AHC: Prime Minister George Galloway

Peelitebkearns

Hi all,

If you follow the news in the UK, you probably know George Galloway has been in the news for his surprise reelection to parliament.

With that in mind, I set this challenge-with as late a pod as possible, find a (realistic) way of making George Galloway british PM by the present day.

Assuming you can do this, what would his Premiership be like?

For what it's worth, I can't personally see him being a success as Prime Minister-I'm just interested in finding a way to get him to Downing Street-and explore how he handles things when he gets there.

Bonus if you can get Tony Blair to serve in his cabenet, double bonus if you can actually outline a TL where he is regarded as a successful PM by the public at large.
 

Peelitebkearns

Arachnid said:
I'd sooner see Zombie Prime Minister Mosley than Galloway.
Click to expand...

Personally I think it'd be hard to make Galloway PM-and I agree with you that his potential premiership is likely to make Chainberlain's look good in comparrison.

I'm just wondering if their's a way of actually getting him in to power (and making his tennya a success in the process).

So are there any takers regarding this challenge?
 

Deleted member 40957

Islamist revolution in Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of the Grand Mosque Siege (and the ensuing attempts by Iraq to invade both Arabia and Iran) results in oil prices skyrocketing and staying extremely high for the forseeable future. World economy collapses into a second Great Depression.

Tory attempts to introduce supply-side reforms go over even worse, riots and assassinations and repeated strikes ensue, people like Murdoch respond by firing the strikers, unemployment hits 33%, Tony Benn elected PM, MI5 proved to be considering a coup against him, far-left Labour government imposes a state of emergency and Britain becomes a Venezuela-style semi-democracy. Galloway becomes PM in the 2000s as Benn's handpicked successor.

That's the only possibility I could think of (and it's still probably ASB). Galloway's too combatative and radical to become PM under any normal circumstances.
 

Serenissima

Labour loses the Iraq War vote and Blair loses a vote of confidence in Parliament as a consequence. Galloway (and by extension his Respect party) are brought back into the fold of the party by a Labour Party scrambling to the left in an effort to distance itself from the incredibly unpopular New Labour war policy. Galloway then later manages to win a Labour leadership election; combined with the Tories putting up a hard-right candidate to restore the 'status quo pro ante'; Labour may win an election. If Galloway is the Labour leader, that'd make him PM.
 

tiggerfan

As an outside observer I tend to agree with the general view that the only path to make Galloway PM is to effectively end democracy in the UK and make him a quasi dictator.
 

Deleted member 40957

Serenissima said:
Labour loses the Iraq War vote and Blair loses a vote of confidence in Parliament as a consequence. Galloway (and by extension his Respect party) are brought back into the fold of the party by a Labour Party scrambling to the left in an effort to distance itself from the incredibly unpopular New Labour war policy. Galloway then later manages to win a Labour leadership election; combined with the Tories putting up a hard-right candidate to restore the 'status quo pro ante'; Labour may win an election. If Galloway is the Labour leader, that'd make him PM.
Click to expand...

Not entirely impossible, but remember that Galloway's economic policies are pretty far to the left as well (he's very anti-capitalist and anti-globalization). While his foreign policy might be popular in 2004, his other views are probably going to be too different from the New Labour consensus for him to win the leadership election.
 

Garrison

Donor
His only real chance would be if the distrust of the main political parties reached such a scale that something like his Respect party(which is OTL pretty much a one man band) picked up momentum and he gets carried to power to teach the Westminster politicians a lesson, and by the time they realize what a horrific mistake it was its all far too late.
 

Serenissima

serbrcq said:
Not entirely impossible, but remember that Galloway's economic policies are pretty far to the left as well (he's very anti-capitalist and anti-globalization). While his foreign policy might be popular in 2004, his other views are probably going to be too different from the New Labour consensus for him to win the leadership election.
Click to expand...

From the leadership consensus, but I think, by and large, the rank and file membership (trade unionists, etc) are far more left than the New Labour leadership. Hence all the disillusionment in the party, even in reality (and the few popular far-left MPs, who attract support well outside their constituencies within their party).
 

Peg Leg Pom

I hate to do it but to quote the Sun. "Will the last one to leave Britain please turn out the lights". Michael Foot would have been bad enough but Galloway. Shudder. It's almost enough to get me to vote Tory even if Maggie(spit) was still leading them.
 
Thande

Thande

Donor
I can think of one vague way to make it at least slightly possible. Avoid the Falklands War and have the Alliance win the 1983 election, probably as a minority government, and Roy Jenkins becomes Prime Minister. However the Alliance's tenure is troubled and the government collapses after only a couple of years, triggering another election. OTL, Galloway managed to defeat Jenkins in his seat in the 1987 election. Now, we've just seen how Galloway, for all his faults, can run a bloody good campaign, so even if Jenkins was PM I think it's plausible that Galloway could still have unseated him. In the aftermath of this election the Alliance is blown back down to pre-1983 Liberal levels, with most voters seeing it as a failed experiment, and the Labour Party sweeps to power due to the Conservatives still being in a civil war between Thatcherites and One Nationers arguing about whose fault it was that they lost in 1983.

Labour is led by Kinnock and he mostly staffs the cabinet with moderates, but feels the need to give some seats to left-wingers due to continuing pressure within the party. This George Galloway chap is a Labour hero, he's the first person in British political history (IIRC) to unseat a sitting Prime Minister. Sure, he's a bit fiery and gaffe-prone, but the press love him for that, let's give him a role that's prominent but doesn't have that much power. He's Scottish, let's make him Scottish Secretary.

Except, of course, the Alliance were trying to push for devolution and many in Labour want to pick up where they left off in 1979, so new referendums on Scottish and Welsh devolution go ahead. Kinnock, being Welsh, campaigns personally for the Welsh referendum, but support for a Welsh Assembly is still quite low and the referendum fails, embarrassing Kinnock, while Galloway campaigns effectively for the Scottish referendum--and the Scots are more likely to vote yes anyway--and it succeeds.

Thus, as well as bearing a standard-bearer for the Labour Left, Galloway is now also associated with significant political triumphs. Add this to the fact that it's the mid-1980s, the UK's alliance with Ronald Reagan's USA is growing very unpopular--I could see Kinnock giving in on cruise missiles only to be blasted by Galloway--and there is at least a small possibility of Galloway becoming PM in this scenario. He'd make a hash of it, of course, but it could happen.
 
V-J

V-J

This isn't going to happen due to a totally lethal mixture of Galloway's personality and political positioning. I can just, just, see him becoming a possible Labour leader if somehow Labour becomes a third party in the aftermath of a successful breaking of the mould, but that's as far as he's going to rise I'm afraid. Nobody from the campaign group wing of the party is going to become Labour leader from a post-OTL 1983 POD.
 

Deleted member 40957

Thande said:
I can think of one vague way to make it at least slightly possible. Avoid the Falklands War and have the Alliance win the 1983 election, probably as a minority government, and Roy Jenkins becomes Prime Minister. However the Alliance's tenure is troubled and the government collapses after only a couple of years, triggering another election. OTL, Galloway managed to defeat Jenkins in his seat in the 1987 election. Now, we've just seen how Galloway, for all his faults, can run a bloody good campaign, so even if Jenkins was PM I think it's plausible that Galloway could still have unseated him. In the aftermath of this election the Alliance is blown back down to pre-1983 Liberal levels, with most voters seeing it as a failed experiment, and the Labour Party sweeps to power due to the Conservatives still being in a civil war between Thatcherites and One Nationers arguing about whose fault it was that they lost in 1983.

Labour is led by Kinnock and he mostly staffs the cabinet with moderates, but feels the need to give some seats to left-wingers due to continuing pressure within the party. This George Galloway chap is a Labour hero, he's the first person in British political history (IIRC) to unseat a sitting Prime Minister. Sure, he's a bit fiery and gaffe-prone, but the press love him for that, let's give him a role that's prominent but doesn't have that much power. He's Scottish, let's make him Scottish Secretary.

Except, of course, the Alliance were trying to push for devolution and many in Labour want to pick up where they left off in 1979, so new referendums on Scottish and Welsh devolution go ahead. Kinnock, being Welsh, campaigns personally for the Welsh referendum, but support for a Welsh Assembly is still quite low and the referendum fails, embarrassing Kinnock, while Galloway campaigns effectively for the Scottish referendum--and the Scots are more likely to vote yes anyway--and it succeeds.

Thus, as well as bearing a standard-bearer for the Labour Left, Galloway is now also associated with significant political triumphs. Add this to the fact that it's the mid-1980s, the UK's alliance with Ronald Reagan's USA is growing very unpopular--I could see Kinnock giving in on cruise missiles only to be blasted by Galloway--and there is at least a small possibility of Galloway becoming PM in this scenario. He'd make a hash of it, of course, but it could happen.
Click to expand...

Not bad, I'd read this as a TL.

It would definitely be easier for him to win in the Cold War years when antipathy towards America was at its height on the left - plus it'd precede his "salute" to Saddam Hussein, which has dented the credibility of his claims to be concerned about human rights and so on.

You still might have to throw in a bit of economic downturn for his hard-left economic policies to be palatable, though. A serious misstep on the economy by the Alliance could work to his advantage.
 

kspence92

For George Galloway to become PM would require an alien space bat to kill every British MP except him and convince the Queen to accept him as PM
 
black angel

black angel

George's unwillingness to keep it in his pants might bite him in the ass as PM, you know along with the crazy :p

you could see George as the flashy figure head with Tony Blair (or some one) as the real power, given George's laziness, he hardly did ANY thing as an MP, in 2009 he voted just 93 times out of the House's 1,113 votes, the only people that did less were the Sinn Féin members who don't take their seats, the speaker and deputy speakers who can't vote and two MP who has DIED, I think George likes being covered in the press and living high off some one else's dime so I can see him giving speeches to fire people up and such, while the cabinet runs things from behind him.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top