously considered America's antagonists also rankled, especially as a "pink tide" was seeing socialist leaders rise to power across the global south. But he only became a one-term president when the North-Cape scandal was uncovered. That the Rizzo Administration had illegally sent aid to the South African Apartheid regime during the South African Civil War soon consumed the election, and Borman's furious denials of any knowledge of wrongdoing were not terribly convincing. Which meant that the Democrat widely assumed to be a sacrificial lamb would defeat him decisively.

Elizabeth Hanford had worked as a staffer and cabinet secretary in the Johnson, Humphrey and Brown Administrations, and then had slowly worked her way up the ranks of the Democratic Party and the Senate as a reliable, forward-thinking technocrat. She only won the 1996 nomination because most of the big names had chosen to wait for 2000, and in the vague hope that she might be able to improve the party's issues with women and "Rizzo Democrats". In office Hanford has pushed a series of "Millennium Bills" designed to modernise the American state and its infrastructure, as well as making historic meetings with leaders such as Winnie Mandela and Fidel Castro. As the Republicans continued to feud over Rizzo's legacy, Hanford's problems exist elsewhere. The Russian State has elected a Communist President, and America's leader still thinks she can micromanage the White House.

 

[Catalunya]

Ramsey Clark is such an underused figure. I have a TL in the works where he plays a central role.

 

[Stuyvesant]

After the defeat of the Southron Republic's Conventional Phase and the mass-disenfranchisement of its supporters, many Southron die-hards withdrew into the first of the Second Republic's Parallel Power Systems: the Southron Nationalist Kuklos Khruseos – the Golden Circle.

The Kuklos was dedicated to fighting the US Government, especially in the South, partaking in Terrorist activities against US Army Bases, Union Party State Governments, and Freedmen. Documents later discovered by the German Government following the Europakrieg in Paris found that the French Empire had been funding the Kuklos since its foundation.

After 1879, Kuklos Activities decreased as the Southron Insurgency ended in the face of overwhelming force by the Tweed Administration. It reemerged during the Civil War as the Paramilitary wing of the Second Southron Republic before being subsumed into its army proper during the Interconstitutional Era

 

[Persephone]

After the defeat of the Southron Republic's Conventional Phase and the mass-disenfranchisement of its supporters, many Southron die-hards withdrew into the first of the Second Republic's Parallel Power Systems: the Southron Nationalist Kuklos Khruseos – the Golden Circle.

The Kuklos was dedicated to fighting the US Government, especially in the South, partaking in Terrorist activities against US Army Bases, Union Party State Governments, and Freedmen. Documents later discovered by the German Government following the Europakrieg in Paris found that the French Empire had been funding the Kuklos since its foundation.

After 1879, Kuklos Activities decreased as the Southron Insurgency ended in the face of overwhelming force by the Tweed Administration. It reemerged during the Civil War as the Paramilitary wing of the Second Southron Republic before being subsumed into its army proper during the Interconstitutional Era

>The Tweed Administration
Oh god oh fuck oh no-

 

[Ishan]

Given that I am banned from the other site and I was banned a few years ago for being underage, (my username was Ishan P(not telling the rest of my surname and if you know, please don't post it publically), and various timelines got me interested in potentially writing an AH TL that will probably be better than my original TLs that is probably unreadable and made from an iPad, I might as well start posting here. Here's an infobox I posted here and on Atlas.

____________________​

I played Prime Minister Infinity and I got this.

 

[bd_roberts]

Given that I am banned from the other site and I was banned a few years ago for being underage, (my username was Ishan P(not telling the rest of my surname and if you know, please don't post it publically), and various timelines got me interested in potentially writing an AH TL that will probably be better than my original TLs that is probably unreadable and made from an iPad, I might as well start posting here. Here's an infobox I posted here and on Atlas.

____________________​

I played Prime Minister Infinity and I got this.

Well that's spooky, I spent the evening making this similar infobox!

 

[gentleman biaggi]

i can’t like this it hurts too much

 

[Comrade Izaac]

i can’t like this it hurts too much

ong just reading the box gave me -100 psychic damage

 

[Callan]

RAS British Airways is a British regional airline operating domestic services across the Commonwealth of Great Britain and Ireland. Founded in 1934 as Railway Air Services, the airline was originally founded as a joint venture by the five major British railway companies and Imperial Airways to complement the latter's international services. Under the 1947 Aviation Act the airline, now RAS - British Airways, was designated a monopoly over domestic air services to complement Commonwealth Airways's monopoly over international services.

Since then the airline has taken many different forms in terms of ownership and scope. As of 2021, the airline is jointly owned by the British Transport Commission, a holding company owned by the Ministry of Transport and Communications, and a consortium of privately owned airlines dominated by Commonwealth Airways, with which it has codesharing and joint-ticketing arrangements. The primary remit of RAS is to provide regional services that would not necessarily generate profit, and is allowed to dominate certain domestic trunk routes (such as the London - Dublin shuttle) to subsidise loss-making routes that are deemed to be in the public interest.

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[Comrade TruthTeller]

Here is Cummings' wikibox in Time for Real Change, which I'm sharing here because of how surprisingly well the portrait turned out and how extremely happy I am with the way it did.

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[Comrade TruthTeller]

 

[Bolt451]

View attachment 42494

Yikes, it going even worse for Labour (2019 wise I mean, I actually quite like Lisa Nandy)

 

[Stuyvesant]

Lyman Trumbull was elected the American President in 1876 in the aftermath of the Panic of 1873 on a for-the-time radical platform that was immediately hamstrung by an American Congress that was ironically controlled by his own Union Party. This was because the Party as a whole, mostly funded by Big Business, had no stomach for Trumbull’s pseudo-collectivist economics. This deadlock exasperated the already existing Great Depression, which led to pay cuts across the nation, this in turn led to a nationwide strike, calling for Unionization.

This “National Strike” stoked fears in many of the nation of a “New 1848” with many Governors calling up their National Guards to force an end to the Strike. George W. McCrary personally recommended Trumbull nationalize the National Guard to end the strike with Federal Troops. President Trumbull refused, claiming it would be a violation of the strikers’ Civil Rights, and advised the railroads to instead negotiate with the strikers.

Vice President Tweed contacted the Party’s Congressional leaders to begin drawing up impeachment charges, claiming that the President was aiding and abetting the strikers [Article I], and that damages in each state he refused to nationalize the Guard in was dereliction of duty. [Articles II-XIII] The fact that the evidence used has since been found to be fraudulent, and the speed with which the impeachment proceeded has led to historians have dubbed it a Coup.

The impeachment has often been considered the true Beginning of the Second Era of Good Feelings. The subsequent Tweed Presidency is also the beginning of the end of American Democracy, and as Blythe said in his seminal work on the topic: “Was the beginning of the end for the United States”.

 

[Comrade TruthTeller]

Yikes, it going even worse for Labour (2019 wise I mean, I actually quite like Lisa Nandy)

It's actually Nandy making good on her pledges and expelling people (I only included 5 because I wasn't sure of a hard number)

 

[Blackentheborg]

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[ES1702]

New Beginnings (Part 1 of 3)

"...Margaret Jane Joachim, Liberal-SDP Alliance, fifteen thousand three-hundred and forty-five...Laurence Gregory Spiegel, Labour Party candidate, nine thousand eight-hundred and ninety-eight...Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Conservative Party candidate, fourteen thousand one-hundred and twelve...and that the said Margaret Jane Joachim has been duly elected to serve as a Member of Parliament for the said constituency."

Mrs Thatcher's defeat in Finchley in the early hours of 7th October 1983 was merely an illustration of the Conservative Party's fortunes across the United Kingdom in Election 83. Though the economy had begun to rebound, the four-year experiment of monetarism and neoliberalism under Thatcher's watch had not impressed the British people. Sharp rises in unemployment, a steep drop in manufacturing output and riots all contributed to a sense that the decline that Thatcher had railed so hard against during the last Labour government was far from being reversed and, if anything, was being accelerated under her leadership.

The rise of the Liberal-SDP Alliance from 1981 onwards had caught most by surprise. Disillusionment with Labour under their new left-wing leader Michael Foot and anger with the Conservative government had at last provided a path through for the Liberals, now joined by the fledgling SDP led by former Labour minister Roy Jenkins. Strong local election results for the Alliance in both 1982 and 1983 had caused nerves in both of the two traditional main parties and had caused Thatcher to listen to advice from some of her ministers to delay the election she had initially planned to call for June until October, though still ignored the advice of others to push it into 1984.

The momentum that the Alliance had gained seemed almost unstoppable and by the time Thatcher visited the Queen at Buckingham Palace on 12th September to request the dissolution of Parliament for an election on 6th October. The combined forces of David Steel and Roy Jenkins gave the Alliance an advantage of five points over both Labour and the Conservatives at the opening of the campaign - were the polls to end up as the result it indicated a weak Labour minority and a much depleted Conservative Party but still comfortably the second largest party in the House of Commons. As the three-week campaign wore on, however, the Alliance gained more steam thanks to a lovechild scandal involving a Tory minister, Cecil Parkinson, breaking just days before polling day and scepticism of Labour's manifesto.

By the time election day arrived few anticipated the political earthquake that was about to strike in Britain. Most observers, both domestically and abroad, had expected the Alliance to perhaps win the largest number of votes but for Labour to end up in government while being substantially below the 326 seats needed for a majority. Mrs Thatcher's Conservatives would be lucky to reach 200 seats, let alone 326. The BBC produced a forecast shortly after polls closed and it revealed that Labour would emerge, as most had expected, as the largest party on 276 seats - up slightly on the notional result from 1979. It was the Alliance, however, that was the big story - surging from 9 seats in 1979 for the Liberals to a forecast total of 249. The Conservatives would collapse to just 102 seats - lucky to keep themselves over 100.

The result from Torbay, the first constituency to declare on election night, provided the first evidence that something extraordinary was happening. Torbay had been held by the Conservatives with a 21,000 vote majority in 1979 and they had only failed to win the seat or it's predecessors three times since 1832 - the last time being in 1923. Sixty years later in 1983 it went yellow again, with the Liberals gaining the seat by a comfortable majority of almost 6,000. The Tory vote dropped to it's lowest-ever of 37.7%.

All over the country, Conservative seat after Conservative seat fell - all but 20 of them going to the Alliance. By the time of Mrs Thatcher's defeat in Finchley it was clear that the Conservatives had been trounced and that, indeed, Labour had not in fact reaped the rewards. Labour, too, suffered loses albeit negligible ones especially compared to the scale of the Tory losses. The Alliance had emerged as the largest group in the House of Commons by the end of counting, with 295 seats. They had also secured almost a three million vote lead, achieving 38.7% of the vote. Within the Alliance it was the Liberals who emerged as the largest party and it was David Steel who was summoned to the Palace at lunchtime on 7th October to be asked by the Queen to form a new government after Mrs Thatcher's resignation.

​

 

[ES1702]

New Beginnings (Part 1 of 3)

New Beginnings (Part 2 of 3)

"Alliance Avalanche Sends Tories Packing" - The Times, Monday 18th June 1984

Less than a year after the general election, voters across the United Kingdom went to the polls again - this time to elect their 81 members to the European Parliament. In 1979, the inaugural election for the European Community's new democratically-elected institution were won handsomely by the Conservatives - 48.4% of the vote and 60 seats. Only Labour and the Scottish National Party won seats in Great Britain other than the Conservatives, with the almost 13% of the vote won by the Liberals delivering them 0 seats under the first-past-the-post system.

Prime Minister David Steel and Deputy Prime Minister Roy Jenkins, himself as former President of the European Commission, still couldn't quite believe the extent to which the political landscape in Britain had changed over the last twelve months. For all the party leaders, including the new Conservative leader Geoffrey Howe, the adjustment to the new political reality was not easy. The European elections on 14th June came just a few weeks after the local elections. Labour, who had been convinced to stick with Michael Foot as their leader in case of a snap second election caused by the Alliance minority, managed to come out on top in those and were confident of improving on their disappointing 1979 showing in the European election though were all but resigned to accepting second place behind the Alliance.

Voting took place on 14th June but results were not announced until the evening on 17th June, in order to allow voting to take place across other European Community member states. When the results were revealed, though, it gave unambiguous proof that the events of October 1983 were not a one-off. The Alliance came from a base of under 13% and 0 seats to win the election decisively with almost 40% of the vote and over 50 seats. Labour were able to improve on 1979, while the Conservatives collapsed to just 21% and were reduced to 1 seat - drawing level with the DUP, SDLP and UUP in Northern Ireland. The SNP lost their single seat.

Turnout was 35.5% - an increase of over 3% but by far the lowest in Europe still and it was criticised harshly by both Steel and Jenkins as staunch pro-Europeans.

The Alliance's victories across the length and breadth of Great Britain spoke to their new position as a national party and a party that could appeal to a broad range of voters, and still being seen as a protest vote for some despite them now being the governing party. From Bedfordshire South to Devon to Leeds, London South, Greater Manchester East and the Highlands, the Alliance had succeeded in forming an electoral coalition that could deliver results and they had now done it twice.

For the media, the results fuelled the constant talk of an election. On just 295 seats the Alliance was often reliant on the goodwill of the Conservatives to get through some landmark legislation and avoid defeats on votes of confidence - both determined to avoid creating chaos that could bring the government down and allow Michael Foot and his Labour Party to walk into Number 10 by accident. But it was fair to say that having won their second national election and with Labour showing few signs of a strong improvement and the Conservatives still lingering way behind in third place, there were whispers beginning to emerge from Alliance MPs and ministers themselves about it being a matter of when, not if, David Steel and Roy Jenkins would decide to pull the plug on their minority and go to the country.

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[ES1702]

New Beginnings (Part 3 of 3)

"Good afternoon. I would like to confirm to you that this morning I saw Her Majesty the Queen and sought her permission for a dissolution of Parliament and a general election on 25th October. I am pleased to say that Her Majesty has given her permission for that to go ahead."

Reassured by the local and European election results in the spring and a string of strong polling results through the summer, David Steel and Roy Jenkins met together at Chequers in late September to agree that the time was right to pull the plug on their minority government and to go to the country to seek a majority government. Standing together outside of Number 10 on a mild and damp 1st October, they set out their case to the people - saying that while they had made some progress over previous 12 historic months, in order to achieve real and lasting change they needed a majority - or at least get much closer to one.

That it was the Alliance in a minority and now asking for a majority was still an absurdity for many people. The pace of change in British politics had been so rapid that just 12 months on from when Margaret Thatcher looked still to be in with a chance of holding 200 seats for the Conservatives and when Michael Foot looked likely to be heading for power at the head of a minority government, it was now a question of how much further Geoffrey Howe's Conservatives could drop and how far the Alliance could advance at the expense of the Tories and Labour for Election 84.

Geoffrey Howe insisted that the Conservatives were not out of the race for power and that the volatility of politics and the tight margins in dozens of constituencies made it a theoretical possibility that they could put themselves back in a strong position. However, almost everyone - including most Conservative MPs and candidates - acknowledged that their campaign would be about mitigating potential losses rather than striving for gains. The mood of the British people had softened towards the Conservatives over the last year, but with the Alliance government proving popular it was of no help to them at all.

Labour was in a rather awkward situation going into the election. Their losses of just 10 seats a year before and the looming prospect of an imminent second election had allowed Michael Foot to stay on as leader - leading the party to positive performances in May and June's elections. But it was still clear that the public were weary of the prospect of Foot as Prime Minister and while the national Labour campaign was focused on laying a path for Labour to make gains and possibly go into government, at the local level candidates knew that they were playing a defensive game in this election.

The polls at the start of the campaign showed the Alliance on course for gains, but it was touch and go for the 326 for a majority. By the end, however, the polls had shifted more decisively in their favour and they looked on course for a small majority of possibly 2-20 seats. By the time that polling day had arrived on 25th October it was a nervous wait for both Steel and Jenkins as they waited to see if their gamble had paid off and if they would make history yet again.

"He who dares wins," is what Jenkins is reported to have told Steel on the morning of 26th October as they arrived back in Downing Street together. Armed with a larger than expected majority of 36 seats, the Alliance could now embark on a raft of radical reforms in Britain and ensure that Election 84 would be the last held under first-past-the-post. It was also at this stage, it would later be said, that the two men agreed to begin the process of merging the Liberals and the SDP into a single party united under a single vision.

For the Conservatives, the election marked another low point for them - falling to under 27% of the vote and barely keeping their head above 50 seats. Labour suffered a small reduction in their share of the vote, but their number of seats dropped by another 20 and marked the end of the road for Michael Foot's leadership. In the space of 12 months, the right-wing experiment in the Conservative Party and the left-wing experiment in the Labour Party had both been decisively rejected by the British people on two occasions in favour of what seemed to be a new liberal and social democratic consensus forged by an alliance of a party with deep historical roots and a fledgling new force.

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