Maybe Blair doesn't become as much of a reformist as in OTL? He could well stay in the leftist camp (he was in the 80s). Basically, you can have Labour lose, but not New Labour.
Here's an idea: the Germans never build up a large navy, deciding to remain a merely continental power (maybe Kaiser Bill sees some dashing soldiers rather than pretty boats as a child?). France decides it needs a bigger navy as Japan flexes its muscles, the entente cordiale never happens. With...
I think that the 50s is pushing it. If Keynes is better at convincing the US to give us more money and Cripps doesn't pursue savage austerity in 1948-9, we may see less of the perennial economic difficulties consensus-era Britain faced and so less incentive to flee from the colonies. We may also...
There is a book on this called The Third World War by Gen. Shan Hackett. It essentially has a conventional war in Europe with a slow Soviet advance through Germany. As the push slows, the house of cards the Soviet government is resting on begins to crumble. The Politburo decides to nuke...
After Napoleon, the British crown reaffirms its claim to France. Normandy becomes part of Britain. Basque separatists make a Pyrrenean state. Burgundy undergoes a nationalist revolution, giving a four-state France, sort of. It's a horrible way of going about it, but the best I could do.
Couldn't they just say 'OK, move beyond the line but be sure to respect the natives' integrity'? Or declare that the existing line is the boundary of existing colonies and that to settle beyond it you need to apply to London (or the colonial authority) so arrangements can be made for a new 'state'?
A decent idea would essentially be devolved colonial governments (this also deals with the eventual issue of the sheer resources of the OTL US overpowering the British homeland) and an 'Imperial Congress' called when necessary to deal with crises and co-ordinate wider policy.
I don't know where a fifth Blackadder would have gone, really. It could work with, as has been suggested, a BAOR setting. But I quite like the idea of one set in the millenium-era with him trying to cash in on the internet boom. I don't know how Baldrick or George would fit in to it, but it...
What if, instead of resorting violent revolution, the colonials manage to hammer out a deal with the British government? For example, an MP for each of the thirteen colonies? Or a separate, supernational colonial parliament (i.e. imperial confederation from the beginning)? What would the effects...