alternatehistory.com

It is often mistaken, even by those in British Politics, that on these fair isle exists a two-party system. This mistake is easily forgiven, at least to those who are perhaps not as political engaged as others, as since the 15th of November 1922, there has not been a Prime Minister from a Party that is neither the Conservative Party, nor the Labour Party. Admittedly, this is not strictly true, but it would be pedantic to bring up the Third Ministry of Ramsay MacDonald, whom served as a member of the National Labour Committee, or the Brief Government of Bonar Law and Sir Alec Douglas-Home, two Scottish Unionist, all members of factions making up the great Conservative Coalitions of the mid-Century. Of course, before the 14th of November 1918, nearly the same could be said for the political dominations of the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party, who sat opposite on another in the House for some sixty years, with the Liberal Party helming administrations that would last for some thirty four years, under three Monarchs, seven Prime Ministers, and the Great War.

To put a complicated process into the briefest terms, the Liberal Party helped win the Great War, but lost the subsequent peace, bitterly fragmenting into several factions in the 1918 election, mainly between David Lloyd George, who wished to continue the Wartime Coalition with the Conservative and Labour Party, and H.H. Asquith, who did not. Following 1918, the Party would never hold high political office again beyond ministerial posts in Coalitions during the interwar period and Second World War, and ultimately, on the 2nd of March 1988, 69 years, four months, and 18 days after the final day of the last Liberal Government, the Party, a shell and shadow of what was perhaps once the most important political forces in the Western Hemisphere, died.

However, as these things have a habit of doing, it didn't end there for the Liberal Party. From the 6th of June 1981, through to the 3rd of March 1988, the Liberal Party under the relatively youthful David Steel was bound in an electoral alliance with the Social Democratic Party, a Labour splinter Party initially led by former Chancellor and Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, then former Foreign Secretary David Owen, and finally a former Junior Minister in the Department of Trade and Industry Robert MacLennan (their leaderships, as well as Steel's, are discussed at lengths in a later chapter). Both Parties joined one another, recognising that it would be better to be a single Centralist force in politics rather than multiple, so 'The Alliance', as it was known, set out to replace Labour as the Party of Opposition and a Party of Government, effectively doing what Labour had done to the Liberals in the interwar. This ultimately failed.

As a response to the results of the 1987 General Election, a merged was sought. Though not without resistance, the Liberals and Social Democrats dissolved, reemerging blinking into the world as a single unified Party known as the 'Social and Liberal Democrats' on the 3rd of March, 1988.

And this brings us to the first leader of this brave new party, Jeremy ‘Paddy’ Ashdown.