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WI: Prime Minister Jimmy Savile in 1995

SinghSong

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So, looking at Jimmy Savile's connections with political figures and the royal family, I was just wondering- WI Jimmy Savile had decided to go into politics in the early 80's, joining his best friend PM Margaret Thatcher as a member of her Conservative party, and setting his sights upon eventually becoming the Prime Minister of the UK? :eek:

Could he have potentially succeeded in becoming Great Britain's PM, with Savile's close friendship with Thatcher getting him into the House of Parliament, mounting a leadership challenge against incumbent leader & Prime Minister John Major in 1995, winning out over John Redwood, and then subsequently managing to win the 1995 Conservative Party leadership election? Or would his horrific sexual misdeeds have been exposed before he managed to succeed in becoming PM, due to the extra media attention, potentially allowing some 'good' to come out of this (and if so, could the Conservatives, or indeed the entire British political establishment, ever salvage its destroyed reputation after the TTL's supercharged version of OTL's Sleaze Scandals)?

And if he had become PM, would the truth have come out regardless during his term in office, and/or his lifetime? Or would they have been kept under wraps, and covered up by public authorities, in the same manner as they had been with Cyril Smith's sex offences, and to an even greater extent? Could PM Savile potentially have used the national security resources to conceal his crimes or even erase any record of them, using his cult of personality as a British pop icon to win re-election against Tony Blair, and consolidate his position as PM? And if so, how much more dystopian could GB have be ITTL?
 
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Saville undoubtedly had access to and the ear of Thatcher, he got her to promise money towards hospitals and lobbied for her to change the law towards charities paying taxes, and they had dozens of lunches and exchange of letters. She was also pretty persistent in terms of lobbying to give him a knighthood despite the civil service being openly concerned about him and not wanting to.

But that relationship was based on the idea that he was a basically apolitical charity guy, it's a huge stretch to suggest because of that friendly relationship she'd recommend him for a political position. The dynamics are very different.

You might as well pick any person knighted by a PM and ask what would happen if that PM picked them as their successor. Like what if Alex Ferguson had followed Tony Blair into the labour party and won against Gordon Brown in 2007?
 
By the point of being chummy with Thatcher, I'm not sure he'd be interested in becoming an MP as he'd already have all the fame, money, power, and opportunity he wanted. (I did a vignette with him as PM in the 70s, as he wouldn't have become Him Off The Telly when he shifted to being an MP and also for the dark pun "Sunny Jim") He'd have to be convinced he could get away with more as an MP, which might be difficult as Gary's right that you can't be the Beloved Modern Saint if you're not apolotical.

If he could be in position to challenge in 1995 - or heck, maybe he's the one who gets it in 1990 - he'd probably be able to keep a lid on almost everything. (Cyril Smith did and he wasn't even PM or a party leader!) Though there could be an exception if foreign journalists find this, because they'd be operating under other legal systems, they don't have any inherent familiarity and fondness for Him Off The Telly, and he'd be a very weird person that 24/7 American telly is going to have fun with. If they dig up evidence Savile's a paedo and it comes out and he's not just alive but running the country, that's going to be the mother of all scandals and possibly cause some riots.
 
One of the most chilling things about Savile is that he got a full, non-honorary knighthood (as distinct from Bob Geldof's honorary KBE, and even that didn't happen as soon as some had wanted) before anyone else who had built his career on pop music - he was five years ahead of even Cliff Richard on that front, slightly longer ahead of Paul McCartney & George Martin (who were very late Major knighthoods to get in before Blair, in some ways the equivalent of Heath's U-turn as a means of attempting to reconcile with the unions), 12 years ahead of Mick Jagger, and 20-30 years ahead of those who have latterly followed under the Cameronite/Johnsonian Rock Right.

I'm not sure how you could practically get people from the pop and rock worlds to be widely honoured sooner, because you'd have to have boomers running the country before they could realistically have been old enough to reach the top. Indeed, if anything the most frequently-cited counterfactuals that would have any impact on that - i.e. John Smith living or Gordon Brown becoming leader after Smith died - would likely have meant that it took *longer* for pop and rock musicians to receive British state honours on an unremarkable and uncontroversial basis, and that the elevation of white, mainstream pop and rock music to Elgar/Vaughan Williams level might have been less marked and dramatic.

But that Savile stat really does chill. Obviously when the Elm Guest House frenzy was at its height, with all that suggests, people were saying that Cliff might ultimately be stripped of his knighthood (as Stuart Hall & Rolf Harris had honours removed when they were found out, and as we found out re. Savile & Smith cannot be done after someone has died, when a non-hereditary honour ceases to exist legally).
 
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