Lists of Heads of Government and Heads of State

[Makemakean]

What's that got to do with anything?

I was going to joke about it being very on-brand to have a Republican senator whose name is literally A. Bible, but I imagine everyone already did that joke at the time.

Well, I’m just glad you pushed the like button knowingly.

 

[Makemakean]

What's that got to do with anything?

I was going to joke about it being very on-brand to have a Republican senator whose name is literally A. Bible, but I imagine everyone already did that joke at the time.

Ironically, Alan Bible (who was actually a Democrat) voted against cloture on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, because he was worried about losing Southern support to keep the federal government from going after Nevada's lax gambling laws.

 

[rosa]

picks Nevada Senator Alan Bible.

Love the hipster choices

 

[Indicus]

Prime Ministers of India

1947-1947: Jawaharlal Nehru (Indian National Congress) †

Nehru was, for a long time, one of the great faces of the Indian independence movement. He abandoned his comfortable life as an elite quasi-aristocratic man for a hard life of protest, arrest, and beatings. In 1947, this finally came to fruition when India became independent. But alas, it came at a heavy price. The Muslim League, a Muslim nationalist organization led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, successfully exploited the divisions in Indian society and, despite the fight of numerous low-caste Muslim organizations against them, they successfully forced through a partition of India, cutting off Sindh, the North-West Frontier Province, most of Punjab, and most of Bengal to create a nation for subcontinent Muslims, Pakistan. This division was largely arbitrary in nature, and even if it wasn't there was no way to divide Pakistan from India in a clean manner. The result was that, on one side Muslim fanatics, and on the other Hindu and Sikh fanatics, sought to demarcate the border in blood. They stormed the houses of the "other" and gave them the choice between leaving their homeland, or dying a horrible death. The result was the death of one million people, and the ethnic cleansing of fourteen million. For them, independence did not mean joy but grief and death.

Nehru, like few people, understood the cruel irony of Partition, that the dream of independence finally being achieved also came with so much mass murder. He shuddered at what religious particularism did to his India, and his aversion towards religion only intensified. To witness Partition firsthand, he visited the North-West Frontier province. But the moment he got out of his car, there came gunfire; one bullet hit his head, killing him. The Muslim League disavowed this assassination and denied it had any role in it, but the Congress party disagreed; at the same time, Mahatma Gandhi crisscrossed India and denounced communalism in an attempt to prevent the anti-Muslim riots many feared would occur. Nehru's funeral was scientific, and his daughter gave a speech where she reminded the crowd that, indeed, he was only one of the many casualties of Partition. But his death left India's fate highly uncertain.

1947-1950: Vallabhbhai Patel (Indian National Congress)

Coming to power on the backs of a tragedy, Patel had the almost impossible job of holding India together in a time of great chaos. There were numerous princely states that refused to integrate with India, and Patel threatened them with the army. For the most part, this proved successful. When Junagadh, a Muslim-led state which was almost entirely Hindu, tried to integrate with Pakistan, Patel invaded and annexed it. Trouble came with two princely states in particular - Hyderabad, and Jammu and Kashmir. Hyderabad was ruled by a Muslim Nizam and a largely Muslim nobility over a largely-Hindu population, while Jammu was ruled by a Hindu Maharajah and a disproportionately Hindu nobility over a mixed but majority-Muslim population. Jammu and Kashmir was further complicated by a secularist Kashmiri movement. While there were many in India who wanted to ally with the Kashmiri movement in the name of secularism, Patel was not one of them, and he negotiated with Pakistan a deal whereby India would get Hyderabad and Pakistan would get Jammu and Kashmir. This disappointed Jinnah who viewed Hyderabad as a fellow Islamic country, but he agreed to it nonetheless. In both cases, the actual process proved far more complicated than this.

Indian nationalists, allied with communists, rose up in Hyderabad, and the reaction of the Hyderabadi nobility was to create paramilitaries which committed war crimes against the rebelling masses in the name of Islam. The Indian army invaded and overthrew both the Nizam and the communists. The Indian government spun this to the USSR as an anti-feudal action and to the US as an anti-communist action; in a sense, it was both. But this proved successful and Hyderabad was integrated into India. In Jammu and Kashmir, the Maharaja attempted to maintain independence and he got some Hindu nationalist support for this. The Pakistani military invaded nonetheless, and their invasion saw Hindus and Sikhs being killed or else forcibly converted in a process that included beef consumption. When reports of this came, the result was that virtually all remaining Hindus and Sikhs attempted to flee. But the only railway connection between J&K and the outside world was through Sialkot, part of Pakistan, the very country they wanted to avoid. There was nowhere they could flee; instead, the city of Jammu swelled with stranded refugees. A crisis was imminent, and Hindu nationalists in India made motions about this. Patel made a decision, and he reached out to Pakistan. In return for patriating Hyderabadi war criminals to Pakistan, Hindus and Sikhs in Jammu would be given free access to India. Pakistan accepted, and Hindus and Sikhs fled through rail and airlifts. Most of them moved to Delhi, those that were forcibly converted were converted back, and they were assimilated into refugee Punjabi identity. Kashmiri Hindus and Sikhs found it too hot and instead they moved to Shimla, in a district named - what else? - Jawaharlal Nehru Nagar.

India seemed at peace - a peace left after mass murder, but peace nonetheless - and Patel got to work at building new houses and cities for refugees. He ensured that the constitution's citizenship provisions applied to them. But then Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist terrorist, and the order was upended once more. Many were shocked, most of all Patel, and he led a charge against Hindu nationalism. He arrested its leadership, and he had them tried for Gandhi's murder. When this charge failed, he brought a new one for assassinating lower-level Congress supporters, and through judicial intimidation he got a guilty verdict; they were executed afterwards. Across India, Hindu nationalists were stoned, and those Partition refugees who would otherwise have been attracted by calls to "get back at" the Muslims who wronged them were instead brought into refugee rights parties opposed to those who would turn India into a mirror image of Pakistan. But even after all of this, many remained nervous and watchful, and Patel led this effort.

In 1948, after the Portuguese fascist government arrested Indian freedom fighter Ram Manohar Lohia for protesting their rule of Goa, and India harshly protested this action. Indian nationalist protests in Goa continued, and Portugal continued to suppress them. In 1950, Patel made the decision to invade Goa, and though this invasion was successful and cheered on in Goa and in the rest of India, it received international condemnation. The Indian government argued this was an action against a fascist white supremacist colonizer and Krishna Menon gave brilliant speeches in its defence, but it nevertheless was denounced by the very same west Patel wanted approval from. And attempts to get France to surrender its India ports proved much more difficult in its wake.

Finally, in 1950, Patel died due to a heart attack. For his many flaws, he kept India from being the hell on earth it was in 1947.

1950-1958: Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (Indian National Congress)
1951-2 def. Ajoy Ghosh (Communist Party of India)
1957 def. Shripat Amrit Dange (Communist Party of India)

Upon the death of Patel, the Congress party made Maulana Azad its leader. This was notable for a very large reason - he was a Muslim scholar, in a land where many blamed Muslims for Partition. He had a long career in the Congress party, where he fought ardently for independence and - citing the Constitution of Medina - he believed India should be a composite secular nation. Being a Muslim, he realized many viewed him with suspicion, and he sought to prove his nationalism by consistently condemning Pakistan. Notably, he attacked Hindu nationalists for wishing to turn India into a Hindu Pakistan. With the issue of a consistent law code for Hindus emerging, he smartly stepped out of the conversation as he recognized that as a Muslim this did not affect him. But nevertheless, his tenure was consumed by this issue. The other great issue of this era was linguistic states. While the Congress party had formerly supported linguistic states as an antidote to religious nationalism, both Hindu and Muslim, upon independence it discarded this issue as regionalist. But it increasingly became a hot-button issue, and the issue of Hindi imposition onto the south made it worse.

Though Azad tried to drag his feet onto this issue, it refused to let itself go, and in 1955 Azad was forced to unify the Telugu-speaking parts of Hyderabad state into Andhra, with Madras as the co-capital of the two states of Andhra and the new "Dakshin Pradesh". Further linguistic statehood movements saw a single Kannada-speaking state. Despite attempts to stop the formation of a Tamil state due to the fascistic nature of the Dravidian-Tamil movement, after the movement's leader Periyar called Malayalis the bastard sons of Brahmins plotting to suck the blood of the Tamil people, Kerala sought to eject itself from Dakshin Pradesh, resulting in the formation of the separate states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The Marathi-speaking lands were cut up into five separate states - Bombay, Maharashtra, Khandesh, Vidarbha, and Goa - due to its size and fears of regionalism, and moves for uniting them failed. This further inspired a movement for breaking up the United Provinces into four separate states, which proved successful. In Assam, the Barak Valley, which spoke Bengali due to a Partition refugee wave, was made a separate state after a nativist Assamese movement alienated it. While Punjab, a very large state with a Hindi-speaking plurality, saw a Punjabi-language statehood movement which Azad refused to countenance due to its extremely Sikh nature, and instead it was made a bilingual Hindi-Punjabi state, with many Punjabi Hindus writing their language as Hindi due to this confessional movement. But for the most part, despite many riots, the linguistic statehood movement was mostly complete by this era. At the same time, Azad put the breaks on making Hindi India's national language, instead making it share the spotlight with English.

All the while, Azad promoted education aggressively. He created new universities across the nation and linked them together through a variety of institutions. They greatly expanded Indian university education, even if it remained only accessible to some. More decisive was his declaration of compulsory public education, and a massive drive to establish schools to implement that. But this awakened a language movement against Hindi imposition; while to Azad Hindi in schools was part of replacing English with it, to Tamils Hindi in schools was a plot to replace Tamil as their mothertongue. This mirrored the Bengali language movement in Pakistan, and many feared this would turn into an independence movement. And so, Azad stood back and excluded Tamil Nadu from Hindi.

Finally, in 1958, Azad collapsed and died.

1958-1961: G. B. Pant (Indian National Congress)

Azad's successor was the closest figure he had to a second-in-command, G. B. Pant. Many knew he was of bad health, and so as a result his tenure saw a brewing fight for succession between Morarji Desai and Jagjivan Ram. Furthermore, there was some controversy over Pant's support of Hindi as the national language, which forced him to specifically declare he no longer intended to impose it as such. For all intents and purposes, he was an able administrator, and so even as he liberalized the market as much has he could, he retained the loyalty of the cabinet. This liberalization came with a number of consequences - most notably, it weakened the ability of the state to respond to famine - but it helped allow for greater prosperity and the opening of the elite class to a greater number of people.

But nevertheless, his tenure was dominated by scheming. Jagjivan Ram and Morarji Desai spat at one another, and they gathered allies for the succession fight they knew was coming. Desai was ill-liked for his arrogance and rigidity, while Jagjivan Ram was a young man brewing with ideas who was also a Scheduled Caste. When Pant died in 1961, this succession fight came to the surface.

1961-1964: Jagjivan Ram (Indian National Congress)
1962 def Shripat Amrit Dange (Communist Party of India)

While there were attempts to find a separate candidate to either, they failed, and instead the unlikeable Desai was thrown aside in favour of Jagjivan Ram. This was important for a number of reasons, but the largest was that he was a Scheduled Caste, in a nation whose political life was dominated by upper-caste individuals and in which every previous prime minister had been upper-caste. This motivated him to create a commission to look into the issue of caste reservations in universities and government jobs, despite discomfort among many. More immediately, Jagjivan Ram sought to implement socialism in India. He nationalized the banks, in a decision that deeply divided his cabinet, and he set out to spread them across the nation. He requested American support for improving crop productivity, to bring the Mexican innovations to India, although the United States dragged its feet on the issue. He also created state-owned businesses and also cooperated with existing businesses in an effort to keep capital in the nation and avoid what he felt was cronyism in business.

But ultimately, the caste commission completed its report. It organized non-scheduled backwards castes into a new category of Other Backwards Classes, itself divided between Moderately and Extremely Backwards Classes. It recommended reservations for this, in some cases exceeding 50%, in government jobs and university placements, across the nation. Jagjivan Ram immediately made the decision to implement this report, giving a speech declaring as such. The result was total chaos, as university students felt their livelihoods were at risk. Thus, they rioted, which sparked further riots as this erupted caste onto the national stage. In Punjab, it tore up the rug underneath the Punjabi statehood movement, as suddenly the divide between scheduled and upper caste Sikhs was revealed, while in Tamil Nadu it similarly weakened the claims of the Dravidian movement by dividing upper non-Brahmin castes from the majority. It caused chaos across the nation and widespread rioting verging on rebellion. Within his own party, this move was controversial, and it resulted in it officially removing him from it. With his supporters, Jagjivan Ram walked out of the party and declared their own Congress party, but this was not enough to deny his opponents a majority. And so, Jagjivan Ram's tenure came to an end.

1964-1967: Yashwantrao Chavan (Indian National Congress (O))

Chavan inherited a nation in chaos. He immediately made moves to calm it. With Punjab seeing mass rioting among upper-caste Jat Sikhs which at times turned into advocacy of independence, Chavan conciliated them by establishing a Punjabi-speaking state with the largest-possible borders even including Hindu-majority districts, and he declared a new grand capital of Bhagatnagar would be built as its capital. He similarly declared that, for the time being, he would engage in more moderate caste reservations, and this calmed the rioting substantially. The rioting that wasn't, he calmed with the iron fist. And so, the nation seemed at peace, though as Jagjivan Ram toured the nation and organized vast crowds, his position wasn't as secure as one would assume it. Nevertheless, Chavan reaped the benefits of the Green Revolution, as crop yields increased dramatically and the horrors of famine were forever dispelled. While in 1966, negotiations with France over its Indian colonies finally concluded with them being given to India.

But none of this stopped the growth of feelings of outrage across India over caste, and the 1967 election saw the INC (O) decisively defeated.

1967-1977: Jagjivan Ram (Indian National Congress (J))
1967 def. Yashwantrao Chavan (Indian National Congress (O)
1972 def. Shripat Amrit Dange (Communist Party of India)

Returning to power in India's first peaceful transfer of power, Jagjivan Ram re-implemented full caste reservations. This time, they did not cause as much revulsion across the nation, both because it was less surprising and because partial caste reservations had already been introduced. But nonetheless, there were riots which Jagjivan Ram promptly crushed. The coming years saw a political flux as, with the INC (O) not quite having a handle on oppositionism, it started to collapse. And so, Jagjivan Ram got to work. He expanded business in association with the state, and he helped create an economic boom, he expanded the Green Revolution through subsidies, and he pushed radical land redistribution policies. All of this made him extremely controversial among the old Indian elite which increasingly found itself overshadowed, and in preparation for the coming election the opposition consolidated.

But in 1971, Pakistan sought to suppress the Bangladeshi national movement through genocidal mass killings; this caused a massive refugee wave. This, combined with reports of genocidal massacres, resulted in a wave of sympathy across India. Following the monsoon, India declared war on Pakistan, and in a swift war it destroyed Pakistani forces and liberated Bangladesh, establishing it as an independent republic. Jagjivan Ram's popularity increased to new extremes, and he was openly compared to Hanuman by his supporters. The 1972 election subsequently saw a massive landslide as the INC (J) won 457 seats despite opposition consolidation.

In the coming years, Jagjivan Ram continued further with reforms. He amended the constitution to end all princely stipends, and he engaged in further land redistribution. It was all very radical and transformed India. But at the same time, an agrarian movement brewed across India, and he did not see it coming. Its protests increased in scale, and in Bihar it forced the state government to declare elections which ended with an opposition victory. These protests spread, and they even received support among the Punjab Mahapanchayat in Delhi. But Jagjivan Ram refused to budge, and instead he tried to simultaneously conciliate and crush the protests. These efforts failed, and in 1977 he was defeated.

1977-xxxx: Indira Gandhi (Indian Kranti Congress)
1977 (min.) Jagjivan Ram (Indian National Congress (J)), Shripat Amrit Dange (Communist Party of India)

Indira Gandhi's political career began with her eulogy of her father at his funeral. She movingly spoke of him, and she pointed to the fact that he was one of millions killed by Partition. It was a most moving eulogy which impacted most. Afterwards, she was highly notable in the efforts to house Kashmiri Hindus and Sikhs after they were forced out, and she ensured they would be housed in Shimla where their native climate would be approximated. Being a Hindu, and a Kashmiri in the ethnic but not cultural sense, she felt a duty to help them. She was driven into further refugee humanitarian work, and in the 1950s she moved into the movement for peaceful land redistribution. She made many friends along the way, and after her husband died in a car crash in 1962 she was driven into politics. With the agrarian movement becoming the root of the new opposition in the 1970s, she quickly became its leader, as she could not be touched due to her illustrious father. Winning a bypoll, she became an MP and excoriated Jagjivan Ram for his record. The 1977 election, saw, to the shock of many, the INC (J) reduced to a minority, and Indira Gandhi was able to win a one-seat majority through coalition negotiations. Despite Charan Singh attempting to become PM, the party refused, and instead that honour went to Indira.

She immediately harped on to the same themes as her father. She spoke of socialism and state ownership of the resources. Unlike her atheist father, she was a practicing Hindu, but nevertheless she spoke of the scientific temper and the need to destroy the very same superstitions she partook in. It was a dramatic shift in ideology from the vague agrarianism the party had formerly practiced. But nonetheless, Indira had the will to push it through, and her status as a great humanitarian gave her much credibility.

 

[Kimkatya]

Prime Ministers of India

1947-1947: Jawaharlal Nehru (Indian National Congress) †

Nehru was, for a long time, one of the great faces of the Indian independence movement. He abandoned his comfortable life as an elite quasi-aristocratic man for a hard life of protest, arrest, and beatings. In 1947, this finally came to fruition when India became independent. But alas, it came at a heavy price. The Muslim League, a Muslim nationalist organization led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, successfully exploited the divisions in Indian society and, despite the fight of numerous low-caste Muslim organizations against them, they successfully forced through a partition of India, cutting off Sindh, the North-West Frontier Province, most of Punjab, and most of Bengal to create a nation for subcontinent Muslims, Pakistan. This division was largely arbitrary in nature, and even if it wasn't there was no way to divide Pakistan from India in a clean manner. The result was that, on one side Muslim fanatics, and on the other Hindu and Sikh fanatics, sought to demarcate the border in blood. They stormed the houses of the "other" and gave them the choice between leaving their homeland, or dying a horrible death. The result was the death of one million people, and the ethnic cleansing of fourteen million. For them, independence did not mean joy but grief and death.

Nehru, like few people, understood the cruel irony of Partition, that the dream of independence finally being achieved also came with so much mass murder. He shuddered at what religious particularism did to his India, and his aversion towards religion only intensified. To witness Partition firsthand, he visited the North-West Frontier province. But the moment he got out of his car, there came gunfire; one bullet hit his head, killing him. The Muslim League disavowed this assassination and denied it had any role in it, but the Congress party disagreed; at the same time, Mahatma Gandhi crisscrossed India and denounced communalism in an attempt to prevent the anti-Muslim riots many feared would occur. Nehru's funeral was scientific, and his daughter gave a speech where she reminded the crowd that, indeed, he was only one of the many casualties of Partition. But his death left India's fate highly uncertain.

1947-1950: Vallabhbhai Patel (Indian National Congress)

Coming to power on the backs of a tragedy, Patel had the almost impossible job of holding India together in a time of great chaos. There were numerous princely states that refused to integrate with India, and Patel threatened them with the army. For the most part, this proved successful. When Junagadh, a Muslim-led state which was almost entirely Hindu, tried to integrate with Pakistan, Patel invaded and annexed it. Trouble came with two princely states in particular - Hyderabad, and Jammu and Kashmir. Hyderabad was ruled by a Muslim Nizam and a largely Muslim nobility over a largely-Hindu population, while Jammu was ruled by a Hindu Maharajah and a disproportionately Hindu nobility over a mixed but majority-Muslim population. Jammu and Kashmir was further complicated by a secularist Kashmiri movement. While there were many in India who wanted to ally with the Kashmiri movement in the name of secularism, Patel was not one of them, and he negotiated with Pakistan a deal whereby India would get Hyderabad and Pakistan would get Jammu and Kashmir. This disappointed Jinnah who viewed Hyderabad as a fellow Islamic country, but he agreed to it nonetheless. In both cases, the actual process proved far more complicated than this.

Indian nationalists, allied with communists, rose up in Hyderabad, and the reaction of the Hyderabadi nobility was to create paramilitaries which committed war crimes against the rebelling masses in the name of Islam. The Indian army invaded and overthrew both the Nizam and the communists. The Indian government spun this to the USSR as an anti-feudal action and to the US as an anti-communist action; in a sense, it was both. But this proved successful and Hyderabad was integrated into India. In Jammu and Kashmir, the Maharaja attempted to maintain independence and he got some Hindu nationalist support for this. The Pakistani military invaded nonetheless, and their invasion saw Hindus and Sikhs being killed or else forcibly converted in a process that included beef consumption. When reports of this came, the result was that virtually all remaining Hindus and Sikhs attempted to flee. But the only railway connection between J&K and the outside world was through Sialkot, part of Pakistan, the very country they wanted to avoid. There was nowhere they could flee; instead, the city of Jammu swelled with stranded refugees. A crisis was imminent, and Hindu nationalists in India made motions about this. Patel made a decision, and he reached out to Pakistan. In return for patriating Hyderabadi war criminals to Pakistan, Hindus and Sikhs in Jammu would be given free access to India. Pakistan accepted, and Hindus and Sikhs fled through rail and airlifts. Most of them moved to Delhi, those that were forcibly converted were converted back, and they were assimilated into refugee Punjabi identity. Kashmiri Hindus and Sikhs found it too hot and instead they moved to Shimla, in a district named - what else? - Jawaharlal Nehru Nagar.

India seemed at peace - a peace left after mass murder, but peace nonetheless - and Patel got to work at building new houses and cities for refugees. He ensured that the constitution's citizenship provisions applied to them. But then Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist terrorist, and the order was upended once more. Many were shocked, most of all Patel, and he led a charge against Hindu nationalism. He arrested its leadership, and he had them tried for Gandhi's murder. When this charge failed, he brought a new one for assassinating lower-level Congress supporters, and through judicial intimidation he got a guilty verdict; they were executed afterwards. Across India, Hindu nationalists were stoned, and those Partition refugees who would otherwise have been attracted by calls to "get back at" the Muslims who wronged them were instead brought into refugee rights parties opposed to those who would turn India into a mirror image of Pakistan. But even after all of this, many remained nervous and watchful, and Patel led this effort.

In 1948, after the Portuguese fascist government arrested Indian freedom fighter Ram Manohar Lohia for protesting their rule of Goa, and India harshly protested this action. Indian nationalist protests in Goa continued, and Portugal continued to suppress them. In 1950, Patel made the decision to invade Goa, and though this invasion was successful and cheered on in Goa and in the rest of India, it received international condemnation. The Indian government argued this was an action against a fascist white supremacist colonizer and Krishna Menon gave brilliant speeches in its defence, but it nevertheless was denounced by the very same west Patel wanted approval from. And attempts to get France to surrender its India ports proved much more difficult in its wake.

Finally, in 1950, Patel died due to a heart attack. For his many flaws, he kept India from being the hell on earth it was in 1947.

1950-1958: Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (Indian National Congress)
1951-2 def. Ajoy Ghosh (Communist Party of India)
1957 def. Shripat Amrit Dange (Communist Party of India)

Upon the death of Patel, the Congress party made Maulana Azad its leader. This was notable for a very large reason - he was a Muslim scholar, in a land where many blamed Muslims for Partition. He had a long career in the Congress party, where he fought ardently for independence and - citing the Constitution of Medina - he believed India should be a composite secular nation. Being a Muslim, he realized many viewed him with suspicion, and he sought to prove his nationalism by consistently condemning Pakistan. Notably, he attacked Hindu nationalists for wishing to turn India into a Hindu Pakistan. With the issue of a consistent law code for Hindus emerging, he smartly stepped out of the conversation as he recognized that as a Muslim this did not affect him. But nevertheless, his tenure was consumed by this issue. The other great issue of this era was linguistic states. While the Congress party had formerly supported linguistic states as an antidote to religious nationalism, both Hindu and Muslim, upon independence it discarded this issue as regionalist. But it increasingly became a hot-button issue, and the issue of Hindi imposition onto the south made it worse.

Though Azad tried to drag his feet onto this issue, it refused to let itself go, and in 1955 Azad was forced to unify the Telugu-speaking parts of Hyderabad state into Andhra, with Madras as the co-capital of the two states of Andhra and the new "Dakshin Pradesh". Further linguistic statehood movements saw a single Kannada-speaking state. Despite attempts to stop the formation of a Tamil state due to the fascistic nature of the Dravidian-Tamil movement, after the movement's leader Periyar called Malayalis the bastard sons of Brahmins plotting to suck the blood of the Tamil people, Kerala sought to eject itself from Dakshin Pradesh, resulting in the formation of the separate states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The Marathi-speaking lands were cut up into five separate states - Bombay, Maharashtra, Khandesh, Vidarbha, and Goa - due to its size and fears of regionalism, and moves for uniting them failed. This further inspired a movement for breaking up the United Provinces into four separate states, which proved successful. In Assam, the Barak Valley, which spoke Bengali due to a Partition refugee wave, was made a separate state after a nativist Assamese movement alienated it. While Punjab, a very large state with a Hindi-speaking plurality, saw a Punjabi-language statehood movement which Azad refused to countenance due to its extremely Sikh nature, and instead it was made a bilingual Hindi-Punjabi state, with many Punjabi Hindus writing their language as Hindi due to this confessional movement. But for the most part, despite many riots, the linguistic statehood movement was mostly complete by this era. At the same time, Azad put the breaks on making Hindi India's national language, instead making it share the spotlight with English.

All the while, Azad promoted education aggressively. He created new universities across the nation and linked them together through a variety of institutions. They greatly expanded Indian university education, even if it remained only accessible to some. More decisive was his declaration of compulsory public education, and a massive drive to establish schools to implement that. But this awakened a language movement against Hindi imposition; while to Azad Hindi in schools was part of replacing English with it, to Tamils Hindi in schools was a plot to replace Tamil as their mothertongue. This mirrored the Bengali language movement in Pakistan, and many feared this would turn into an independence movement. And so, Azad stood back and excluded Tamil Nadu from Hindi.

Finally, in 1958, Azad collapsed and died.

1958-1961: G. B. Pant (Indian National Congress)

Azad's successor was the closest figure he had to a second-in-command, G. B. Pant. Many knew he was of bad health, and so as a result his tenure saw a brewing fight for succession between Morarji Desai and Jagjivan Ram. Furthermore, there was some controversy over Pant's support of Hindi as the national language, which forced him to specifically declare he no longer intended to impose it as such. For all intents and purposes, he was an able administrator, and so even as he liberalized the market as much has he could, he retained the loyalty of the cabinet. This liberalization came with a number of consequences - most notably, it weakened the ability of the state to respond to famine - but it helped allow for greater prosperity and the opening of the elite class to a greater number of people.

But nevertheless, his tenure was dominated by scheming. Jagjivan Ram and Morarji Desai spat at one another, and they gathered allies for the succession fight they knew was coming. Desai was ill-liked for his arrogance and rigidity, while Jagjivan Ram was a young man brewing with ideas who was also a Scheduled Caste. When Pant died in 1961, this succession fight came to the surface.

1961-1964: Jagjivan Ram (Indian National Congress)
1962 def Shripat Amrit Dange (Communist Party of India)

While there were attempts to find a separate candidate to either, they failed, and instead the unlikeable Desai was thrown aside in favour of Jagjivan Ram. This was important for a number of reasons, but the largest was that he was a Scheduled Caste, in a nation whose political life was dominated by upper-caste individuals and in which every previous prime minister had been upper-caste. This motivated him to create a commission to look into the issue of caste reservations in universities and government jobs, despite discomfort among many. More immediately, Jagjivan Ram sought to implement socialism in India. He nationalized the banks, in a decision that deeply divided his cabinet, and he set out to spread them across the nation. He requested American support for improving crop productivity, to bring the Mexican innovations to India, although the United States dragged its feet on the issue. He also created state-owned businesses and also cooperated with existing businesses in an effort to keep capital in the nation and avoid what he felt was cronyism in business.

But ultimately, the caste commission completed its report. It organized non-scheduled backwards castes into a new category of Other Backwards Classes, itself divided between Moderately and Extremely Backwards Classes. It recommended reservations for this, in some cases exceeding 50%, in government jobs and university placements, across the nation. Jagjivan Ram immediately made the decision to implement this report, giving a speech declaring as such. The result was total chaos, as university students felt their livelihoods were at risk. Thus, they rioted, which sparked further riots as this erupted caste onto the national stage. In Punjab, it tore up the rug underneath the Punjabi statehood movement, as suddenly the divide between scheduled and upper caste Sikhs was revealed, while in Tamil Nadu it similarly weakened the claims of the Dravidian movement by dividing upper non-Brahmin castes from the majority. It caused chaos across the nation and widespread rioting verging on rebellion. Within his own party, this move was controversial, and it resulted in it officially removing him from it. With his supporters, Jagjivan Ram walked out of the party and declared their own Congress party, but this was not enough to deny his opponents a majority. And so, Jagjivan Ram's tenure came to an end.

1964-1967: Yashwantrao Chavan (Indian National Congress (O))

Chavan inherited a nation in chaos. He immediately made moves to calm it. With Punjab seeing mass rioting among upper-caste Jat Sikhs which at times turned into advocacy of independence, Chavan conciliated them by establishing a Punjabi-speaking state with the largest-possible borders even including Hindu-majority districts, and he declared a new grand capital of Bhagatnagar would be built as its capital. He similarly declared that, for the time being, he would engage in more moderate caste reservations, and this calmed the rioting substantially. The rioting that wasn't, he calmed with the iron fist. And so, the nation seemed at peace, though as Jagjivan Ram toured the nation and organized vast crowds, his position wasn't as secure as one would assume it. Nevertheless, Chavan reaped the benefits of the Green Revolution, as crop yields increased dramatically and the horrors of famine were forever dispelled. While in 1966, negotiations with France over its Indian colonies finally concluded with them being given to India.

But none of this stopped the growth of feelings of outrage across India over caste, and the 1967 election saw the INC (O) decisively defeated.

1967-1977: Jagjivan Ram (Indian National Congress (J))
1967 def. Yashwantrao Chavan (Indian National Congress (O)
1972 def. Shripat Amrit Dange (Communist Party of India)

Returning to power in India's first peaceful transfer of power, Jagjivan Ram re-implemented full caste reservations. This time, they did not cause as much revulsion across the nation, both because it was less surprising and because partial caste reservations had already been introduced. But nonetheless, there were riots which Jagjivan Ram promptly crushed. The coming years saw a political flux as, with the INC (O) not quite having a handle on oppositionism, it started to collapse. And so, Jagjivan Ram got to work. He expanded business in association with the state, and he helped create an economic boom, he expanded the Green Revolution through subsidies, and he pushed radical land redistribution policies. All of this made him extremely controversial among the old Indian elite which increasingly found itself overshadowed, and in preparation for the coming election the opposition consolidated.

But in 1971, Pakistan sought to suppress the Bangladeshi national movement through genocidal mass killings; this caused a massive refugee wave. This, combined with reports of genocidal massacres, resulted in a wave of sympathy across India. Following the monsoon, India declared war on Pakistan, and in a swift war it destroyed Pakistani forces and liberated Bangladesh, establishing it as an independent republic. Jagjivan Ram's popularity increased to new extremes, and he was openly compared to Hanuman by his supporters. The 1972 election subsequently saw a massive landslide as the INC (J) won 457 seats despite opposition consolidation.

In the coming years, Jagjivan Ram continued further with reforms. He amended the constitution to end all princely stipends, and he engaged in further land redistribution. It was all very radical and transformed India. But at the same time, an agrarian movement brewed across India, and he did not see it coming. Its protests increased in scale, and in Bihar it forced the state government to declare elections which ended with an opposition victory. These protests spread, and they even received support among the Punjab Mahapanchayat in Delhi. But Jagjivan Ram refused to budge, and instead he tried to simultaneously conciliate and crush the protests. These efforts failed, and in 1977 he was defeated.

1977-xxxx: Indira Gandhi (Indian Kranti Congress)
1977 (min.) Jagjivan Ram (Indian National Congress (J)), Shripat Amrit Dange (Communist Party of India)

Indira Gandhi's political career began with her eulogy of her father at his funeral. She movingly spoke of him, and she pointed to the fact that he was one of millions killed by Partition. It was a most moving eulogy which impacted most. Afterwards, she was highly notable in the efforts to house Kashmiri Hindus and Sikhs after they were forced out, and she ensured they would be housed in Shimla where their native climate would be approximated. Being a Hindu, and a Kashmiri in the ethnic but not cultural sense, she felt a duty to help them. She was driven into further refugee humanitarian work, and in the 1950s she moved into the movement for peaceful land redistribution. She made many friends along the way, and after her husband died in a car crash in 1962 she was driven into politics. With the agrarian movement becoming the root of the new opposition in the 1970s, she quickly became its leader, as she could not be touched due to her illustrious father. Winning a bypoll, she became an MP and excoriated Jagjivan Ram for his record. The 1977 election, saw, to the shock of many, the INC (J) reduced to a minority, and Indira Gandhi was able to win a one-seat majority through coalition negotiations. Despite Charan Singh attempting to become PM, the party refused, and instead that honour went to Indira.

She immediately harped on to the same themes as her father. She spoke of socialism and state ownership of the resources. Unlike her atheist father, she was a practicing Hindu, but nevertheless she spoke of the scientific temper and the need to destroy the very same superstitions she partook in. It was a dramatic shift in ideology from the vague agrarianism the party had formerly practiced. But nonetheless, Indira had the will to push it through, and her status as a great humanitarian gave her much credibility.

I have always liked the "major leader irl gets assassinated early on" POD. It may be a rudimentary way to change the fabric of a state, but it never fails to bring interesting results.

Indian post-independence political history seems as fascinating as it is complicated, in all honesty.

 

[Sideways]

A project I've worked on far too long

British PMs Lists Statistics
​

A statistical analysis of lists of British Prime Minister and Head of State (not counting monarchs) posted on this thread

So far this thread has imagined 8,992 years of British history and 774 prime ministers, giving each PM an average rule of 11.618 years

I think it gives an interesting look at the psychology of this community - who looms large, what eras we focus on. Here is the leader board for PMs

View attachment 21032

And the parties

View attachment 21034
Labour has formed more governments, but the Conservatives frequently get renamed the Nationals or Unionist, which evens things up a little. It helps here that I count "National" governments as National PMs as there's often not a clear dividing like where the national government forms into a National Party.

The SDP does well because the name is often used for random non-Labour left wing party, and New Democratic is a surprisingly common choice for a new party.

I've done an update on this

PM Lists Statistics 2022​

1325 people have served as British Prime minister in stories in this thread - covering 20,794 years of history

Top Prime Ministers List (Changes from May 2020)

Position	Years in office	Name	Change
1	600	Tony Blair	-
2	572	Margaret Thatcher	+1
3	347	Clement Attlee	+3
4	344	Winston Churchill	- 2
5	311	Harold Wilson	+9
6	303	Anthony Eden	+14
7	288	Michael Heseltine	+8
8	285	Gordon Brown	+2
9	278	Boris Johnson	+17
10	257	David Cameron	- 6
11	242	Tony Benn	+9
12	240	Theresa May	- 5
13	239	John Major	- 4
14	227	Edward Heath	- 3
15	203	Jeremy Corbyn	- 8
16	187	Peter Shore	+3
17	186	David Lloyd George	- 7
18	185	David Owen	(New!)
19	178	Harold Macmillan	+6
20	172	James Callaghan	+1
21	172	Herbert Henry Asquith	- 4
22	160	Neil Kinnock	-
23	156	Rab Butler	- 9
24	153	Kenneth Clarke	+8
25	146	Roy Jenkins	- 10
26	145	Michael Portillo	+76
27	139	Herbert Morrison	+77
28	135	Oswald Mosley	+1
29	123	Stanley Baldwin	- 6
30	117	Stafford Cripps	- 11
31	114	Austen Chamberlain	+3
32	113	David Miliband	+41
33	112	Barbara Castle	+27
34	111	Michael Foot	- 10
35	110	Denis Healey	+22
36	108	Ed Miliband	- 9
37	106	Tony Greenwood	- 7
38	102	John Prescott	- 55
39	99	Hugh Gaitskell	+7
40	88	Leo Amery	- 12

Keir Starmer was 256th in 2020 having done 8 years as PM, now he's 51st having done 82 years

 

[Sideways]

My reflections on this:

• David Miliband overtaking Ed fascinates me
• The enduring legacy of Tonty Blair on the cultural imagination is interesting. I suspect this is because he's the last stable PM
• Eden was interesting - Eden doing better seems like a common theme
• Boris has done well due to [current year] it'll be interesting to see if this continues - Churchill, Thatcher, and Blair do well because they're common jumping on points. Itll be interesting to see if "post COVID/brexit" emerges as a similar touchpoint
• Corbyn TLs do seem to be dropping off - which is weird to me as he still feels alive in the cultural imagination

 

[napoleon IV]

My reflections on this:

• David Miliband overtaking Ed fascinates me
• The enduring legacy of Tonty Blair on the cultural imagination is interesting. I suspect this is because he's the last stable PM
• Eden was interesting - Eden doing better seems like a common theme
• Boris has done well due to [current year] it'll be interesting to see if this continues - Churchill, Thatcher, and Blair do well because they're common jumping on points. Itll be interesting to see if "post COVID/brexit" emerges as a similar touchpoint
• Corbyn TLs do seem to be dropping off - which is weird to me as he still feels alive in the cultural imagination

Corbyn dropping off makes sense to me. Being LOTO gives a Current Thing bounce (see also Starmer's meteoric rise), but I suspect that once they are no longer LOTO it starts to drop off as people move on to different personalities and also that person can't really be used for future PM lists (Starmer will suffer the same fate assuming he doesn't become PM). Plus, Corbyn is still fairly popular as a choice overall.

What I'm curious about is why Michael Portillo, David Owen, and Herbert Morrison have had such huge rises over the last two years while John Prescott has fallen so precipitously.

 

[Time Enough]

David Miliband overtaking Ed fascinates me

I don’t think folks are doing positive examinations, I suspect much of it is ‘Miliband coups Brown and crashes and burns’ myself.

Eden was interesting - Eden doing better seems like a common theme

I suspect that it’s to do with a). Finding out the Eden-Skelton Connection and b). Being a fairly pathetic character that folks probably want to recontextualise and all that, easier to do that with a more successful Eden Premiership.

An interesting one to ponder is to see Silkin will raise any time soon as I’ve noticed that he’s been used a bit more than he once was.

What I'm curious about is why Michael Portillo, David Owen, and Herbert Morrison have had such huge rises over the last two years while John Prescott has fallen so precipitously.

I think I blame partially myself for Portillo and Morrison, I like using them as ‘Things Are Meh’ lists or Morrison deciding to do a Lavender Scare or something.

As for Prescott, I suspect it’s because it’s become increasingly obvious how much of a ticking time bomb he would be. He’s a figure with a personality that doesn’t lend itself to out and out leadership.

 

[Steve Brinson]

Corbyn dropping off makes sense to me. Being LOTO gives a Current Thing bounce (see also Starmer's meteoric rise), but I suspect that once they are no longer LOTO it starts to drop off as people move on to different personalities and also that person can't really be used for future PM lists (Starmer will suffer the same fate assuming he doesn't become PM). Plus, Corbyn is still fairly popular as a choice overall.

What I'm curious about is why Michael Portillo, David Owen, and Herbert Morrison have had such huge rises over the last two years while John Prescott has fallen so precipitously.

I feel like with John Prescott people used to sort of ignore or laugh off the punching incident in a way they no longer do - I remember when @Callan had that destroy his leadership that felt like both a turning point and sort of an obvious take in a "yeah, that's probably how it would go, surprising that nobody did that before" sort of way.

EDIT: Ninja'd by @Time Enough

 

[Sideways]

What I'm curious about is why Michael Portillo, David Owen, and Herbert Morrison have had such huge rises over the last two years while John Prescott has fallen so precipitously.

From reading through a lot of lists I've come to see these Portillo and Morrisson standard first odd leaders. Standard starting points are the end of WW2 and the end of Thatcher and they're fairly standard alternatives for a timeline just starting to get weird from there. I think that's why you also see Blair as the most popular - you're likely to see him as either the start of a post-Blair timeline, a feature of a post Thatcher timeline or even very early scene setting in a modern day-adjacent TL.

An interesting question is, 2005 to 2010 are still common dates for post Blair TLs and that's a common jumping off point - will we start to see post-pandemic/brexit as a similar jumping off point? When we started on this site 2000s ers PoDs meant "basically the present day" but increasingly the big figures of that time aren't in politics. We're seeing more post-brexit stories and I wonder who will emerge as the relevant figures from that

 

[napoleon IV]

It would also be interesting to see the statistics for US Presidents. My guess for most popular Presidents: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Bernie Sanders. Also a number of leaders who individually don't do well, but as the collective category "Dystopic Fascist Leader in an FH list" do extremely well.

 

[Time Enough]

I feel like with John Prescott people used to sort of ignore or laugh off the punching incident in a way they no longer do - I remember when @Callan had that destroy his leadership that felt like both a turning point and sort of an obvious take in a "yeah, that's probably how it would go, surprising that nobody did that before" sort of way.

EDIT: Ninja'd by @Time Enough

Well that and also his very long list of general dodgy incidents around women (including one sexual assault allegation) and it’s kind of less funny having ‘Hahaha, why it’s Prezza’ in a list anymore.

From reading through a lot of lists I've come to see these Portillo and Morrisson standard first odd leaders. Standard starting points are the end of WW2 and the end of Thatcher and they're fairly standard alternatives for a timeline just starting to get weird from there.

True. Probably explains why Kinnock has stayed fairly even, having him scalp Thatcher or Major is good scene setting for ‘Things Now Get Weird’

I’m surprised there aren’t more 60s and 70s silliness.

 

[Mumby]

1945-1955: Clement Attlee (Labour)
1945 (Majority) def. Winston Churchill (Conservative), Archibald Sinclair (Liberal), Ernest Brown (National Liberal), various Independents
1950 (Majority) def. Winston Churchill (Conservative), Clement Davies (Liberal)
1951 (Majority) def. Winston Churchill (Conservative), Clement Davies (Liberal)
1955-1960: Herbert Morrison (Labour)
1955 (Majority) def. Winston Churchill (Conservative), Clement Davies (Liberal)
1959 (Majority) def. Anthony Eden (Conservative), Mark Bonham Carter (Liberal)
1960-1961: Harold Wilson (Labour majority) [1]
1961-1963: Tony Greenwood (Labour majority) [2]
1963-1964: Jim Callaghan (Labour majority)
1964-1965: Alec Douglas-Home (Conservative) [3]
1964 (Minority) def. Jim Callaghan (Labour), Mark Bonham Carter (Liberal)
1965-1970: Enoch Powell (Conservative)
1966 (Majority) def. Jim Callaghan (Labour)
1970-1974: Jim Callaghan (Labour)
1970 (Majority) def. Enoch Powell (Conservative), Eric Lubbock (The Movement)
1974-1975: Enoch Powell (Conservative)
1974 (Minority) def. Jim Callaghan (Labour), Eric Lubbock (The Movement)
1974 (Minority) def. Jim Callaghan (Labour), Eric Lubbock (The Movement)
1975-1979: Hugh Fraser (Conservative majority) [4]
1979-1980: Denis Healey (Labour) [5]
1979 (Majority) def. Hugh Fraser (Conservative), John Pardoe (Independent Parliamentary Group)
1980-1988: Peter Shore (Labour)
1983 (Majority) def. Hugh Fraser (Conservative), David Owen (Democratic)
1987 (Majority) def. Hugh Fraser (Conservative), David Owen (Democratic)
1988-1992: Tony Benn (Labour majority) [6]
1992-1994: Bryan Gould (Labour) [7]
1992 (Coalition with Democrats) def. Douglas Hurd (Conservative), Alan Beith (Democratic)
1994-1997: Margaret Beckett (Labour-Democratic coalition)
1997-2001: Michael Howard (Conservative) [8]
1997 (Coalition with Democrats) def. Margaret Beckett (Labour), Alan Beith (Democratic)
2001 (Coalition with Democrats) def. Margaret Beckett (Labour), David Rendel (Democratic)
2001-2003: David Davis (Conservative-Democratic coalition) [9]
2003-2010: Kenneth Clarke (Conservative)
2005 (Coalition with Democrats) def. Margaret Beckett (Labour), David Rendel (Democratic)
2010-2010: John McDonnell (Labour) [10]
2010 (Majority) def. Kenneth Clarke (Conservative), Simon Hughes (Democratic)
2010-2015: Diane Abbott (Labour majority) [11]
2015-2016: Liz Kendall (Labour) [12]
2015 (Coalition with Democrats) def. Kenneth Clarke (Conservative), Chris Huhne (Democratic)
2016-2020: Owen Smith (Labour) [13]
2017 (Coalition with Democrats) def. Liam Fox (Conservative), Norman Lamb (Democratic)
2019 (Coalition with Democrats) def. Owen Smith (Labour), Ed Davey (Democratic)
2020-0000: Lisa Nandy (Labour-Democratic coalition)

[1] Morrison was brought down by his conduct during the Levant Crisis, and Wilson was the sacrificial lamb offered up at Labour Conference who unexpectedly took the leadership for himself. Wilson proved unready for the position, and soon stepped aside.
[2] Greenwood was a controversial Prime Minister, distancing himself from the incoming Nixon Administration and instead making a name for himself shaking hands with Premier Malenkov in Berlin. Fears of his Soviet sympathies led to a rebellion in the unions who got their pick for the new leader.
[3] Douglas-Home restored the Tories to power after nearly two decades in the cold - his crackdown on 'Cultural Socialism' led to a reaction on university campuses and he was assassinated by a militant group.
[4] Powell had once been popular, cracking down heavily upon the 'social permissiveness' that had led to the death of his predecessor. His polarising policies however led to a failure to form a majority government in the 1970s. Hugh Fraser was a more avuncular figure able to form a de facto Grand Coalition with Callaghan throughout the remainder of the decade.
[5] Healey became the second Prime Minister of the 20th Century to be assassinated - but this time by Protestant Unionist paramilitaries.
[6] Benn was the natural successor to Shore, combining his Euroscepticism and his firm commitment to socialism. But when Labour lost it's majority in 1992, his removal from the leadership was the Democrats' price for helping Labour form a government.
[7] Gould continued Shore and Benn's Euroscepticism, even as he was forced to hold a referendum on joining the Community. He resigned following the conclusion of the successful YES campaign.
[8] Howard was the most successful Conservative leader since Powell or possibly Baldwin, but another coalition agreement in 2001 led to a backbench Tory rebellion. Another coalition was the price, and a more libertarian Tory leader.
[9] Davis was, like Gould before him, brought down by being a Eurosceptic in coalition with the Democrats. Unable to meet their demands he stepped aside for a more productive leader.
[10] McDonnell was the last Prime Minister to die in office, gunned down by a radicalised squaddie in Liberia.
[11] Abbott was McDonnell's deputy - and an unacceptable coalition partner once Labour lost it's majority in 2015.
[12] Kendall was Labour's answer to the Democrat's demands, but after revelations of both Labour and Democratic leaders using their positions to aid or defend their partners, it was time to clean the slate.
[13] Smith never managed to get the majority he wanted at either of the snap elections he called - and called it quits in 2020 after the Democrats got a new leader.

 

[Charles EP M.]

• David Miliband overtaking Ed fascinates me

I think most are having a go at the idea of the Lost Proper Brother (or being generally sardonic about it), and the forum really hates that idea.

including one sexual assault allegation

uhhhhhh oh.

 

[Walpurgisnacht]

Part of the David MiliComeback is, I think, that he's not as talked up as much these days--it's gone from "ugh I was on the train and everyone was chanting 'David for PM, Ed for Prison' in unison" to "haha lol remember Thunderbirds". So now he's cool to use again, and he represents an end-of-history-forever aesthetic that we have a major tendency to return to because, well, it was just before now.

 

[Time Enough]

Part of the David MiliComeback is, I think, that he's not as talked up as much these days--it's gone from "ugh I was on the train and everyone was chanting 'David for PM, Ed for Prison' in unison" to "haha lol remember Thunderbirds". So now he's cool to use again, and he represents an end-of-history-forever aesthetic that we have a major tendency to return to because, well, it was just before now.

My end of history aesthetic is Neil Kinnock becoming PM and having Bryan Gould do tax cuts so we’re all different I guess.

 

[Mumby]

2007-2013: Gordon Brown (Labour)
2010 ('Rose Garden Agreement' minority) def. David Cameron (Conservative), Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrat), Peter Robinson (Democratic Unionist), Alex Salmond (Scottish National), Gerry Adams (Sinn Fein)
2011 PR referendum; YES 53%
2012 Scottish independence referendum; 61% NO
2013-2015: David Cameron (Conservative)
2013 (Coalition with UKIP and DUP) def. Gordon Brown (Labour), Alex Salmond (Scottish National), Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrat), Nigel Farage (United Kingdom Independence), Peter Robinson (Democratic Unionist), Natalie Bennett (Green), Gerry Adams (Sinn Fein), Alasdair McDonnell (Social Democratic and Labour)
2014 EU membership referendum; 53% LEAVE
2015-2016: Michael Gove (Conservative-UKIP-DUP coalition)
2016-2016: John McDonnell (Labour)
2016 (Minority) def. Michael Gove (Conservative), Paul Nuttall (United Kingdom Independence), Vince Cable (Liberal Democrat), Alex Salmond (Scottish National), Caroline Lucas (Green), Arlene Foster (Democratic Unionist), Gerry Adams (Sinn Fein), Colum Eastwood (Social Democratic and Labour)
2016-2017: Mark Carney (Independent leading Technical Government)
2017-0000: Louise Mensch (Conservative)
2017 (Coalition with UKIP and DUP) def. John McDonnell (Labour), Mark Carney (Making Change), Paul Nuttall (United Kingdom Independence), disputed (Scottish National), Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat), Arlene Foster (Democratic Unionist), Colum Eastwood (Social Democratic and Labour), Mary Lou McDonald (Sinn Fein)
2018 Democratic Representatives referendum; 55% YES
2019 (Majority) def. Rebecca Long-Bailey (Labour), Gina Miller (Liberal Democrat / Making Change), Alex Salmond (Scottish National), Edwin Poots (Democratic Unionist)
2023 (Majority) def. Keir Starmer (Alliance), Richard Burgon (Labour), Edwin Poots (Democratic Unionist), Alex Salmond (Scottish National), Mary Lou McDonald (Sinn Fein)

 

[Bolt451]

2019 Democratic Representatives referendum; 55% YES

What this please Bob? Q move back away from PR?

 

[Mumby]

What this please Bob? Q move back away from PR?

Yea