alternatehistory.com
Uhura's Mazda - On The Plus Side, At Least We Have A Woman PM
On The Plus Side, At Least We Have A Woman PM
1979-1979: Margaret Thatcher (Conservative)
1979 def: Jim Callaghan (Labour), David Steel (Liberal)
The return of Conservative Government to the United Kingdom proved to be less smooth than had been hoped for. On the morning of the State Opening of Parliament, just before the Parliamentary hostage was sent to the Palace and before the Queen set off for Westminster, a series of explosions shook the heaving Parliament. Big Ben plummeted into the Thames, never to sound again. All the neo-Gothic magnificence was utterly destroyed, reduced to rubble. The Great London Museum, completed in 1996 at the site of the blasts, showcases what remains of the statues and busts, but it is a poor treasure trove compared to what existed before.
And, of course, literally all the MPs and Lords were diffused out over the Gulf Stream.
1979-1979: Oswald Mosley (Union Movement)
It didn’t take long to find out who the perpetrators were: they came forward within minutes with their Union Jack and their stomach-churning pronouncements about the quality of Black Blood which were fairly ridiculous considering all the Red Blood that surrounded them in that mound of rubble just off Parliament Square. The remaining onlookers were too shaken to take them to task, though, and were further discouraged from doing so when Lord Carington clawed his way out of the wreckage - the only surviving politician in the land - and was shot in the face for his trouble. The Terrorists proclaimed Sir Oswald Mosley as Prime Minister, but there is no evidence that Mosley had any ties with Derek Holland and his collaborators. But for a few hours, until the Army cleared out the last of the Terrorists in the Palace of Westminster, he was the closest thing we had to a Premier. Even though he may not have been aware of this until after the fact.
1979-1980: Emlyn Hooson (Liberal)
The following day, Queen Elizabeth II, who had been under especially strong armed guard since the events of the State Opening, addressed the nation over television in a historic breach of convention. She immediately appointed Emlyn Hooson, a long-standing Liberal MP who had lost his seat a month or two before and was the closest thing Britain had to a unifying figurehead. Hooson, however, was powerless to prevent the Army from pursuing a tactic of summary executions of suspected National Front supporters or other Terrorists, and could not move out of Downing Street fast enough when the (relatively) unprovoked attacks on Irish Nationalists in Ulster sparked yet another phase of general violent lawlessness in Northern Ireland. He called a General Election as soon as it was safe to do so in the majority of the country (while the NF was very small and its actions greeted with hatred by ordinary people, there were copycat attack in minor cities) and announced that he would step down from his unelected role.
1980-1994: Teddy Taylor (Conservative)
1980 def: Shirley Williams (Labour), Emlyn Hooson (Liberal)
1984 def: Shirley Williams (Labour), Alex Carlile (Liberal)
1989 def: Tony Blair (Labour), Paddy Ashdown (Liberal)
Teddy Taylor (who had also lost his seat in 1979 and, in doing so, saved his own life) benefited from a ‘rally round the flag’ effect in the aftermath of the Westminster Attack. The Martyr Margaret Thatcher, at whose State Funeral he was featured prominently, had not been overly fond of him, but needs must when the devil drives, and the British people felt that the NF should be told that the Tories were the democratic choice of the People. As such, Taylor won 450 seats off the bat against Labour moderate Shirley Williams.
Taylor was a chief member of the Monday Club, and pursued a double policy of cracking down on far-right activists while also withdrawing from the EEC on a unilateral basis and reaching out to the disaffected Right by banning (and stringently enforcing the bans on) homosexuality and abortion and establishing a system of voluntary repatriation. The attacks ceased, apart from the incessant Ulster situation. Now, Shirley Williams was a fairly liberal voice in Labour, and attacked these measures, but she was again rejected by an electorate in siege mentality in 1984. The Actual Liberals were also losing ground, having lost a lot of the MPs who had built up personal votes in their constituencies and being on the wrong side of the human rights debates of the 1980s.
1994-2001: Gordon Brown (Labour)
1994 def: Teddy Taylor (Conservative), Paddy Ashdown (Liberal)
1999 def: Michael Fallon (Conservative)
Labour only returned to power when the electorate was bored of the aging Taylor and Labour had moved towards the new consensus. Socially, Gordon Brown was not exactly Taylorite, but he certainly saw such issues as irrelevant compared to the very real issues of Balance of Payments crises and wage exploitation. Brown kept the social policies of the Tories, but introduced helpful measures such as the Minimum Wage and the Family Box for new mothers, in stark contrast to Taylor’s more hands-off approach to the economy. Brown enjoyed huge success despite his personal awkwardness, because he was presented as a munificent Father of the State in an era when Britain really needed someone to reassure them that everything was going to be alright.
2001-2001: Peter Mandelson (Labour)
It wasn’t going to be alright.
On the 9th of November 2001, the radical Islamist group ‘Al-Qaeda’ hijacked eight planes from Luton Airport and flew them into the newly-constructed Houses of Parliament in the New Town of Elizabethton. This was different to the National Front attack: not only was Britain hardened, but on a more practical level, not every MP was present on that particular day. Peter Mandelson, of the oily demeanour and slightly creepy moustache, was the only surviving Cabinet Member and proclaimed himself Prime Minister in an insufficiently mournful address to the public (including several policy announcements which were considered a bit Soon), and before long not only was the entire population baying for his resignation, but the Queen was too. Mandelson, leaving the new Prime Ministerial residence on Thatcher Street with his wife just a few days after entering it, would be followed by a repeat of the last time Parliament had been decimated: a down-to-earth Liberal who had just lost his seat in the previous election.
2001-2001: Paddy Ashdown, Baron Ashdown (Liberal)
What had worked last time did not work this time. A population presented with nonentities in yellow rosettes whose policies were directly in contradiction with the Principle of Self-Preservation (Teddy Taylor’s coinage) had eroded the stellar local work of the Liberal Party, and they had lost the last of their seats, Yeovil, in 1999. Now, Lord Ashdown, one of the surviving Peers, was not a bad man at all, but he came at the wrong time. Having been involved in the Yugoslavian Civil War as a mediator between Christian and Muslim groups, he was ill-suited to commanding a country which demanded nothing less than the eradication of Islamism both at home and abroad. He resigned within the month under pressure from the ad-hoc militias and the Establishment.
2001-0000: Diana, Princess of Wales (Independent, leading Anti-Islamist Government)
2002 def: Peter Mandelson (Labour), William Hague (Conservative)
2007 def: Peter Mandelson (Labour), Andrea Leadsom (Conservative)
2012 def: Peter Mandelson (Labour), Andrea Leadsom (Conservative)
Princess Diana, whose Muslim second husband had died in a car crash a couple of years before, was the only person in the country with the gravitas to lead (except perhaps Noel Edmonds). She was chosen as PM by the Queen and found a seat to run in unopposed. Since then, her image - at first on reassuring posters and now on digital billboards and Apps - has been inescapable. She has united both parties in an Anti-Islamist Government, which roots out various undesirables at home for the ultimate safety of Britain, while simultaneously co-operating with other, similarly threatened countries, such as America and South Africa, to target the terrorist menace wherever it crops up - be it Northern Ireland or Saudi Arabia. Admittedly, some people are getting bored of the fact that no constituencies have been contested by both parties since 1999, but a slight lack of democracy is a small price to pay for the knowledge that sudden swathes of by-elections are much less likely than they have been lately.
1979-1979: Margaret Thatcher (Conservative)
1979 def: Jim Callaghan (Labour), David Steel (Liberal)
The return of Conservative Government to the United Kingdom proved to be less smooth than had been hoped for. On the morning of the State Opening of Parliament, just before the Parliamentary hostage was sent to the Palace and before the Queen set off for Westminster, a series of explosions shook the heaving Parliament. Big Ben plummeted into the Thames, never to sound again. All the neo-Gothic magnificence was utterly destroyed, reduced to rubble. The Great London Museum, completed in 1996 at the site of the blasts, showcases what remains of the statues and busts, but it is a poor treasure trove compared to what existed before.
And, of course, literally all the MPs and Lords were diffused out over the Gulf Stream.
1979-1979: Oswald Mosley (Union Movement)
It didn’t take long to find out who the perpetrators were: they came forward within minutes with their Union Jack and their stomach-churning pronouncements about the quality of Black Blood which were fairly ridiculous considering all the Red Blood that surrounded them in that mound of rubble just off Parliament Square. The remaining onlookers were too shaken to take them to task, though, and were further discouraged from doing so when Lord Carington clawed his way out of the wreckage - the only surviving politician in the land - and was shot in the face for his trouble. The Terrorists proclaimed Sir Oswald Mosley as Prime Minister, but there is no evidence that Mosley had any ties with Derek Holland and his collaborators. But for a few hours, until the Army cleared out the last of the Terrorists in the Palace of Westminster, he was the closest thing we had to a Premier. Even though he may not have been aware of this until after the fact.
1979-1980: Emlyn Hooson (Liberal)
The following day, Queen Elizabeth II, who had been under especially strong armed guard since the events of the State Opening, addressed the nation over television in a historic breach of convention. She immediately appointed Emlyn Hooson, a long-standing Liberal MP who had lost his seat a month or two before and was the closest thing Britain had to a unifying figurehead. Hooson, however, was powerless to prevent the Army from pursuing a tactic of summary executions of suspected National Front supporters or other Terrorists, and could not move out of Downing Street fast enough when the (relatively) unprovoked attacks on Irish Nationalists in Ulster sparked yet another phase of general violent lawlessness in Northern Ireland. He called a General Election as soon as it was safe to do so in the majority of the country (while the NF was very small and its actions greeted with hatred by ordinary people, there were copycat attack in minor cities) and announced that he would step down from his unelected role.
1980-1994: Teddy Taylor (Conservative)
1980 def: Shirley Williams (Labour), Emlyn Hooson (Liberal)
1984 def: Shirley Williams (Labour), Alex Carlile (Liberal)
1989 def: Tony Blair (Labour), Paddy Ashdown (Liberal)
Teddy Taylor (who had also lost his seat in 1979 and, in doing so, saved his own life) benefited from a ‘rally round the flag’ effect in the aftermath of the Westminster Attack. The Martyr Margaret Thatcher, at whose State Funeral he was featured prominently, had not been overly fond of him, but needs must when the devil drives, and the British people felt that the NF should be told that the Tories were the democratic choice of the People. As such, Taylor won 450 seats off the bat against Labour moderate Shirley Williams.
Taylor was a chief member of the Monday Club, and pursued a double policy of cracking down on far-right activists while also withdrawing from the EEC on a unilateral basis and reaching out to the disaffected Right by banning (and stringently enforcing the bans on) homosexuality and abortion and establishing a system of voluntary repatriation. The attacks ceased, apart from the incessant Ulster situation. Now, Shirley Williams was a fairly liberal voice in Labour, and attacked these measures, but she was again rejected by an electorate in siege mentality in 1984. The Actual Liberals were also losing ground, having lost a lot of the MPs who had built up personal votes in their constituencies and being on the wrong side of the human rights debates of the 1980s.
1994-2001: Gordon Brown (Labour)
1994 def: Teddy Taylor (Conservative), Paddy Ashdown (Liberal)
1999 def: Michael Fallon (Conservative)
Labour only returned to power when the electorate was bored of the aging Taylor and Labour had moved towards the new consensus. Socially, Gordon Brown was not exactly Taylorite, but he certainly saw such issues as irrelevant compared to the very real issues of Balance of Payments crises and wage exploitation. Brown kept the social policies of the Tories, but introduced helpful measures such as the Minimum Wage and the Family Box for new mothers, in stark contrast to Taylor’s more hands-off approach to the economy. Brown enjoyed huge success despite his personal awkwardness, because he was presented as a munificent Father of the State in an era when Britain really needed someone to reassure them that everything was going to be alright.
2001-2001: Peter Mandelson (Labour)
It wasn’t going to be alright.
On the 9th of November 2001, the radical Islamist group ‘Al-Qaeda’ hijacked eight planes from Luton Airport and flew them into the newly-constructed Houses of Parliament in the New Town of Elizabethton. This was different to the National Front attack: not only was Britain hardened, but on a more practical level, not every MP was present on that particular day. Peter Mandelson, of the oily demeanour and slightly creepy moustache, was the only surviving Cabinet Member and proclaimed himself Prime Minister in an insufficiently mournful address to the public (including several policy announcements which were considered a bit Soon), and before long not only was the entire population baying for his resignation, but the Queen was too. Mandelson, leaving the new Prime Ministerial residence on Thatcher Street with his wife just a few days after entering it, would be followed by a repeat of the last time Parliament had been decimated: a down-to-earth Liberal who had just lost his seat in the previous election.
2001-2001: Paddy Ashdown, Baron Ashdown (Liberal)
What had worked last time did not work this time. A population presented with nonentities in yellow rosettes whose policies were directly in contradiction with the Principle of Self-Preservation (Teddy Taylor’s coinage) had eroded the stellar local work of the Liberal Party, and they had lost the last of their seats, Yeovil, in 1999. Now, Lord Ashdown, one of the surviving Peers, was not a bad man at all, but he came at the wrong time. Having been involved in the Yugoslavian Civil War as a mediator between Christian and Muslim groups, he was ill-suited to commanding a country which demanded nothing less than the eradication of Islamism both at home and abroad. He resigned within the month under pressure from the ad-hoc militias and the Establishment.
2001-0000: Diana, Princess of Wales (Independent, leading Anti-Islamist Government)
2002 def: Peter Mandelson (Labour), William Hague (Conservative)
2007 def: Peter Mandelson (Labour), Andrea Leadsom (Conservative)
2012 def: Peter Mandelson (Labour), Andrea Leadsom (Conservative)
Princess Diana, whose Muslim second husband had died in a car crash a couple of years before, was the only person in the country with the gravitas to lead (except perhaps Noel Edmonds). She was chosen as PM by the Queen and found a seat to run in unopposed. Since then, her image - at first on reassuring posters and now on digital billboards and Apps - has been inescapable. She has united both parties in an Anti-Islamist Government, which roots out various undesirables at home for the ultimate safety of Britain, while simultaneously co-operating with other, similarly threatened countries, such as America and South Africa, to target the terrorist menace wherever it crops up - be it Northern Ireland or Saudi Arabia. Admittedly, some people are getting bored of the fact that no constituencies have been contested by both parties since 1999, but a slight lack of democracy is a small price to pay for the knowledge that sudden swathes of by-elections are much less likely than they have been lately.
- Uhura's Mazda
- Word Count: 1.4k