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Lists of Heads of Government and Heads of State

Revamped version of an earlier idea.

Presidents of the United Arab Republic

1959 - 1983: Mohamed Naguib / Abdul Salam Arif (Arab Socialist Union) [1]
1961 def: Unopposed
1966 def: Unopposed
1971 def: Unopposed
1976 def: Unopposed
1981 def: Unopposed

1983 - 1990: Abdul Salam Arif / Ali Abdullah Saleh (Arab Socialist Union) [2]
1986 def: Unopposed
1990: Ali Abdullah Saleh / vacant (Arab Socialist Union) [3]
1990 Constitutional Referendum - 86% YES, 14% NO
1990 - 1991: Ali Abdullah Saleh / Abdelaziz Bouteflika (Nonpartisan)
1991 - 1996: Abderrahmane Youssofi / Talal al-Saud (Reformist Democratic Party)
[4]
1991 def: Ma'mun al-Hudaybi / Ayad al-Sammari (Muslim Brotherhood), Ali Abdullah Saleh / Abdelaziz Bouteflika (Nonpartisan)
1996 - 2001: Muhammad Surur / Abdullah ibn Husayn al-Ahmar (Muslim Brotherhood) [5]
1996 def: Abderrahmane Yousoffi / Talal al-Saud (Reformist Democratic Party), Safwan al-Qudsi / Mohammad al-Shaar (National Progressive Party)
2001 - 2007: Ayman Nour / Mustafa Barghouti (Reformist Democratic Party) [6]
2001 def: Muhammad Surur / Abdullah ibn Husayn al-Ahmar (Muslim Brotherhood), Assem Qanso / Mohammad Younis al-Ahmed (National Progressive Party), Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr / Nouri al-Maliki (Islamic Dawa Party), Masoud Barzani / Rowsch Shaways (Kurdish Democratic Party)
2006 def: Saad el-Katatni / Mohammad Farouk Tayfour (Muslim Brotherhood), Isam al-Qadi / Sayed Abdal Aal (National Progressive Party), Hassan al Saffar / Amina al-Sadr (Islamic Dawa Party), Masoud Barzani / Rowsch Shaways (Kurdish Democratic Party)

2007 - 2011: Ayman Nour / Ahmad Shafik (Reformist Democratic Party)
2011 - 0000: Mohammad Farouk Tayfour / Ali Bapir (Muslim Brotherhood)
[7]
2011 def: Hisham Bastawisy / Khaled Mohieddin (National Progressive Party), Ahmad Shafik / Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi (Reformist Democratic Party), Khaled Ali / Mehdi Joumaa (Freedom Party), Nimr al-Nimr / Suhbi al-Tufayli (Islamic Dawa Party), Masoud Barzani / Nechirvan Barzani (Kurdish Democratic Party)
2016 def: Mustafa Barghouti / Khaled Ali (Reformist Democratic Party), Fayiz Ismail / Saleh al-Mutlaq (National Progressive Party),
Nimr al-Nimr / Suhbi al-Tufayli (Islamic Dawa Party), Ahmed Chalabi / various (Arabian National Congress), Nechirvan Barzani / Vala Fareed (Kurdish Democratic Party)

Prime Ministers of the United Arab Republic

1959 - 1965: Ali Sabri (Arab Socialist Union)
1960 def: Unopposed
1965 def: Unopposed

1965 - 1973: Abd al-Rahman al-Bazzaz (Arab Socialist Union)
1970 def: Unopposed
1973 - 1983: Ali Abdullah Saleh (Arab Socialist Union)
1975 def: Unopposed
1980 def: Unopposed

1983 - 1991: Abdul Aziz Abdul Ghani (Arab Socialist Union)
1985 def: Unopposed
1990 def: Unopposed

1991 - 1995: Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour (Reformist Democratic Party)
1991 def: Abbassi Madani (Muslim Brotherhood), Abdul Aziz Abdul Ghani (Arab Socialist Union)
1995 - 1999: Abbassi Madani (Muslim Brotherhood)
1995 def: Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour (Reformist Democratic Party), Akram al-Hawrani (National Progressive Party), Rowsch Shaways (Kurdish Democratic Party)
1999 - 2007: Ahmad Chalabi (Reformist Democratic Party)
1999 def: Abbasi Madani (Muslim Brotherhood), Abdul Halim Khaddam (National Progressive Party) Mahmoud Shahroud (Islamic Dawa Party), Rowsch Shaways (Kurdish Democratic Party)
2003 def: Ali Belhadj (Muslim Brotherhood), Abdul Halim Khaddam (National Progressive Party) Mahmoud Shahroudi (Islamic Dawa Party), Rowsch Shaways (Kurdish Democratic Party)

2007 - 2011: Mohammad al-Shaar (National Progressive Party)
2007 def: Mohand Laesner (Freedom Party), Ali Belhadj (Muslim Brotherhood), Ahmad Chalabi (Reformist Democratic Party), Ali Salman (Islamic Dawa Party), Nechirvan Barzani (Kurdish Democratic Party)
2011 - 2019: Saad el-Katani (Muslim Brotherhood)
2011 def: Bahaa el-Din Abu Shoka (Reformist Democratic Party), Mohammad al-Shaar (National Progressive Party), Mohand Laesner (Freedom Party) Ali Salman (Islamic Dawa Party), Nechirvan Barzani (Kurdish Democratic Party)
2015 def: Bahaa el-Din Abu Shoka (Reformist Democratic Party), Ghassan Othman (National Progressive Party), Ali Salman (Islamic Dawa Party), Nechirvan Barzani (Kurdish Democratic Party)

2019 - 2020: Abdurrahman El-Keib (Reformist Democratic Party)
2019 def: Saad el-Katani (Muslim Brotherhood), Ghassan Othman (National Progressive Party), Ali Salman (Islamic Dawa Party), Nechirvan Barzani (Kurdish Democratic Party)
2020 - 0000: Abdurrahman Mustafa (Reformist Democratic Party)

[1] - Mohamed Naguib became President of Egypt in 1952, following a military coup d'etat which overthrew the Egyptian Monarchy. Naguib would consolidate power for himself in Egypt, and presented himself as the leader of the Arab World, an image bolstered following the nationalization of the Suez Canal, and how he stood down the UK, France, and Israel. The doctrine of Arab Nationalism would begin to spread across the Arab World, such as in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. In Saudi Arabia, in 1957, a coup d'etat by the Free Princes Movement, led by Talal al-Saud, would reform Saudi Arabia into the Republic of the Arabian Peninsula, and would align itself with the Arab Nationalist bloc. The Saudi coup would be the basis for the formation of the United Arab Republic in 1959, with Naguib at its head. As this was going on, the military of Egypt (and later, the UAR) was reformed into a modern military. Generals were chosen based on merit, not through favoritism, and in 1960 a US military observer stated that the military of the UAR was one of the strongest in the world (not as strong as the US or Soviet military, of course, but strong enough to take on pretty much all of its neighbors).

With the UAR formed, it would set its sights on Israel. The failure of the Arab monarchies to defeat Israel in 1948 was the reason for the Egyptian coup in 1952, and destruction of Israel was a promise made by Arab Nationalist leaders. Israel, aware of the UAR's numerical superiority, would also try and build up its military. However, seeing as how the UAR was doing the same thing, Israel realized that it needed allies. It couldn't find any - the US didn't want to alienate the UAR, as it needed their oil, and the USSR already had friendly relations with the UAR. As such, Israel would find itself alone. When war came in 1963, it was no surprise, but what was surprising was how Israel managed to punch above its weight and how it dragged the UAR into a fight which lasted three years. The UAR only won because of a blockade imposed on Israel in 1965, and it is believed that had it not been for that blockade the war would had probably lasted until 1970. Israel would be annexed into the UAR, and millions of Jewish refugees would end up fleeing to the west. So many refugees were leaving, that it meant that revenge attacks weren't common, as there weren't many Jews to take revenge on. Palestinian refugees would return to Palestine and would resettle the area.

The UAR, buoyed by the victory in Israel, would see the ideology of Arab Nationalism begin to spread. For the next ten years after the victory in Israel, the countries of Libya, Sudan, Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, the Trucial States, Yemen, Oman, and Jordan, would see UAR-backed coup d'etats and revolutions which would change the governments in place, and in turn cause an Arab Nationalist government to be put in its place (Jordan, Yemen, the Trucial States, Libya, Sudan and Oman would be annexed after the coup, but Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania were more reluctant to be annexed immediately after). The Arab-Iran War of 1975-1977, which led to the annexation of al-Ahwaz, would further strengthen Arab Nationalism. On January 1st, 1980, Algeria, Morocco, and Mauritania, the countries which were led by Arab Nationalists which were reluctant to join the UAR, would finally acquiesce to becoming a part of the UAR, finally achieving the Arabist goal of uniting all of the Arabs into one country.

Naguib would die three years and five days later. He is remembered fondly among the people of the UAR, though there are some liberals and Islamists who are critical of him, the former for his human rights abuses, and the latter for his secularism.

[2] - Vice President Abdul Salam Arif, who was President of Iraq at the time Iraq became a part of the UAR, would become the UAR's second President after Naguib's death.

Arif would become president as Turkey, a US ally, was falling apart. After decades of incompetant authoritarian governance, Turkey began to fall apart at the seams. Islamists, Maoists, Kurdish Separatists, pro-government militias, Armenian separatists, and a few democrats would be involved in Turkey's civil war. As this was going on, President Arif saw an opportunity to take Turkish Hatay/Alexandretta, which was a part of Syria until France gave it to Turkey in the 1930s. This would be condemned by the international community, and small sanctions would be put in place, hurting the UAR's economy.

As Arif became president, the Indonesian Civil War was winding down, and it had become a decisive victory for the Islamists, leading to the formation of the Islamic State of Indonesia. In 1965, a communist coup would occur in Indonesia, thus prompting the US to intervene. The Indonesia War would soon become a quagmire for the US as they found it hard to put down communist insurgents. The Islamist insurgency in Indonesia, which was on the decline before the war, would experience a resurgence, and would battle both communists and Americans. Many Arabs would go to Indonesia to fight alongside them. The US would withdraw in 1976, but the Indonesian Civil War continued. The pro-US Indonesian government did not expect a victory after the US withdrawal, and saw the Islamists as the strongest anti-communist force, so they ended up giving most of their resources to them, and the pro-US government ended up fleeing to Australia. This tipped the scales for the Islamists, and it led to their victory. The Arabs who had fought alongside Indonesian Islamists would end up returning to the UAR, and would use the knowledge and skills they possessed to radicalize other Arabs against the UAR government. If they were not doing that, they were going to Turkey to fight alongside Turkish Islamists. It was becoming a security concern for the UAR government, and as such Arif tried to secularize the UAR much as how Ataturk secularized Turkey. The niqab was banned for all women, and the hijab was banned for working women. A hajj tax would be put in place, in which you would have to pay 1000 Arabian Pounds to a government officer if you would want to go for pilgrimage, and mosques would be closely monitored by the UAR (and in many cases there would be raids in mosques). Clerics who spoke out against this would be arrested. Seeing as how many of those clerics were popular among the people of the UAR, this policy of secularization would soon become unpopular.

Arif would have to intervene in Turkey once again. The Kurdish separatists in Turkey would end up crossing over to the UAR to support Kurdish separatists in the UAR. In time, it soon became a security concern for the UAR, and in 1986 the UAR would begin their intervention in southeastern Turkey. The Kurdish separatists fought hard, and would soon drag the UAR into a quagmire. The original goal of the intervention was to neutralize the ability of Kurdish separatists to pose a threat to the UAR's interests, but it soon switched to finding a way to withdraw and not seem humiliated.
In 1989, the UAR airforce would kill PKK general Cemil Bayik in an airstrike, and it would just be the excuse needed to say "mission accomplished" and leave. The withdrawal of the UAR would lead to the formation of the Democratic Republic of Kurdistan. In an attempt to revive prestige, a nuclear bomb test would occur a few weeks after the withdrawal, thus bringing the UAR into the nuclear club.

Eventually, after years of a bad economy, a failed military intervention, and a failing yet harsh secularization program, the people of the UAR had enough and took to the streets. A crackdown was attempted, but all it did was lead to more sympathy to the protesters. The aging Arif would end up finding many opponents within the ASU, who wanted talks with the demonstrators. This moderate ASU faction would end up pressuring Arif to resign, and give power to the leader of said faction, Ali Abdullah Saleh.

[3] - By the time Saleh became president, many of the demonstrators began to get violent. Police officers were attacked, government buildings were burnt down, and bomb attacks would occur against religious minorities and government offices. Saleh offered a referendum on the proposed "Rabat Constitution" (so called because the constitution was drafted by pro-democracy lawyers in Rabat), which would occur later in the year. The referendum for the constitution would succeed in a vote of 86-14. A day later, Saleh announced new presidential and legislative elections to occur in July 1991. He would also announce the dissolution of the Arab Socialist Union. Saleh would run as a nonpartisan candidate in the election, and would only win 15% of the popular vote.

[4] - Youssofi was one of the drafters of the "Rabat Constitution", and would run under the banner of the Reformist Democratic Party. He would run with Talal al-Saud, the so-called "Red Prince" who played a role in the formation of the UAR, but would later become disillusioned with it in the mid 1970s, and would move to Paris. He would become a vocal opponent of it after a failed assassination attempt in 1980, in which the assassin had links to the UAR government.

Youssofi would work on transitioning the UAR from an autocracy into a democracy. Trials would be held for members of the Arif government, and he would try to woo some religious voters over by ending the ban on the niqab and the hijab (the Hajj tax remained, and alcohol remained legal, much to the consternation of the Muslim Brotherhood). In addition, the death penalty was abolished, though this was not put in the Rabat Constitution (Youssofi had wanted to abolish the death penalty, but this was not a popular idea, and Youssofi wanted more signatories for the Rabat Constitution, and so for the time being he gave up on that idea). When former members of the Arab Socialist Union banded together to form the National Progressive Party, Youssofi would try to get the party banned, but would face opposition from the Supreme Court. Ironically, the Supreme Court ruled that, though previous rulings had marginalized members of the ASU, that banning the NPP would be in violation of the same constitution Youssofi drafted, which stated that there should be no ban on political parties. Youssofi was fairly offended at the ruling, and would move to dismiss Chief Justice Maher el-Beheiry from his position.

Another problem which Youssofi would have to deal with was with the rise of terrorism, specifically Zionist terrorism, in the UAR. Many Zionists never gave up on the dream of a Jewish state, even with Israel's defeat in 1966, and the UAR's revolution and rocky transition to democracy would lead to many Zionist extremists believing that the country is on the verge of collapse, and that when it does collapse then they should be ready for the creation of a Jewish state. Zionist extremists from the west would end up going into the UAR, and after they immigrated they would begin to commit terrorist attacks. In 1996, just a few weeks before the election, three Zionist extremists would begin a massacre of Muslim worshippers in the al-Aqsa Mosque, killing 300. The security lapse was blamed on Youssofi, and that, along with the controversy over banning the NPP would be the cause for Youssofi's loss in 1996.

[5] - Surur was an anti-Shia, Salafi ideologue, who offended not just Shias and other religious minorities, but also many Sufi Sunnis as well. However, he would try to downplay his bigotry in the election campaign and would focus mainly on the economy and on the NPP controversy. With the anti-Brotherhood vote split between the NPP and RDP, Surur would win by only one tenth of a percentage point.

The Muslim Brotherhood government would manage to get a ban on alcohol, and lifted the Hajj tax. Alongside this, he prevented coverage of Christmas, Ashura, Mawlid, Easter, and other religious occasions on the state TV channel besides Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr, and Eid al-Adha. Music would also not be put on state TV. These restrictions would lead to a diversification of the UAR's media, as before that state TV was the only channel on air (once it was the only channel *allowed* on air, but after the 1990-1991 revolution it became the only channel on air as there was no impetus to make more channels, until now).

Foreign policy wise, Surur sought to make the UAR the leader of the Islamic World. First that flag of the UAR would be changed from a secular red-white-black horizontol tricolour to a more Islamic green flag with a crescent, and with Arabic calligraphy which said "United Arab Republic". The UAR would strengthen ties with the Islamic Republic of Bengal, the Islamic Republic of Turkey, and the Islamic State of Indonesia. Furthermore, the UAR would begin to provide aid to Islamic factions in the Soviet Civil War, and this aid would be crucial to the independence of Tatarstan.

Surur's anti-Shiism would lead to the formation of the Islamic Dawa Party. The Islamic Dawa Party would mainly function as a religious Shia party meant to represent Shia interests, and would receive support from religious Shias. The formation of the party looked to be a threat for the RDP, as it was expecting the Shia vote to propel it to victory in 2001, and they began to fear that it would be a spoiler in the election. However, by then Surur had alienated much of the country, and would end up losing re-election.

If there was one thing Surur changed, it was the nature of Islamism in the UAR. For a long time, many Islamists were mainly Ashari, but Surur's presidency would lead to Salafism become prevalent among Islamists in the UAR, with Asharism on the decline. Asharism is still popular among Arab Sunni Muslims, but among Islamists, it is on the decline.

[6] - As Nour came into office, he, along with the NPP, IDP, KDP, and other, smaller parties would try to prevent another Muslim Brotherhood victory from occurring. First was putting in place a run-off system for presidential elections, in which if no candidate has 50% of the vote, a run-off would occur in two weeks in which the top two candidates would face off against each other. There was also an attempt to implement hate speech laws, but that would fail to pass.

Nour would also try to rollback some of the reforms Surur made as he was president. Christmas (along with other religious occasions) would return to state TV channel, as would music. Relations with Bangladesh, Turkey, and Indonesia would be decreased, as the UAR would begin to vote in favor of UN resolutions condemning their human rights violations.

Nour's presidency would occur at a time of worldwide economic growth. The conclusion of the Soviet Civil War would lead to a period of relative peace and prosperity across the world, and said peace and prosperity did not escape the UAR. However, Nour's presidency would be hurt when, in 2006, reports of corruption coming from Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi would begin to emerge.

Initially, Chalabi would be accused of embezzlement in his banking days, but then it was revealed that a pattern of corruption continued, with reports of bribery emerging as late as 2005. Chalabi would receive the support from the establishment of the RDP, but Vice President Barghouti would end up breaking with the establishment in this situation. The reason for the RDP establishment's support of Chalabi was his reputation of being good at campaigning, and the victory of the RDP in the 2003 legislative elections was attributed to that skill. With legislative elections coming up, the RDP establishment did not wish to get rid of an asset like Chalabi. Eventually, Barghouti would end up resigning in protest. Chalabi held on as Prime Minister even as more allegations came out, and this would lead to 50 other members of the RDP splitting from the party to form the Freedom Party. Said party would end up becoming the opposition, as the amount of vote-splitting done in the 2007 legislative elections would lead to the National Progressive Party becoming the largest party by only two seats. Chalabi would end up leading the RDP to fourth place (though, admittedly there was only a twenty seat difference between the RDP and NPP). After such an electoral disaster, Chalabi was kicked out of his position as leader of the RDP in the legislature. This scandal would lead to the RDP's defeat in 2011.

[7] - The Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition to the RDP, would end up taking advantage of the scandal regarding Chalabi to win first place in the first round of the 2011 election. The NPP made it second place, and as such made it to the run-off. The Muslim Brotherhood would bring up the NPP's ties to the ASU, while the NPP would fearmonger about a return of the Surur administration. The Muslim Brotherhood did a lot better job convincing people about a return to ASU authoritarianism, then the NPP did trying to convince people that a Tayfour victory would mean an Islamic theocracy.

Tayfour shares many of the same views with Surur. However, unlike Surur, he tends to be a lot more cunning then him. He is not known for his prior inflammatory rhetoric regarding religious minorites, but he does try to push the overton window to where such rhetoric begins to get accepted. Indeed, one can see his election as a reaction which many religious Muslims had over the secularism of the ASU and RDP, a reaction which shows no signs of stopping. The increase in Zionist terror incidents in Palestine just makes it worse. Though Tayfour's rhetoric is not as bad Surur, much of Surur's policies have returned. State TV doesn't play music anymore, nor does it broadcast non-Sunni religious occasions, but this was not done all immediately after becoming president as it was under Surur, it only happened after Tayfour won re-election. The death penalty would be brought back under Tayfour as well. Religious institutions (all of them Salafi) would begin to receive funding from the government, in spite of opposition from the RDP, NPP, and IDP, along with smaller parties.

The choice of a Kurd as Vice President was also a smart choice, as it made the Muslim Brotherhood begin to nibble off the KDP's base in Kurdistan, thus leading to more cooperation in parliament between the KDP and RDP. There were attempts to form a united opposition against the Muslim Brotherhood, as can be seen with the Freedom Party's reabsorption into the RDP, but from there most attempts failed. In fact, the RDP's repudiation of what they termed "Chalabism" led to Ahmed Chalabi running in 2016, siphoning off votes from them in the first round. The failure of the RDP to defeat the Muslim Brotherhood in 2016's second round has led to a demoralized opposition, as many could not believe that so many people in the UAR would support the Muslim Brotherhood. Now, they don't know what to do. Do they become more religious and alienate minorities, or do they remain secular, thus leading to more losses in the future?

The victory of the RDP in the 2019 legislative elections is promising, but it remains to be seen as to whether or not the RDP can achieve a similar victory in 2021. The poll numbers show the Muslim Brotherhood leading the RDP in the presidential race by around three-five points, which means that the RDP cannot just rest on their laurels following the legislative elections. One cannot say, with certainty, what the future of the world's second largest democracy (largest being China) would be.
 
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What exactly did Boris go to jail for? I want to say domestic abuse, but I could be wrong.

I think that's the most likely, but I wanted to leave it ambiguous because I wouldn't like to say that Boris Johnson is the kind of person who would hospitalise his girlfriend. It's also possible it's automobile manslaughter, or some past incident coming back to bite him of the arse.
 
2019-2027: Boris Johnson (Conservative)
2019: Boris Johnson (Conservative) [365] Jeremy Corbyn (Labour) [202] Nicola Sturgeon (SNP) [48] Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat) [11] Arlene Foster (DUP) [8] Mary Lou McDonald (Sinn Fein) [7] Adam Price (Plaid Cymru) [4] Colum Eastwood (SDLP) [2] Siân Berry and Jon Bartley (Green Party England & Wales) [1] Naomi Long (Alliance) [1] Lindsay Hoyle (Speaker) [1]
2024: Boris Johnson (Conservative) [357] Keir Starmer (Labour) [233] Joanna Cherry (SNP) [25] Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat) [9] Mary Lou McDonald (Sinn Fein) [8] Adam Price (Plaid Cymru) [6] Naomi Long (Alliance) [5] Peter Weir (DUP) [4] Colum Eastwood (SDLP) [1] Siân Berry and Caroline Lucas (Green Party England & Wales) [1] Lindsay Hoyle (Speaker) [1]
Boris Johnson's time in office was perhaps the most transformative in the whole Conservative ascendancy: Brexit negotiations continued towards a final deal in 2022. In 2020 the Coronavirus Pandemic saw the deaths of over 80,000 people in the UK. The Queen died in 2021 and her funeral and the coronation of Charles III dominated the year. A huge double dip recession stretched from 2020 to 2022. In 2023 an escalation of the situation with Russia almost saw Europe plunged into nuclear war.

Boris was re-elected in 2024 with a reduced majority, prompting calls for Keir Starmer to resign. His supporters would, however, point to the fact that he gained more seats than any Labour leader since 1997 and that getting rid of the Tories at this stage was a two term job.

The second term of Johnson would be transformative for different reasons. Deregulation in education would allow for more competition in the PE, SE, FE and HE markets. Increasingly, universities would franchise schools, creating a new, successful model for the industry that ensured a boom in profits. The government took strong action removing Climate Camps and dealing with environmental and left wing extremism.

Other actions were less positive. In 2025 a motorist drove their car into the Brighton Trans Pride March, causing one of the largest mass deaths by transphobic violence in the world. In 2026 and 2027 a wave of mosque bombings struck fear in the Muslim community and caused over 20 deaths.

2027-2035: Liz Truss (Conservative)
2028: Liz Truss (Conservative) [331] Keir Starmer (Labour) [254] Joan McAlpine (SNP) [27] Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat) [10] Pearse Doherty (Sinn Fein) [9] Bethan Sayed (Plaid Cymru) [8] Naomi Long (Alliance) [6] Peter Weir (DUP) [3] Magid Magid and Alexandra Phillips (Green Party England & Wales) [2] Lindsay Hoyle (Speaker) [1]
2032: Liz Truss (Conservative) [337] Keir Starmer (Labour) [262] Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat) [14] Joan McAlpine (SNP) [12] Pearse Doherty (Sinn Fein) [11] John McQuade (DUP) [5] Magid Magid and Alexandra Phillips (Green Party England & Wales) [4] Bethan Sayed (Plaid Cymru) [3] Naomi Long (Alliance) [2] Mhairi Black (Scottish Freedom Party) [1] Lindsay Hoyle (Speaker) [1]

Liz Truss took over a country that was on a sound economic footing and saw off another Labour campaign under Keir Starmer. While Labour had fewer gains than last time he was persuaded to stay in post to head off the danger of another Labour Party Civil War.

Truss would implement a new Bill of Rights and Responsibilities that for the first time gave legal recognition to self-identified non-binary and trans people, as a separate but equal category to men and women. She also itroduced compulsory 8 week National Citizen Service for 18 year olds doing work in the community. Her new special economic zones allowed finance and business to migrate from failing tax havens to the UK without having to accept too much in the way of extra regulation, and her Right to Let and Right to Rent policies led to a boom in new builds and buildings re-zoned as housing, many of these remain in use today, over a decade later.

2035-2036: Huw Merriman (Conservative)
Merriman was elected as the representative of the party's left and planned for an ambitious set of policies including an investigation into the deaths of protestors at the Climate Camps and a blanket ban on placing trans women in prison wards with men arrested for hate crimes. His biggest policies were a new rental deposit loan to help people to get onto the rental ladder in their in their 20s; and a policy create new rights for the 20% of the UK workforce in the gig economy.

However, he was sunk by a badly communicated policy on the NHS. His scheme to introduce mandatory health insurance and a voucher system was painted as being an attack on the NHS, when really it was a progressive measure designed to cover additional costs outside of what was covered by the NHS, but this was not a case that people were willing to hear, and the election campaign went badly for the Conservatives.

2036-2041: Zarah Sultana (Labour) coalition with Pearse Doherty (Sinn Fein)
2036: Zarah Sultana (Labour) [319] Huw Merriman (Conservative) [291] Ruby Chow (Liberal Democrat) [15] Kathleen Funchion (Sinn Fein) [10] John McQuade (DUP) [6] Susan Sinclair (SNP) [5] Bethan Sayed (Plaid Cymru) [4] Magid Magid and Cleo Lake (Green Party England & Wales) [1] Lindsay Hoyle (Speaker) [1]

Sultana failed to win a clean majority, but was in the position of choosing a coalition partner. She refused to deal with the Liberal Democrats due to economic differences and a deal with the SNP was scuppered due to differences on social matters. In the end a deal was reached with Sinn Fein's new "Associate MPs"; a partnerships that cost Labour a border poll in 2038, which Sinn Fein lost. Labour nonetheless began plans to reach a new power-sharing deal in Ireland that would increase the region's power considerably.

The new Gender Self-Identification Act of 2038 would create a legal conflation of sex and gender, allowing trans women to be legally treated as women in all senses. It would also allow people to identify as they wished, rather than by three, legally defined and delineated, options The 2040 Equality Act would create protected characteristics based on class, intersex identity, and deformity. The new Worker's Rights Act has put new limits on the flexibility of the gig economy and failing schools have been bought up and incorporated into a new National Education Service which is subsidised from the profits of elite companies involved in the Education Industry.

Out of power, the left were highly critical of attempts to curb radicalism, however under Sultana these measures have been applied on a larger number of right wing groups including long standing political movements such as UKIP, Women's Place UK, and the Movement for Britain.

Coming up to a new election, it seems unlikely that Labour will continue in power. Mark Wallace is leading the Conservatives and arguing for a moderate conservative set of policies including allowing great private investment in the NHS and deregulating the education industry. The question is, will Sultana's administration be the end of the Conservative Ascendancy, or could we be at the beginning of another generation of Conservative rule?
 
The Merry Men (And Women) of No10:

1990-1992: John Major (Conservative)
1992 Def: (Majority) Neil Kinnock (Labour), Paddy Ashdown (Liberal Democrat), Alex Salmond (SNP), Dafydd Wigley (Plaid Cymru), James Molyneaux (UUP), Ian Paisley (DUP), John Hume (SDLP), Gerry Adams (Sinn Fién), Jean Lambert & Richard Lawson (Green)
1992-1997: Ken Clarke (Conservative)
1997-2006: Paddy Tipping (Labour)

1997 Def: (Majority) Ken Clarke (Conservative), Paddy Ashdown (Liberal Democrat), Alex Salmond (SNP), Dafydd Wigley (Plaid Cymru), James Goldsmith (Referendum), Alan Sked (UKIP), David Trimble (UUP), Ian Paisley (DUP), John Hume (SDLP), Gerry Adams (Sinn Fién), Peg Alexander-David Taylor (Green)
2001 Def: (Majority) Micheal Portillo (Conservative), Charles Kennedy (Liberal Democrat), John Swinney (SNP), Ieuan Wyn Jones (Plaid Cymru), Jeffery Titford (UKIP), David Trimble (UUP), Ian Paisley (DUP), John Hume (SDLP), Gerry Adams (Sinn Fién), Margaret Wright-Mike Woodin (Green), British Socialist Committee (Socialist Alliance)
2005 Def: (Coalition with Liberal Democrats) Micheal Howard (Conservative), Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat), Tony Blair (Reform 05), Roseanna Cunningham (SNP), Iuean Wyn Jones (Plaid Cymru), Roger Knapman (UKIP), Nick Griffin (BNP), Ian Paisley (DUP), David Trimble (UUP), Mark Durkan (SDLP), Gerry Adams (Sinn Fién), Caroline Lucas (Green), British Socialist Committee (Socialist Alliance)

2006-2010: Nick Palmer (Labour-Lib Dem Coalition)
2010-2013: Patrick Mercer (Conservative)

2010 Def: (Majority) Nick Palmer (Labour), Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat), Tony Blair (Reform), Roseanna Cunningham (SNP), Ieuan Wyn Jones (Plaid Cymru),Lord Pearson (UKIP), Peter Robinson (DUP), Reg Empery (UUP), Mark Durkan (SDLP), Gerry Adams (Sinn Fién), David Ford (Alliance), Caroline Lucas (Green), Dave Nellist (TUSC)
2013-2016: Anna Sobury (Conservative)
2015 Def: (Majority) Vernon Coaker (Labour), Paul Holmes (Liberal Democrat), David Miliband (Reform), Nicola Sturgeon (SNP), Leanne Wood (Plaid Cymru), Douglas Carswell (UKIP), Peter Robinson (DUP), Tom Elliot (UUP), Alasdair McDonnell (SDLP), David Ford (Alliance), Natalie Bennett (Green), David Nellist (TUSC)
2016-2017: Mark Spencer (Conservative)
2017-2022: Lillian Greenwood (Labour)

2017 Def: (Majority) Mark Spencer (Conservative), Jason Zadrozny (Liberal Democrats), David Miliband (Reform), Nicola Sturgeon (SNP), Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru), Patrick Mercer (UKIP), Arlene Foster (DUP), Tom Elliot (UUP), Colum Eastwood (SDLP), Gerry Adams (Sinn Fién), Naomi Long (Alliance), Natalie Bennett (Green), Catriona Grant (TUSC)
2021 Def: (Minority with SNP Supply and Demand) Lee Anderson (Conservative), Jason Zadrozny (Liberal Democrat), Chris Leslie (Reform), Kirsty Blackman (SNP), Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru), Douglas Carswell (UKIP), Arlene Foster (DUP), Robin Swann (UUP), Colum Eastwood (SDLP), Mary Lou MacDonald (Sinn Fién), Naomi Long (Alliance), Caroline Lucas-Ellie Chowns (Green), Catriona Grant (TUSC)

2022-2022: Lee Anderson (Conservative)
2022 Def: (Coalition with DUP & UUP) Lillian Greenwood (Labour), Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat), Jason Zadrozny (Reform), Kirsty Blackman (SNP), Adam Price (Plaid Cymru), Douglas Carswell (National), Arlene Foster (DUP), Robin Swann (UUP), Colum Eastwood (SDLP), Mary Lou MacDonald (Sinn Fién), Naomi Long (Alliance), Caroline Lucas-Ellie Chowns (Green), Cat Boyd (TUSC)
2022-2026: Robert Jenrick (Conservative)
2023 Def: (Majority) Gloria Del Piero (Labour), Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat), Chris Leslie (Reform), Jason Zadrozny (Renew), Kirsty Blackman (SNP), Adam Price (Plaid Cymru), Annunziata Mary Rees-Mogg (National), Arlene Foster (DUP), Robin Swann (UUP), Colum Eastwood (SDLP), Mary Lou MacDonald (Sinn Fién), Naomi Long (Alliance), Caroline Lucas-Ellie Chowns (Green), Cat Boyd (TUSC)
2026-2030: Alex Norris (Labour)
2026 Def: (Coalition with Liberal Democrats and Green) Robert Jenrick (Conservative), Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat), Heidi Allen (Reform), Jason Zadrozny (Renew), Huzma Yousaf (SNP), Bethan Sayed (Plaid Cymru), Annunziata Mary Rees-Mogg (National), Emma Little-Pengelly (DUP), Colum Eastwood (SDLP), Mary Lou MacDonald (Sinn Fién), Naomi Long-Hannah Irwin (Alliance), Magid Magid-Ellie Chowns (Green), Cat Boyd (TUSC)
2030 Def: (Majority) Ben Bradley (Conservative), Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat), David Miliband (Reform), Jason Zadrozny (Renew), Huzma Yousaf (SNP), Bethan Sayed (Plaid Cymru), Patrick Mercer (National), Ian Paisley Jr (DUP), Claire Hanna (SDLP), Mary Lou MacDonald (Sinn Fién), Gillian Greer- Hannah Irwin (Alliance), Magid Magid- Alexandra Philips (Green), Cat Boyd (TUSC)

2030-: Nadia Whittome (Labour)

The Guardian, August 24th 2030: The End of Tipping Domination
"With the election of Nadia Whittome to Labour Leader and Prime Minister of Great Britian, the era of 'Tippingnomics' of Labour has ended. The Soft Left wing economic planning of partial renationalisation, expansion of public parks, rebuilding elements of the Labour Unions of old, a sort of return to the mixed economic models of the 60s but for the era of Neoliberalism and more has dominated the politics and ideas of Labour for over thirty years now. Whilst it has been appreciated by many, those on the Left have attacked it as not going far enough (which can be seen with the rise of TUSC and Nadia Whittome) in promoting actual Democratic Socialism, whilst on those on the Right there has been the constant attacks of it wastage, Pro-European, inability to quickly adapt to the problems of the 21st Century. However given how unlike the Conservative governments which have been prone to getting Right Wing Populists or Centrist Privatising Technocrats in charge and the instability that unfolds from those appointments (just look to the 3 month Lee Anderson government for a notable example) the Labour Governments of Tipping, Palmer, Greenwood and now Norris have been perceived as fairly dull in comparison with events occurring around them rather than being caused by the policies themselves...

With Whittome we can see a change in direction in Labour, towards a more Fiery Democratic Socialist model of Government maybe. What this doesn't signal though is the end to Nottinghamshire domination though. It seems the constituencies of that small county still have a lot of sway on how the country is run it seems."

(Is this the dumbest thing I'll ever do...probably, but I have to represent my home county in someway).
 

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Very good gimmick list
 
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Very good gimmick list
Thank you, the idea of a Nottinghamshire dominated No10 does throw up a lot of questions. Also a world in which Lee Anderson and Patrick Mercer are PM’s is fucking horrifying.

Also fun fact, I’ve met three of the people on the list and shared a pint with two of them.

Guess who they are and you win a prize...*

*Probably just a like and the dopamine rush of being right.
 
Thank you, the idea of a Nottinghamshire dominated No10 does throw up a lot of questions. Also a world in which Lee Anderson and Patrick Mercer are PM’s is fucking horrifying.

Also fun fact, I’ve met three of the people on the list and shared a pint with two of them.

Guess who they are and you win a prize...*

*Probably just a like and the dopamine rush of being right.

Three Jason Zadroznnys in a trench coat (the one on the bottom was the designated driver)
 
Not what I decided to use for my Utopia/Glass half full world but something I thought was at least worth a brief write up.

"Cannot Be Won And Must Never Be Fought"

1981-1988: Ronald W. Reagan / George H. W. Bush (Republican)
1980: James E. Carter / Walter F. Mondale (Democratic), John B. Anderson / Patrick J. Lucey (Independent)
1984: Walter F. Mondale / Geraldine A. Ferraro (Democratic)
1988-1989: George H. W. Bush / Lynn M. Martin (Republican)
1989-1997: Mario M. Cuomo / Charles S. Robb (Democratic)

1988: Marion G. “Pat” Robertson / Alan K. Simpson (Republican)
1992: H. Ross Perot / John S. McCain III (Independent), Patrick J. Buchanan / M. Elizabeth A. H. Dole (Republican)
1997-2001: Charles S. Robb / Michael S. Dukakis (Democratic)
1996: A. Lamar Alexander, Jr. / Jack F. Kemp (Republican), H. Ross Perot / Angus S. King, Jr. (Reform)
2001-2009: J. Danforth Quayle / Christine Todd Whitman (Republican)
2000: Charles S. Robb / Michael S. Dukakis (Democratic), William J. Clinton / Jesse G. Ventura (Reform)
2004: Richard A. Gephardt / Joseph I. Lieberman (Democratic)
Ronald Reagan was not over the course of his administration the most popular President in American History, but by the mid 1980s he had secured a more-than-comfortable reelection and was viewed by most Conservative Republicans to have delivered on being the promised figure after decade upon decades of defeat and betrayal since Bob Taft had the nomination stolen from him in 1952. His charisma was enough to at least leave most Americans outside of the GOP roughly content with the idea that at the very least, the President meant well, though for many Americans, specifically Racial, and Sexual Minorities he could only at best be said to be disinterested and at worst malevolent as Crack and AIDS wracked their way across the country.

His 1986 summit with his new Soviet counterpart Gorbachev turned everything though. Reagan the hawk and Reagan the madman and Reagan the fiercest Anti-Communist in America made an offer to the USSR, massive cash injections, investment and grain discounts, almost whatever the General Secretary could ask for if the USSR would agree with Reagan to walk forward into the glorious morning of a world without Nuclear Weapons. After intense consultation with his economic and military advisers Gorbachev agreed. Reagan had not consulted with anyone outside of his inner circle, who were opposed but none the less using the Bully Pulpit of his office he forced it forward. The 1987 Disarmament Treaty, that followed used up all of Reagan's political and diplomatic capital but eventually Mitterrand and Thatcher came aboard and within a year of its signing so too would Deng, the United Nations Security Council Powers all agreed, by 2001 none of them would maintain nuclear arsenals, with a small stockpile to be maintained under UN auspices for a further ten years, all to be done under a legion of observers and full disclosure. In America Democrats were baffled, divided and torn as Reagan flew to Stockholm to accept a Nobel peace prize. The Republicans were equally confused and enraged but even as they'd been bullied into helping secure a one vote majority to approve the Treaty, most were sharpening the knives in preparation for revenge.

Republican would use Iran Contra as a weapon to destroy their President in a fit of madness, the rage and division overflowed forcing George H. W. Bush to stand down after the New Hampshire Primary in 1988, and no matter what he could do or say he was unable to lead the party back towards decorum or unity, in the end the intensely divisive political novice from Virginia won the nomination repelling moderate Republicans as the GOP became for a time, no more then a component of the Evangelical Moral Majority. Democrats were barely able to keep the lid on things themselves, settling on a compromise position about the Reykjavik Treaty, cautious optimism and demands for withdrawal clauses if any power started to cause questions. With victory certain and popular pressure intense, Mario Cuomo jumped into the race comfortably securing the nomination before winning a landslide victory on par with that of Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

Cuomo would spend his term attempting to revitalize American Social Liberalism and fighting off the "New Democrats" and Jerry Brown types who while holding a good deal of momentum suddenly seemed to have lost any means of claiming that they could win back the Reagan Democrats. Cuomo's great foreign policy victory would come in 1990 when the second Reykjavik Treaty would see many other potential or actual nuclear powers such as Post-Apartheid South Africa, India, Pakistan, Israel, Argentina and Brazil agree to join in the nuclear weapons ban. By the end of the Century nearly every country in the world had signed on, with notable exceptions including Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the DPRK, and the Junta in Myanmar.

1992 would see divisions in the Republican Party into a disastrous third place as Pat Buchanan's need to talk about the nazis in a less then negative light doomed the campaign and caused his Vice Presidential nominee to resign the ticket in an October surprise that was never quite worked out. In 1996 Gorbachev and Cuomo would meet in Helsinki and agree to an official end to the Cold War, with very quiet US Intelligence Aid being provided to help the Soviets deal with the growing danger of the Islamic Insurgency in its Central Asian Republics.

Vice President Robb was easily able to brush off a Primary challenge by Senator Al Gore and defeat a resurgent GOP as well as the Reform Party which rode high after Perot's impressive result in 1992. Robb would oversee a booming economy and liberalize trade with the PRC while maintaining Cuomo's domestic politics and expanding them with the passage of the 1998 American Healthcare Act.

In 2000 Robb though would be defeated, mostly due to party fatigue and the world for a moment held its breath. Dan Quayle, the first Republican President in twelve years campaigned talking tough as the final countdown to disarmament approached, and many feared that he would toss the whole treaty apart. In the end he would meet with the new Soviet Premier, in Istambul shortly after the transition from the USSR to the USS, and agreed to stay the course. In 2002 the last US and Soviet warheads, a pair of gravity bombs were officially dismantled. While the last Chinese bombs would be dismantled a week later and questions about the Iraqi arsenal would remain until the UN-NATO Air Campaign toppled the regime there in 2007 that date, 15 years after Reagan had sacrificed everything became known as Disarmament Day, which over the past few years has slowly moved towards being a government recognized holiday in the United States.

It is said that Ronald Reagan, long ago having ridden off into the sunset of disgrace and dementia watched the official ceremony at his home in California, in the few lucid years he had left between his impeachment and the loss of his mind he had developed a close friendship with his one time rival and then brother-in-arms as far as being an exile from his own party went, Jimmy Carter who was with him for the ceremony, and would deliver the eulogy at his funeral two years later, noting that whatever their differences were, Reagan had gladly accepted the costly burdens of making the world a safer place. And while few Republicans or Democrats would ever be willing to publicly admit it, as the world moved forward without the nightmare of nuclear winter and atomic horror hanging above it the results seemed to speak for themselves.
Brilliant, a better world and story.
 
Can't win for frit

Or how the Conservatives took 30 years to get back into power...


1974-1976: Harold Wilson (Labour)
Feb 1974 (Minority) def. Edward Heath (Conservatives), Jeremy Thorpe (Liberal), William Wolfe (SNP)
Oct 1974 (Majority) def. Edward Heath (Conservatives), Jeremy Thorpe (Liberal), William Wolfe (SNP)


1976-1985: Denis Healy (Labour) [1]
1978 (Majority) def. Margaret Thatcher (Conservatives), David Steel (Liberal) [2]
1983 (Majority) def. Margaret Thatcher (Conservative), John Pardoe (Liberal), Robert Bradford (National Unionist Party) [3]

1985-1996: Peter Shore (Labour) [4]
1988 (Majority) def. Michael Heseltine (Conservative) [5], John Pardoe (Liberal), Norman Tebbit (Reform) [6], Robert Bradford (NUP), Ian Paisley (DUP), Ruairí Ó Brádaigh (Sinn Fein)
1992 (Majority) def. Michael Heseltine (Conservative), Paddy Ashdown (Liberal)
[7], Norman Tebbit/Robert Bradford (Reform/NUP Alliance) [8], Ruairí Ó Brádaigh (Sinn Fein), Ian Paisley (DUP)
April 1996 (Minority) def. Douglas Hurd (Conservative), Paddy Ashdown (Liberal), John Redwood (Reform Unionist)
[9], Ruairí Ó Brádaigh (Sinn Fein), John Hume (SDLP)

1996-1999: Donald Dewar (Labour) [10]
Dec 1996 (Coalition, with Liberals) def. Douglas Hurd (Conservative), Paddy Ashdown (Liberal), John Redwood (Reform Unionist), John Hume (SDLP), Ruairí Ó Brádaigh (Sinn Fein)

1999-2004: Tony Banks (Labour) [11]
2000 (Majority) def. David Davis (Conservative), Paddy Ashdown (Liberal), John Redwood (Reform Unionist), John Hume (SDLP)

2004-????: Ann Widdecombe (Conservative) [12]
2004 (Majority) def. Tony Banks (Labour), Simon Hughes (Liberal), David Calvert (Reform Unionist), Roseanna Cunningham (SNP), Alasdair McDonell (SDLP)


[1] The betting money over who would be the next Prime Minister, was rightly on Jim Callaghan. Wilson had tipped him off a few months prior, and the two men had been rivals for the top spot for plenty of years. But Callaghan's spot was far and a way a given, the fact being that he was more popular outside the Parliamentary Party than within. So it didn't take long for the anti-Jim movement to form, both Left and Right of the Party began stomping their candidates to take on Callaghan around. Inevitably, the compromise of independent minded Denis Healey, Chancellor of the Exchequer slipped ahead after Roy Jenkin's European obsession became a liability and Michael Foot seemed too interested in just leading the Labour Party, rather than the nation. The leadership contest was brief, and with Callaghan mostly abroad with his duty as Foreign Secretary, Healey was able to pip him to the post. The Cabinet was reshuffled immediately, with Callaghan moved to the Exchequer after nearly ten years absence, Jenkins replaced him at the Foreign Office and Foot was rocketed up to Home Secretary as thank yous for their support.

But Healey's ascension did not come at the best time. The economy was going into meltdown, Callaghan was sent to secure an IMF loan which resulted on strict austerity inflicted on the nation while Foot and the Unions screamed their heads off. It was painful and Labour's majority was dropped, but the economy was recovering by 1978 and they were leading in the polls, so Healey called an election over Callaghan's protests - who felt that he was risking everything unnecessarily, or fearing he would be dropped from Cabinet now that the need for him was passed, so he resigned instead. Jenkins had left by then too, gone to Europe where his passions laid. Despite these losses, Healy got a twenty seat majority, which he took humbly and gratefully, trademark eye brows wriggling for the photographers as he left Downing Street for the Palace.

History inevitably proved Healy right of course. As soon as the election dust had cleared, the economy imploded again. Known as the Winter of Discontent, it is rightly remembered as the darkest hour of post-war Britain, but Labour was able to weather the storm. Healey's friendship with Foot (built up over their membership of the Byron Society) managed to keep the Left mostly on side, in return for Peter Shore's monopoly over Industrial policy, while the rest of Economy remained in Healey and David Owen's hands: simultaneously keeping the unions onside and beginning the re-engineering the fundamentals of Keynes. The experiment in Industrial Democracy revived to Glasgow dockyards which accelerated the exploitation of North Sea oil and three years of cuts gradually pumped life back into the economy and averted the dreaded devaluation that the Conservative press was constantly predicting.

By 1982, the economy was rehabilitated, but still Healey's government did not have the honeymoon that was long overdue. The invasion of the Falklands by Argentina was expected to be the end of the government, but the expected fight between Left and Right never came, as Peter Shore and Michael Foot effectively expelled Tony Benn from their ranks after he protested the dispatching of the Royal Navy. Though the response was sluggish, and the island had to suffer an extended occupation because of the Cabinet debates, Healey snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. This translated into a landslide election victory in 1983, as Healey dressed in uniform welcoming home wounded soldiers and on Remembrance Day made even the most bedrock Conservative seats unsafe. Healey remained PM for another two years before he stood down, though he remained unpopular in certain corners for his early days as Premier, his reputation suffered a revival in the 2000s and his opinions remain of value.

[2] David Steel was elected as an interim leader in 1977 after Jeremy Thorpe was arrested on suspicion of murder. The subsequent trial and Steel's ambiguous statements from the witness box quickly had public convinced that he was covering for Thorpe, and the Liberal gains of the past years were wiped out in one day.

[3] Formed after shortly after the attempt on Reverend Bradford's life, the NUP cut a path as the new Unionist Party in Ulster. Its ties to the mainland's National Front soon led to calls from the Far Right that they should go Nationwide, especially after Enoch Powell left the UUP to join them.

[4] Peter Shore rapidly became the standard bearer for the Left in the months after the Falklands War. Wilson's old PPS, Shore was familiar with the corridors of power, which married his radical edge with the practical knowledge of what a Prime Minister could achieve. He became noticeably partisan in cooperating with Healey, which endeared him to the moderates and the unions were happy to benefit from his introduction of Industrial Democracy. The public loved him too, as his impassioned speeches in favour of the government's conduct during the Falklands War made him a house hold name, and led to his being made Foreign Secretary in the 1983 reshuffle.

The contest for succession of Healey began in earnest, partly because the man himself never specified a successor. Though Roy Hattersley had spent many years under Healey's wing, there was never a tip to nudge him into a post which made him the natural successor. So the leadership election of 1985 effectively became a free for all that Shore rapidly began to dominate. Taking the lesson of Callaghan before him, Shore had his schedule cleared so he could lobby the right MPs and he assured pro-Europeans who were wary of him that he wouldn't make an issue of it 'unless it became one'.

Free of effective opposition as the Tory Civil War hit new lows, Shore presided over the biggest changes in British society for 20 years,

supercharging the economic plans for the nation on the profits from North Sea oil national industry forged ahead expanding into the new industries of the information age, workers from the old industries were reeducated to fill the new jobs, while the old jobs like mining and steel received new investment that made them some of the most advanced in Europe. All this came at the cost of rises in wages though, which made the unions grumble but they couldn't deny that they were getting preferential treatment in most disputes, as the government subsidies more private companies.

In foreign affairs, Shore charted Britain's new course. As President Rumsfeld demanded Gorbachev "tear down this wall, or I will" raised the Cold War to dangerous levels, Shore took a different approach, and rapidly became the West's man of reason. It was Shore's assurances that there would be no international repercussions that gave Gorbachev the strength to begin the withdrawals of the Red Army from Eastern Europe. Likewise, after the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s, Shore made the brave choice of telling the Americans that NATO's time was up received warm receptions and praise from the new government in Moscow, while its European members were glad to exercise their new independence in foreign affairs: especially the new united Germany.

The straw that broke Shore's back was ultimately Europe. As Brussels unveiled the finalised Treaty of Maastricht, Shore was horrified and now resolved Britain would have no further part in the European project. Following the '92 election, Shore called a referendum on Maastricht in line with the Manifesto, but was determined not for it to be a repeat of Wilson's hands off campaign in 1975. Shore came down hard on the pro-Europeans in his Party, and managed to win Britain's withdrawal from the new EU. But from then on, Shore was in constant battle with his party. While an attempt to set up a new Party by David Owen ultimately failed to win any of its by-election, internal dissent continued to mount against Shore. As the economy continued to rock to and fro from the new uncertainty, support for the government began to erode. Calls for his resignation were mountainous by 1996, and he planned to silence them with an early election, but when he woke up the next morning to see he'd lost the Party its majority, Shore acknowledge he needed to step aside.

[5] After 1983, the knives came out for Mrs Thatcher, however there remained debate on whether Monetarism had actually had its day within the Party. Plenty begged to differ, and the questionable victory of Michael Heseltine in the leadership contest led many to beg to differ. As an opposition leader, Heseltine led an ineffectual tenure and his failure to combat the competition from Reform and lackadaisical attitude to Ulster Unionists pained many. For the public, he simply didn't have the Prime Ministerial appeal, noted by his first nickname in the press as the Welsh Windbag (on account of his being from Swansea) and his second as King Tit (derived from his childhood bird watching). After another failure in 1992, even the One Nation faction was sick of him and rapidly showed him the door.

[6] Reform was from the start a Party of protest. It formed as a group of Monetarist MPs who were dissolute with the swing back to the centre, and believed they had been cheated of the leadership by the backroom scheming of members of the 1922 Committee. People didn't take long to distinguish between the Conservatives and 'real' Tories in Reform, as they were no longer shackled to the One Nationers, the campaigned from the start on working class issues like immigration, crime and education - all of which made them poll much better than taking about budget cuts. It didn't take long for Reform to begin competing with the Liberal Party for position as the Westminster's third Party. Relying on ties with the NUP, Reform helped them go nationwide and the two Parties signed an Alliance for the '92 election and concurrently supported the Labour government's position on Maastricht.

[7] After more than 10 years since the trauma of Jeremy Thorpe, the gallant former Royal Marine and diplomat arrived as leader of the Liberal Party. Ashdown's success as leader came from his switching of priority from targeting Labour seats to Conservative seats, especially the urban middle class. This success prevented Reform overtaking the Liberals, and mounted the pressure on Conservative leadership. In 1996, Ashdown managed to dominate the pro-EU vote from both factions, which consequently blew up in his face during his tenure as Foreign Secretary in the Coalition government.

[8] Douglas Hurd largely continued the errors of the Heseltine era. His failure to compromise on the EU question, even post referendum, infuriated much of the public, even those who were pro-European. Plus, he was a public relations nightmare and Spitting Image's characterisation of him as an 'upright Davros' didn't really help his case to the people. After his failure to build on Shore's failures and to reach out Ashdown earlier than he did led two disappointing results in 1996.

[9] John Redwood became the first leader elected to the merger of the NUP and Reform. Admittedly, he alienated some Ulstermen with his election but that made him all the more determined to ensure fair representation of them in Westminster. He was also determined for his Party to supplant the Tories as the voice for the Right. His focused attacks on the Tory Party became so bad that Denis Healey once rose in the Commons to ask if the Leader of the Opposition might not have go, and on another occasion, the otherwise quiet and unknown MP for Huntingdon ran down the Chamber aiming to "knock the piss out of the bastard".

As Redwood looked like he was going to go on forever, he stepped down in 2003, aware that the Ulster members of the Party were becoming annoyed at his increasingly Anglo-centred rhetoric.

[10] Labour's leadership election in 1996 effectively became a competition over how to deal with the hand that Shore had left them with: either stick out the full term with a majority; try the new leader's luck in a few months once the new leader was settled with another election; or try and make deals with anyone who follow Labour, whether Liberal, Reform, even Sinn Fein. Ultimately, Donald Dewar, architect of Shore's devolution plans, was selected leader and planned for a December election with the hope that even if a majority couldn't be achieved then they could always fall back on a coalition with the Libs. Dewar was also acceptable for his hitherto neutrality on the EU question. He'd kept quiet for most of the referendum, and vaguely encouraged Scots to vote for what they thought would do best for them. Regrettably, the December election didn't pay off as bad snows on election day meant shockingly low turnout, especially in Labour's Northern seats, many of whom went to Ashdown's Liberals and Redwood's Reform.

Dewar's coalition was bumpy from the start. Ashdown had extracted as high price from Dewar, as Foreign Secretary and consequently butted heads with Dewar over Yugoslavia. Labour, Dewar included, were determined to continue charting a new course abroad, but Ashdown wanted rehabilitate the European relationship and demanded Britain intervene alongside Europe in the Balkans. Contrary to Ashdown's hopes, the appearance of foreign troops in the war zones of Bosnia did not alleviate to situations, in fact the violence increased as all sides became more desperate regardless of the human cost. Eventually, Dewar, President Barre and Chancellor Scharping had to go cap in hand to the UN and President Brown to help them salvage the situation.

Ashdown became Labour's scapegoats, and while he remained Liberal leader and a member of the coalition, the 1999 reshuffle saw him removed as Foreign Secretary and while Deputy Prime Minister might have sounded like promotion, everyone knew it was just away Ashdown could side-lined with his pride intact. This would be one of Dewar's final acts, as he shortly afterwards died of a brain haemorrhage.

[11] Few people thought that the 1999 leadership contest could get any more bitter than the 1996 one: they were fantastically wrong. The more apathetic observers believed that 25 years of men drunk on power had finally given in the worst parts of themselves. More accurately, it was a contest over whether Labour should break ranks with the coalition come the next election, which boiled further down to which Tony the Party preferred: Banks or Blair. The latter had started out as one of the coalitions biggest advocates and Dewar's special envoy to Ashdown, but rapidly loss faith in what he saw as Ashdown's attempts to discredit Labour: e.g. Bosnia and Europe. Banks meanwhile was of the opposite strand, initially sceptical of a Liberal pact, he had come to embrace the freedom that the alliance allowed, mainly the fact most departments had a junior Liberal that the senior Labour ones could scapegoat. In the end the contest came down to one of charisma. While Banks was confident, could run rings around his opposition and his acid tongue could have most of the chamber howling, Blair rapidly made himself out to be a man of straw propped up by Lord Mandelson.

It's ironic then that the candidate so keen on a renewed coalition won a majority - if only by one seat. 2000 was a hard fought election and Banks was able to capitalise on both sympathy for Dewar and, in the country's first televised debates, the inexperience of the Leader of the Opposition, and a series of savage put downs that had Conservative observers cringing.

Bank's tenure is now commonly held up as an example that a personally popular Prime Minister cannot hold up an unpopular government.

His straight talking was appreciated by the public, but when talking about his own ministers, it only made the governments popularity drop further. The lack of solution to the re-escalation of violence in Northern Ireland and the trickle effect onto the mainland began to cause panic in the bigger cities. Especially as America demanded Britain crackdown harder on the IRA as CIA found increasing ties between them and Iraq, the government was forced more and more to take actions that it didn't want to. The culmination was the resignation of Home Secretary Robin Cook after troops were ordered back onto the streets of Belfast and Derry for the first time in 5 years.

An excess of spending also had to be compensated for with the Exchequer imposing caps on all departments which immediately caused trouble as the long awaited rise in pay for subsidised and nationalised industry had to be once more put on hold. By 2003, walkouts and strikes were becoming more and more common than they had been in the 70s.

Amidst all this noise, the real achievements of the Banks years were hardly felt. The harsher punishment for animal cruelty, conversion of the House of Lords to an elected body, limitations on the entitlements of the royal family, first nation in the world to legalise same-sex marriage, and winning bids for both the 2006 World Cup and 2008 Summer Olympics. Come 2004, the worst was over, but the country was far from out of trouble. Perhaps taking from Healey's example, Banks gambled on an early election, but this time the situation was already too far gone: after thirty years in power, the country was tired of Labour, and the fact was, those that could remember were just seeing the same mistakes being repeated again. While his government did not survive the election, his leadership did, as those Northern seats were finally taken back from Reform, though this did wan't enough to hold back the tide.

[12] People still aren't sure what to make of Ann Widdecombe. Party leader less the 9 months before last years landslide swept the Conservatives back into power, it's puzzling that someone so little interest in the economy should come to power at the worst slump in recent memory, and Tory campaigning and economy plans remain vague: whether a return to Mrs Thatcher's monetarism, 1950s Butskelism, a new form of Hurd's "middle way" or something altogether different. Her main focus during the campaign was on social affairs, where her staunch conservatism on immigration, the War on Terror, the new relationship with Europe all resonated with the apathetic and even dissenting Labour regulars, who'd grown frustrated with the 30 years slide into liberal and socialist values. So now the world watches eager to see what Britain will make of its new Conservative government...
 
Due to all the ideas I've had that never actually ended up on paper and me realizing after this hiatus that they'll probably never be turned into timelines, I've decided to just put out the ideas on a presidents list. Expect more in the future, including my Nixon in Coolidge's body timeline and a Bush chokes on a pretzel short live election game and a Presidents of Deseret idea I've had in my head for a while. The first here is No Longer Bill, a spinoff of Plumber's excellent but unfinished No Longer Jack. No Longer Jack was about Kennedy surviving his assassination but the bullet leaving him like Phineas Gage, a strange erratic form of his old self that is now belittling allies and giving Goldwater an actual fighting chance in 1964. I thought what if something similar happened with Bill Clinton during the 1994 rather haphazard assassination attempt on his life by Francisco Duran.

No Longer Bill

1993-1995: Bill Clinton / Al Gore (Democratic) [1]
1992: George Bush / Dan Quayle (Republican), Ross Perot / James Stockdale (Independent)
1995: Al Gore / VACANT (Democratic)
[2]
1995-1996: Al Gore / Hillary Clinton (Democratic) [3]
1996-1997: Hillary Clinton / VACANT (Democratic) [5]
1997: Bill Clinton / Maxine Waters (Democratic) [4]
1996: Jeb Bush / John McCain (Republican), Ross Perot / Dick Lamm (Reform)
1997: Maxine Waters / VACANT (Democratic)
[6]
1997-2005: Maxine Waters / Dick Gephardt (Democratic)
2000: Rick Santorum / Terry Branstad (Republican), Peter Navarro / Pat Choate (Reform)
2005-2013: Richard Riordan / George Bush (Republican)
[7]
2004: Paul Wellstone / Jocelyn Elders (Democratic), Jerry Brown / Drew Curtis (Reform)
2008:
Hillary Clinton / Roland Burris (Democratic)


[1] When Duran's bullet struck the President through his cheek and out his skullcap, almost the entire nation expected that Bill Clinton would swiftly pass away or be put into a coma. Instead, the President made a recovery, although whether it can be called a "full" one is up for debate. He returned to the White House rather erratic, ignoring the applause from his staff and focusing his glare at Al Gore, the man who dared to be Acting President. A coup! Bastard probably sent Duran after him although he had no proof. Clinton becomes increasingly combative and secretive, seeing conspiracies everywhere but also having something knocked loose in him leading to him being more open with his mouth. After going on national television to curse out Newt Gingrich who he called "a fat fascist fuck", the midterm wave becomes even larger (although has a weirdly positive effect on Clinton's approval) and horrifies folks in the Democratic Party including savvy strategist Dick Morris who isn't naive enough to believe the wave was purely due to Clinton's comments. He knows the party overstepped with the healthcare bill and needs to triangulate.

But Clinton is not interested in moderating at all. Seeing Al Gore as part of a vast right wing conspiracy to steal his Presidency, Clinton starts creating a circle of Very Left Wing people on his side, going out of the way to start culture battles to defend Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders's comments on masturbation and legalizing drugs, dumping Lloyd Bentsen for Robert Reich as his new Treasury Secretary, calling Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan a "feudal fuckhead who would turn anyone that didn't personally vote for Goldwater into an indentured servant" on a CNN interview, and going on record in a press conference that he believes OJ "is 100% innocent unlike President Reagan or Senator North are of war crimes." With the culture war brewing, Clinton's personal approval stagnant, and the party's in the trash, Dick Morris continues to scheme with a very out of the loop Al Gore who realizes that Clinton is not all there in his head. After some brief asking around the Cabinet about the 25th Amendment, Clinton learns about Gore's scheming and proceeds to literally fire everyone right of him in the Cabinet to stop the "coup" right in its tracks. Gore wasn't sure before but now is sure that Clinton is dangerous and looks to other methods. He finds himself forced to talk with Gingrich about possibly impeaching the President, a deal Gingrich is happy to agree to in exchange for his pound of flesh.

[2] An avenue seems to come when it leaks that Clinton has been having an affair with an intern. When confronted on this, Clinton doesn't deny it and says "damn right I did", snatching away any chance of catching him in a lie. But this does lead to further investigations which does lead to it coming out that the President was snorting lines of cocaine alongside DC Mayor Marion Barry inside the Oval Office during their discussions on the future of DC statehood. Impeachment proceedings moved quickly as the Moral Majority screamed in rage at the impropriety. And while Clinton would find his defenders, those who now were convinced it was a right wing conspiracy, ultimately he had no allies in the Senate and few of influence in the House except for the fresh new Congressfolk that had come from his coattails. Al Gore would become the new President of the United States and wanting Clinton who had gained a following in the last few months due to his "tell it like it is" attitude and progressivism to stay on his side, tried to work things out. Clinton, defeated and rejected, in a spur of the moment demands that Gore make his wife (who, by the way, is privately really upset about that whole intern thing) the new Vice President. Gore almost spit takes but recognizes Clinton is deadly serious. He does the deed, and Clinton continues to mill about the White House due to his past position and his wife's new one much to Gore's irritation.

[3] But Gingrich comes to collect his debt. Part of the deal for support on impeachment was that Gore would push through a massive package to privatize Social Security for the sake of a balanced budget. This drives Bill bonkers and sees that Al really was a right wing shill after all. Hillary tries to calm him down, explaining this is just politics and that Bill in a different time would have done the same thing, but this only drives a rift between the two. Bill then declares that the people have been betrayed by a right wing conspiracy and only he can fix this mess. He was thrown out, the people's choice, but the people will not have their voice ignored. He announces his candidacy for the Presidency.

A brutal campaign with is launched by Bill against the current President and his wife. Filling stadiums full of supporters, using every dirty trick in the book, calling in every favor he has, Bill uses the full might of his myth that formed during his Presidency and the unpopularity of Gore's Republican-lite policies leads him to impossibly winning the nomination away from the unpopular Gore. Clinton makes no compromise and shows that his campaign represents a movement to the future with his choice of a black woman as his Vice Presidential nominee. The old Democratic Party was dead.

The Republicans meanwhile are hampered by their own success with Gore's unpopularity dragging them down as well. The sheer number of victories in the midterms leads to way too many credible candidates running including the ludicrousness of both Bush Brothers as well as Dan Quayle. The long contentious primaries would end with a contested convention that leads to Jeb Bush, the underwhelming Governor of Florida who learned none of the lessons from his OTL 1994 loss, to be the nominee. Jeb proceeds to do exactly as well as you'd expect, snatching defeating from the jaws of victory and just coming off as a light weight compared to the rhetorical verboseness of Bill.

Meanwhile, Perot runs again but sees most of his economic positions stolen by Bill Clinton which means he mostly just runs as a more socially conservative Bill Clinton, taking only Never Clinton votes that would have instead went to Bush. He would make a bit of a splash in the debates though although Bill mostly hogged the spotlight when he tore into Jeb as "the weakest man alive, the George Constanza of politics." Some of the audience could swear they saw tears in Jeb's eyes.

In the end, it was a tight race, but Jeb was an extremely of imperfect vehicle for the ascendant right while Bill Clinton was the perfect vehicle who could be anything to anyone, whether it be the more conservative Democrats who felt he was just playing a show or those on the left who really saw someone who would do what he promised. Clinton would squeeze through a victory and make history, coming back from impeachment and removal to take back his throne.

[5] Tragedy would strike after the election when President Gore, on route from an APEC summit in Manila, was killed in an bomb attack on his convoy. A Islamist radical named Osama bin Laden would take credit for the assassination, saying this was the price the US would pay for violating the sacred lands during Desert Shield. The short Presidency of Hillary Clinton and the tragedy of Al Gore's death would unite the Clintons once again as even with brain damage, something stirred in the President-elect's heart. In a national address of unity, President Hillary Clinton and the President-elect would announce that every measure would be taken to bring bin Laden to justice and announced a War on Terror.

[6] With American troops in Afghanistan and Sudan and as tensions flared further with Saddam as his use of chemical weapons became more liberal, Bill Clinton would only assume office for a short time before passing away. The bullet may not have taken his life, but it did drastically reduce it and three weeks of coma merely a month after putting his hand on the Bible and saying those solemn words before shuffling off this mortal coil was all. Maxine Waters would take the oath and promise to fulfill the Clinton legacy with every fiber of her being. bin Laden was brought to justice after a long arduous march of three years. Waters would struggle to pass her signature bills with the House still under Republican control, but it's still a time relatively fondly remembered despite the bitter culture wars of abortion, drugs, Ten Commandment monuments, etc. Santorum brought his holy crusade to life at the dawn of the new millennium in an election for the ages, marked with bitterness, anger, polarization, and ultimately exhaustion.

[7] This exhaustion would manifest with a rather moderate normal ticket winning, the California Governor as well as the more introspective, quiet Bush brother. The younger Bush had seen how the country had torn itself apart during the past three campaigns, exhausting the faith of the people. He had seen how almost a decade of war and nation building, propping up shaky regimes in Kabul, Khartoum, and Baghdad had drained the best blood of a generation. He wanted it to be over, and the nation agreed. As Vice President Bush looks to gaining a third term for the Republican Party and continue the relative stability of the Riordan years while Hillary Clinton gears up for a third direct match-up of the families against each other, he feels he is the man uniquely suited to bring about a new era of peace and prosperity.
 
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Due to all the ideas I've had that never actually ended up on paper and me realizing after this hiatus that they'll probably never be turned into timelines, I've decided to just put out the ideas on a presidents list. Expect more in the future, including my Nixon in Coolidge's body timeline and a Bush chokes on a pretzel short live election game and a Presidents of Deseret idea I've had in my head for a while. The first here is No Longer Bill, a spinoff of Plumber's excellent but unfinished No Longer Jack. No Longer Jack was about Kennedy surviving his assassination but the bullet leaving him like Phineas Gage, a strange erratic form of his old self that is now belittling allies and giving Goldwater an actual fighting chance in 1964. I thought what if something similar happened with Bill Clinton during the 1994 rather haphazard assassination attempt on his life by Francisco Duran.

No Longer Bill

1994-1995: Bill Clinton / Al Gore (Democratic) [1]
1992: George Bush / Dan Quayle (Republican), Ross Perot / James Stockdale (Independent)
1995: Al Gore / VACANT (Democratic)
[2]
1995-1996: Al Gore / Hillary Clinton (Democratic) [3]
1996-1997: Hillary Clinton / VACANT (Democratic) [5]
1997: Bill Clinton / Maxine Waters (Democratic) [4]
1996: Jeb Bush / John McCain (Republican), Ross Perot / Dick Lamm (Reform)
1997: Maxine Waters / VACANT (Democratic)
[6]
1997-2005: Maxine Waters / Dick Gephardt (Democratic)
2000: Rick Santorum / Terry Branstad (Republican), Peter Navarro / Pat Choate (Reform)
2005-2013: Richard Riordan / George Bush (Republican)
[7]
2004: Paul Wellstone / Jocelyn Elders (Democratic), Jerry Brown / Drew Curtis (Reform)
2008:
Hillary Clinton / Roland Burris (Democratic)


[1] When Duran's bullet struck the President through his cheek and out his skullcap, almost the entire nation expected that Bill Clinton would swiftly pass away or be put into a coma. Instead, the President made a recovery, although whether it can be called a "full" one is up for debate. He returned to the White House rather erratic, ignoring the applause from his staff and focusing his glare at Al Gore, the man who dared to be Acting President. A coup! Bastard probably sent Duran after him although he had no proof. Clinton becomes increasingly combative and secretive, seeing conspiracies everywhere but also having something knocked loose in him leading to him being more open with his mouth. After going on national television to curse out Newt Gingrich who he called "a fat fascist fuck", the midterm wave becomes even larger (although has a weirdly positive effect on Clinton's approval) and horrifies folks in the Democratic Party including savvy strategist Dick Morris who isn't naive enough to believe the wave was purely due to Clinton's comments. He knows the party overstepped with the healthcare bill and needs to triangulate.

But Clinton is not interested in moderating at all. Seeing Al Gore as part of a vast right wing conspiracy to steal his Presidency, Clinton starts creating a circle of Very Left Wing people on his side, going out of the way to start culture battles to defend Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders's comments on masturbation and legalizing drugs, dumping Lloyd Bentsen for Robert Reich as his new Treasury Secretary, calling Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan a "feudal fuckhead who would turn anyone that didn't personally vote for Goldwater into an indentured servant" on a CNN interview, and going on record in a press conference that he believes OJ "is 100% innocent unlike President Reagan or Senator North are of war crimes." With the culture war brewing, Clinton's personal approval stagnant, and the party's in the trash, Dick Morris continues to scheme with a very out of the loop Al Gore who realizes that Clinton is not all there in his head. After some brief asking around the Cabinet about the 25th Amendment, Clinton learns about Gore's scheming and proceeds to literally fire everyone right of him in the Cabinet to stop the "coup" right in its tracks. Gore wasn't sure before but now is sure that Clinton is dangerous and looks to other methods. He finds himself forced to talk with Gingrich about possibly impeaching the President, a deal Gingrich is happy to agree to in exchange for his pound of flesh.

[2] An avenue seems to come when it leaks that Clinton has been having an affair with an intern. When confronted on this, Clinton doesn't deny it and says "damn right I did", snatching away any chance of catching him in a lie. But this does lead to further investigations which does lead to it coming out that the President was snorting lines of cocaine alongside DC Mayor Marion Barry inside the Oval Office during their discussions on the future of DC statehood. Impeachment proceedings moved quickly as the Moral Majority screamed in rage at the impropriety. And while Clinton would find his defenders, those who now were convinced it was a right wing conspiracy, ultimately he had no allies in the Senate and few of influence in the House except for the fresh new Congressfolk that had come from his coattails. Al Gore would become the new President of the United States and wanting Clinton who had gained a following in the last few months due to his "tell it like it is" attitude and progressivism to stay on his side, tried to work things out. Clinton, defeated and rejected, in a spur of the moment demands that Gore make his wife (who, by the way, is privately really upset about that whole intern thing) the new Vice President. Gore almost spit takes but recognizes Clinton is deadly serious. He does the deed, and Clinton continues to mill about the White House due to his past position and his wife's new one much to Gore's irritation.

[3] But Gingrich comes to collect his debt. Part of the deal for support on impeachment was that Gore would push through a massive package to privatize Social Security for the sake of a balanced budget. This drives Bill bonkers and sees that Al really was a right wing shill after all. Hillary tries to calm him down, explaining this is just politics and that Bill in a different time would have done the same thing, but this only drives a rift between the two. Bill then declares that the people have been betrayed by a right wing conspiracy and only he can fix this mess. He was thrown out, the people's choice, but the people will not have their voice ignored. He announces his candidacy for the Presidency.

A brutal campaign with is launched by Bill against the current President and his wife. Filling stadiums full of supporters, using every dirty trick in the book, calling in every favor he has, Bill uses the full might of his myth that formed during his Presidency and the unpopularity of Gore's Republican-lite policies leads him to impossibly winning the nomination away from the unpopular Gore. Clinton makes no compromise and shows that his campaign represents a movement to the future with his choice of a black woman as his Vice Presidential nominee. The old Democratic Party was dead.

The Republicans meanwhile are hampered by their own success with Gore's unpopularity dragging them down as well. The sheer number of victories in the midterms leads to way too many credible candidates running including the ludicrousness of both Bush Brothers as well as Dan Quayle. The long contentious primaries would end with a contested convention that leads to Jeb Bush, the underwhelming Governor of Florida who learned none of the lessons from his OTL 1994 loss, to be the nominee. Jeb proceeds to do exactly as well as you'd expect, snatching defeating from the jaws of victory and just coming off as a light weight compared to the rhetorical verboseness of Bill.

Meanwhile, Perot runs again but sees most of his economic positions stolen by Bill Clinton which means he mostly just runs as a more socially conservative Bill Clinton, taking only Never Clinton votes that would have instead went to Bush. He would make a bit of a splash in the debates though although Bill mostly hogged the spotlight when he tore into Jeb as "the weakest man alive, the George Constanza of politics." Some of the audience could swear they saw tears in Jeb's eyes.

In the end, it was a tight race, but Jeb was an extremely of imperfect vehicle for the ascendant right while Bill Clinton was the perfect vehicle who could be anything to anyone, whether it be the more conservative Democrats who felt he was just playing a show or those on the left who really saw someone who would do what he promised. Clinton would squeeze through a victory and make history, coming back from impeachment and removal to take back his throne.

[5] Tragedy would strike after the election when President Gore, on route from an APEC summit in Manila, was killed in an bomb attack on his convoy. A Islamist radical named Osama bin Laden would take credit for the assassination, saying this was the price the US would pay for violating the sacred lands during Desert Shield. The short Presidency of Hillary Clinton and the tragedy of Al Gore's death would unite the Clintons once again as even with brain damage, something stirred in the President-elect's heart. In a national address of unity, President Hillary Clinton and the President-elect would announce that every measure would be taken to bring bin Laden to justice and announced a War on Terror.

[6] With American troops in Afghanistan and Sudan and as tensions flared further with Saddam as his use of chemical weapons became more liberal, Bill Clinton would only assume office for a short time before passing away. The bullet may not have taken his life, but it did drastically reduce it and three weeks of coma merely a month after putting his hand on the Bible and saying those solemn words before shuffling off this mortal coil was all. Maxine Waters would take the oath and promise to fulfill the Clinton legacy with every fiber of her being. bin Laden was brought to justice after a long arduous march of three years. Waters would struggle to pass her signature bills with the House still under Republican control, but it's still a time relatively fondly remembered despite the bitter culture wars of abortion, drugs, Ten Commandment monuments, etc. Santorum brought his holy crusade to life at the dawn of the new millennium in an election for the ages, marked with bitterness, anger, polarization, and ultimately exhaustion.

[7] This exhaustion would manifest with a rather moderate normal ticket winning, the California Governor as well as the more introspective, quiet Bush brother. The younger Bush had seen how the country had torn itself apart during the past three campaigns, exhausting the faith of the people. He had seen how almost a decade of war and nation building, propping up shaky regimes in Kabul, Khartoum, and Baghdad had drained the best blood of a generation. He wanted it to be over, and the nation agreed. As Vice President Bush looks to gaining a third term for the Republican Party and continue the relative stability of the Riordan years while Hillary Clinton gears up for a third direct match-up of the families against each other, he feels he is the man uniquely suited to bring about a new era of peace and prosperity.

Always nice to see a fan! I like the idea.

The idea with No Longer Jack was to combine all the worst aspects of Cold War presidents into one person. Unfortunately this describes the OTL incumbent, so I lost the drive to make it.

IOTL, Clinton was furious he had to triangulate; after Bentsen’s persuaded him to moderate he shouted back that they were “fucking Rockefeller Republicans now.” So I think his shift left is very plausible if he got Gage’d.

And LOL Jeb is definitely the George Constanza of politics, which 1994 and 2016 showed.
 
Always nice to see a fan! I like the idea.

The idea with No Longer Jack was to combine all the worst aspects of Cold War presidents into one person. Unfortunately this describes the OTL incumbent, so I lost the drive to make it.

IOTL, Clinton was furious he had to triangulate; after Bentsen’s persuaded him to moderate he shouted back that they were “fucking Rockefeller Republicans now.” So I think his shift left is very plausible if he got Gage’d.

And LOL Jeb is definitely the George Constanza of politics, which 1994 and 2016 showed.
I think I could have done more with Clinton being wacky besides just being left wing. I imagine him being very impulsive and doing these things less on any political strategy and more being pure id. I could probably also have done more to show how offensive Clinton would be to your classic Republican voter. I imagine a scene at the presidential debate where Jim Lehrer begs Bill to not swear (he doesn't listen). Early versions also had him up against Dole but pissed off Dole so much during the debate that the old veteran takes a swing at Clinton and the two fight on stage while Perot goes on about how this shows the two parties are corrupt. But that became a little too SNL.

Funny enough, I recall not pursuing this despite having written some chapters because it seemed too insane. And then Trump started running for President...
 
1933-1941: Franklin D. Roosevelt/John Nance Garner (Democratic)
1932 def. Herbert Hoover/Charles Curtis (Republican)
1936 def. Alf Landon/Frank Knox (Republican)

1941-1941: Franklin D. Roosevelt/Henry A. Wallace (Democratic)
1940 def. Robert A. Taft/Styles Bridges (Republican)
1941-1944: Henry A. Wallace/vacant (Democratic)
1944-1945: Henry A. Wallace/vacant (Progressive)
1945-1949: Henry A. Wallace/Glen H. Taylor (Progressive)
1944 def. Paul V. McNutt/James F. Byrnes (Democratic), Thomas Dewey/Everett Dirksen (Republican)
1949-1952: George S. Patton/Harold Stassen (National Union)
1948 def. Henry A. Wallace/Glen H. Taylor (Progressive), Norman Thomas/Hubert Humphrey (Socialist)
1952-1953: George S. Patton/Harold Stassen (Democratic/Republican)
1953-1953: Vito Marcantonio/Vincent Hallinan (American Labor)
1952 def. George S. Patton/Harry F. Byrd (Democratic), Harold Stassen/Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (Republican)
1953-1954: Vito Marcantonio/vacant (American Labor)

1954-1954: Darlington Hoopes (American Labor)

1954-1954: Gus Hall (Communist)
1954-0000: Gus Hall (Communist)

I've always been amused by how insistent many far-right ideologues were that the nascent Communist Party was imminently going to overthrow the government during the Second Red Scare.

1936
1588728020495-png.545359


President Franklin D. Roosevelt / Vice President John Nance Garner (Democratic)
Governor Alf Landon / Publisher Frank Knox (Republican)

Many historians would claim that after the start of Hitler's reign in 1933 a Brown Scare was inevitable in the United States. But a much more immediate cause of the Brown Scare of the 1930s was Emilio Mola's successful putsch of the democratically elected Spanish Popular Front government in July, 1936. The sheer brutality of the new Spanish regime, exposed to the American public through smuggled pictures, horrified many in the western world. Mola's open praise of Fascist "fifth columnists," juxtaposed with the lynching death of a Jewish journalist, allegedly at the hands of the new German-American Bund, created an atmosphere of fear and paranoia going into the fall. President Roosevelt would take advantage of this in its entirety, using his position to order the Attorney General to prosecute certain fascists at home and promoting a "common cause and popular front against fascism."

Roosevelt's landslide victory, although expected, blew away contemporary analysts as even Republican New England broke for the President in the early hours of the morning.

1940
1588729107681-png.545360


President Franklin D. Roosevelt / Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace (Democratic)
Senator Robert A. Taft / Senator Styles Bridges (Republican)

HUAC was busy at work, dismantling the infrastructure of domestic fascist organizations, while the GOP faced its own dismantling. Unable to recover a substantial number of congressional seats during the 1938 midterms (even as the country was gripped by the so-called "Roosevelt Recession"), Republican leaders feared that the party was going to face its end. Right as the Brown Scare seemed as though it was dying down the Second World War was kicked off by Nazi Germany in Europe. This shot in the arm for anti-fascist sentiment gave the Roosevelt administration all the public support they needed to push for a new interventionist foreign policy.

Once he was renominated by the Democrats in 1940, FDR was virtually assured a third term. Seeing immediate success for his foreign policy goals and PR dividends from the Trial of Charles Lindbergh, Roosevelt had nothing to worry about for the general election and tacked left with his selection of running mate. His opponent, isolationist conservative Senator Robert Taft, was disliked by most of the public and found his views at odds with the positions held by most Americans. Taft's Chicago Speech, where he criticizes the Roosevelt Administration and the Brown Scare left the man politically ostracized and accused of fascist sympathies. The latter was not aided by an October, 1940 discovery of Taft shaking hands with known fascist William Riker at a campaign rally in California earlier that year.

If anything, the Republicans were lucky to have done as well as they ended up doing.

1944
1588730900771-png.545369


President Henry A. Wallace / Senator Glen H. Taylor (Progressive)
Governor Paul V. McNutt / Associate Justice James F. Byrnes (Democratic)
District Attorney Thomas Dewey / Representative Everett Dirksen (Republican)

President Franklin Roosevelt would die in April, 1941. Taking over in his place would be his new hard left-wing Vice President Henry Wallace. Wallace initially struggled to work with congress but was able to compensate by developing a public image as a Brown Scare crusader. This conflict would continue into the summer until a bombshell dropped in August. The Eden Papers revealed that the recent German invasion of the Soviet Union was riddled with genocide and atrocity, leaving whole towns destroyed in the wake of the German advance. The Eden Papers also strongly speculated that German "domestic population transfers" were in fact far more sinister. Wallace convened congress late in the month and pushed them to vote on a formal declaration of war on the Axis powers.

However narrow the vote may have been, the declaration of war was passed. Wallace soon focused on developing America's nuclear program and worked to share the technology with the United States' new allies, the UK and the Soviet Union. But as the wore dragged on, Wallace and Churchill would see their relationship collapse and by late 1943 Wallace was much closer to Stalin than Churchill, especially after the failure of Churchill's "Adriatic Invasion Force" in the Balkans.

As America entered a new election year popular sentiment began to reflect the foreign policy views of President Wallace more closely than they once did. America's political establishment was not on the same page. For his ties to Stalin and the access he gave to the Soviet Union, as well as his role in the "Balkan Nightmare" the Democratic Party worked to dump President Wallace in favor of Indiana Governor Paul V. McNutt. Dumping Wallace was extremely controversial and his subsequent walkout and joining of the nascent Progressive Party threatened to spoil the election in the face of a moderating and recovering Republican Party.

But Wallace was not going to be a spoiler. The Breton Landings in July signaled a successful land invasion of mainland Europe by allied forces. All of a sudden it appeared that victory was near and that Wallace would be the one to claim it. The Progressives surged during the fall as the campaign and the War in Europe both swung into high gear.

Wallace would narrowly win the presidential election in November, upending the American political system. The Republicans, experiencing their best electoral result since 1932, still languished far behind in third place.

1948
1588743092257-png.545403


General George S. Patton / Former Governor Harold Stassen (National Union)
President Henry A. Wallace / Vice President Glen H. Taylor (Progressive)
Minister Norman Thomas / Mayor Hubert Humphrey (Socialist)

December, 1945 the world had peace. It took months of European land war and joint American-Soviet atomic bombings of Japan, not to mention that failed "Admirals Coup" by the imperial navy, but the Second World War was over. The Americans and Soviets (a wounded Britain and France largely cut out of these deals) worked to set up a neutral and disarmed Germany and Austria and split the occupation of Japan. The Americans handed most Germans over to Soviet authorities, although it would be British judges who preside over Adolf Hitler's "Trial of the Century" and eventual execution. Wallace had worked up enough momentum to produce dividends for left-wing candidates of scattered ideological background in 1946 midterms but it was soon becoming pressingly clear that the Progressives were more big tent than party.

Things would not continue to go well for President Wallace. The fall of China to Mao Zedong in early 1947 would be a harbinger of things to come. By 1948's November election, Iran, Italy, Turkey, and Greece would join the column of Soviet influence. This, combined with Wallace's announcement that American forces would be leaving former Axis countries by January 1, 1949, invigorated Wallace's opponents. His support for civil rights and work to desegregate the military would set his opponents on fire.

With the situation seeming dire enough, the Democrats and Republicans agreed on a "National Union" electoral pact to oppose Wallace in November. They nominated the flamboyant military officer (and well known Wallace critic) George Patton to fight the alleged duel scourges of isolationism and desegregation. They made Harold Stassen, perhaps the Republicans' only national figure who's not Thomas Dewey, his running mate in order to placate moderates and liberals.

Many still viewed both Patton and Wallace as terrible options and sought an alternative. In comes Norman Thomas and his growing Socialist Party. Thomas, making his last presidential run, sought to give the American public choice that weren't "fascism or collaborationism." He criticized the National Unionists for their unapologetic conservatism and the Progressives for "towing the Moscow line." Thomas would be joined by renegade Democrats who had not followed Wallace but were not willing to join Patton. Most prominent of these was Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey who Thomas selected as his running mate.

Although there were conspiracy theories of Soviet aid being sent to aid the President's campaign, Wallace really stood no chance against the National Unionists and Thomas' splinter ticket. He would lose in a landslide and unceremoniously leave office, leaving his Progressive Party behind in shambles.

1952
1588746033807-png.545409


Mayor Vito Marcantonio / Representative Vincent Hallinan (American Labor)
President George S. Patton / Senator Harry F. Byrd (Democratic)
Vice President Harold Stassen / Representative Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (Republican)

The assassination of Philippine President Jose P. Laurel by communist Hukbalahap forces in February, 1949 seemed like the perfect opportunity for Patton's new administration to flex its anti-communist muscles. Seemed that way at first, certainly. Within a year the war very quickly exposed itself as a brutal guerrilla quagmire where thousands of American soldiers were killed a week. As time went on support for the war plummeted and a sophisticated anti-war movement began to grow nationwide.

The case of Green v. Board (1949) would always be remembered for its 6-3 Supreme Court decision ending school segregation. Chief Justice Charles Fahy penned the the historic decision as Associate Justice James Byrnes led the opposition. Many in the north heralded the decision as a landmark for civil rights while many in the south responded to it with vitriol and open defiance. The Patton administration denounced the decision but congress seemed far more willing to comply. This became yet another point of division within the government.

In the wake of Wallace's loss in 1948 the Progressive Party splintered into its various ideological and regional affiliates. Determined to put them back together again in 1950 was newly elected New York City Mayor Vito Marcantonio. Just in time for the midterms the new and unapologetically leftist American Labor Party broke onto the national scene and took down vulnerable National Unionists and minor party candidates.

With racial violence reaching an apogee, the Huk War showing no sign of stopping, and the economy entering a recession all in time for the 1952 election Patton looked extremely vulnerable. The Democrats (now virtually just their southern wing) would come to blow with the Republicans (now having mostly jettisoned their conservative wing into oblivion) at the National Unionist Convention, mostly over a civil rights plank. The Democrats would walk out and re-nominate the President while the lonely and dying Republicans would turn to VP Stassen, virtually their last nationally known figure. Accusations of receiving Soviet support couldn't even slow Marcantonio down and the National Unionist split solidified the fact that there was virtually nothing able to stop Vito Marcantonio from becoming the President.

And so nothing did.

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Marcantonio would come under fire for bringing several communists into important roles in his administration but those criticisms didn't land. He had his congressional mandate and even many moderates would begrudgingly applaud the efficiency at which he brought troops home from the Philippines. The Justice Department sought to assert the federal government's role in protecting civil and voting rights for African-Americans in the South. Violence continued to escalate however, and after the lynching of a black university student by a white mob in Mississippi in the fall of 1953 the army was brought in.

Economically, Marcantonio dealt with the recession by instituting radical measures meant to greatly increase worker control of the workplace and undercut the wealth of America's upper classes. According to some sources he was poised to institute agricultural collectivization measures following the 1954 midterms. But he would never live that long.

On August 9, 1954 Vito Marcantonio would die of a heart attack while working at his desk in the Oval Office. What could have been a simple situation was not. The Vice Presidency had been vacant for almost a year since Vincent Hallinan was supposedly cut loose by the administrations after he was accused of tax evasion. Due to conflicting legal precedent there was confusion over who was next in the line of succession; congress or the cabinet. Speaker Darlington Hoopes, a moderate within the American Labor Party, asserted congress' claim. On the cabinet's end things would become much weirder. Secretary of State Alger Hiss was abroad in Mexico City when he received news of Marcantonio and rushed back on the first flight. Unfortunately for him that plane would disappear while flying over the Gulf of Mexico. Upon being awoken in the early hours of morning and informed of Hiss' death, Secretary of the Treasury Harry Dexter White had a fatal heart attack of his own. It was then that succession fell to Secretary of Defense Gus Hall.

By the evening of August 10th the factions had been made. Hall declared his presidency from the White House (by virtue of having gotten there before Hoopes) with the support of much of the American Labor Party's infrastructure and communists across the country. Communist Party leader, ALP ally, and Hall's personal friend Eugene Dennis mobilized American communists to convene on DC and defend Hall's claim. On the other side, Hoopes declared his presidency from the Capitol Building with the backing of ALP moderates and (somewhat ironically) many former National Unionists. Days wore on and the Supreme Court promised to issue a verdict as litigation served as one of the conflict's auxiliary battlefields. Chief Justice Charles Fahy said that a verdict would arrive by August 20th. But the verdict would never come. On August 19th, 1954 Eugene Dennis' Legitimate People's Army organized a raid on the Capitol Building with the aim of rooting out Hoopes' government. As Dennis' army breached the Capitol Building's makeshift fortifications, Hoopes called in the DC garrison to defend his government. The garrison would comply and were largely able to force Dennis' army back onto the National Mall. Hall was very aware of the devolving situation and called in a favor from the feared Col. Lyn Marcus whose units were stationed nearby in anticipation of conflict.

Not much is known of the events that unfolded during the rest of that night. What is known is that when the dust settled on the morning of August 20th Speaker Darlington Hoopes, Senate President Pro Tempore Walter George, and many congressional supporters of their government were dead, and the Capitol Building lay in ruins. Hall blamed the carnage on aggressive action taken by Speaker Hoopes that was met by intervention from the armed forces. Hall took the formal oath of office at noon.

President Gus Hall immediately faced widespread resistance to what many saw as an illegitimate presidency. Matters were made worse when that evening it came out that the court ruled in favor of Hoopes' claim to the presidency. Warrants were soon put out for the Supreme Court justices, and Hall declared martial law in the face of such vehement and open dissent. The midterm elections were cancelled and Soviet advisors were called in (a request that General Secretary Molotov was only too happy to accede to). To many it appeared that the United States was on the verge of becoming a communist regime and that the Soviet Union had established a global hegemony.
 
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