- Location
- Tamaki Makaurau
In 1951, when Winston Churchill returned to office with a small majority, he took the unusual step of inviting Liberal leader Clement Davies to take the Education brief in his new ministry. This was quite clearly a bear hug, designed to split the Liberal Party, and Davies rejected the offer on these grounds. But he was apparently sorely tempted and only made his mind up when his nerve was stiffened by more resolutely anti-Tory advisers. It's worth noting that Davies had obeyed the whip of the pre-War National Government as a member of the Liberal National Party.
So it's a bit of a handwave, but what if he'd had the wrong people around him on the day and gone for the job in '51?
There's clearly going to be yet another Liberal split. However, interestingly, the last of the definitively lefty/radical Liberals had just lost their seats, among them Megan Lloyd George, and five of the remaining six Lib MPs were unopposed by Tory candidates as a result of abortive Churchill-Davies talks around the possibility of an anti-Socialist electoral pact. I would suggest that if Davies joins a Tory-led Government, then some or all of Arthur Holt, Donald Wade, Rhys Hopkin Morris and Roderic Bowen would feel sufficiently beholden to the Conservatives to back their leader. Probably the least likely to follow suit is Grimond, who was elected against a Tory challenger and - despite being at this point in his career quite a dry economic liberal - sufficiently aware of the main chance to see that leading a new radical party might be a good career move. Others of the other four might go with him.
I suspect that the Daviesite Liberals would still be too fundamentally pissy at the National Liberals - and vice versa - to merge with them, so the latter group probably still continue in their drawn-out decline. They'd just be joined in that decline by most of the rest of the Liberals, assuming the Daviesites don't manage to break free at some opportune juncture - the Liberals IOTL usually voted with the Tories at this time and loved Eden at first because he had a reputation as a liberal internationalist, but Suez would be the obvious point at which they'd choose to go. However, butterflies might change the course of the crisis, and bear in mind that there'd have been an election in the meantime in which the Daviesites would have been in an electoral alliance with the Tories and National Liberals.
Reckons welcome, as are disagreements with my own. Not to be That Guy, though, but I think we can take it as read that the PoD isn't hugely likely in the first place.
So it's a bit of a handwave, but what if he'd had the wrong people around him on the day and gone for the job in '51?
There's clearly going to be yet another Liberal split. However, interestingly, the last of the definitively lefty/radical Liberals had just lost their seats, among them Megan Lloyd George, and five of the remaining six Lib MPs were unopposed by Tory candidates as a result of abortive Churchill-Davies talks around the possibility of an anti-Socialist electoral pact. I would suggest that if Davies joins a Tory-led Government, then some or all of Arthur Holt, Donald Wade, Rhys Hopkin Morris and Roderic Bowen would feel sufficiently beholden to the Conservatives to back their leader. Probably the least likely to follow suit is Grimond, who was elected against a Tory challenger and - despite being at this point in his career quite a dry economic liberal - sufficiently aware of the main chance to see that leading a new radical party might be a good career move. Others of the other four might go with him.
I suspect that the Daviesite Liberals would still be too fundamentally pissy at the National Liberals - and vice versa - to merge with them, so the latter group probably still continue in their drawn-out decline. They'd just be joined in that decline by most of the rest of the Liberals, assuming the Daviesites don't manage to break free at some opportune juncture - the Liberals IOTL usually voted with the Tories at this time and loved Eden at first because he had a reputation as a liberal internationalist, but Suez would be the obvious point at which they'd choose to go. However, butterflies might change the course of the crisis, and bear in mind that there'd have been an election in the meantime in which the Daviesites would have been in an electoral alliance with the Tories and National Liberals.
Reckons welcome, as are disagreements with my own. Not to be That Guy, though, but I think we can take it as read that the PoD isn't hugely likely in the first place.