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Uhura's Mazda - Britain Isn't Gainsborough North/Hill - Lords Protector of the British State
Britain Isn't Gainsborough North/Hill - Lords Protector of the British State
It got renamed with boundary changes, OK.
1973-1977: Jeremy Thorpe (Liberal)
1973 def: Michael Foot (Labour), William Whitelaw (Conservative)
Jeremy Thorpe had dreamed of becoming Prime Minister from an early age. He failed. The office was abolished in 1973 after the Balmoral Incident, along with the monarchy and half of the institutions that had governed the British since time immemorial. Replacing these, in the political sphere, was the role of Lord Protector, to be elected every four years, and a unicameral House of Parliament. Thorpe's previously irrelevant Liberals gained millions of votes due to a simple novelty factor and some very modern television advertising, and beat the two established parties in a three-cornered result. However, the Parliamentary elections were held a month later, and only returned 14 Liberals out of 480 seats in total. For four years, Thorpe was a powerless figurehead, cohabiting first with Labour and then with the Tories as the economic situation ran away from all efforts to control it. The Winter of Discontent in 1976, together with Thorpe's weak response to the Miners' Strike, made him so clearly unpopular that he didn't even dare contest the next election. To make matters worse, the Liberal Party was declared insolvent in January 1977 and the only Liberals in the next Parliament were Independents who subscribed to liberal values.
1977-1985: Airey Neave (Conservative)
1977 def: Tony Benn (Labour)
1981 def: Roy Jenkins (New Liberal), Albert Booth (Labour)
Replacing Thorpe was Airey Neave, who won 72% of the vote in the end, over the left-wing Tony Benn. Over eight years, Neave copied the 'neoliberal' policies of President Carter and Secretary Friedman, even going so far as to privatise parts of the the National Energy Service. However, another version of Liberalism was seizing the headlines. In 1979, the continued left-wing direction of Labour under the unprepossessing Albert Booth had alienated over half of the PLP, who were more frustrated by his poor polling than his policies. They followed Roy Jenkins into a new party together with the Liberal remnants, and ran Neave very close in the 1981 election. In fact, in the legislative elections shortly afterward, they denied Neave a majority, so he was forced to go into coalition with the few dozen remaining Labour MPs. As such, his efforts to continue the economic reforms of his first term were neutered. And the global recovery of the early 80s removed the need to do anything drastic about the unions and the basics of the economy.
1985-1989: Cyril Smith (New Liberal)
1985 def: Airey Neave (Conservative), Jeremy Corbyn (Independent)
The deal with Neave had crippled Labour. Already, all but the hard left had followed Jenkins out, and now the remaining MPs were supporting a Conservative administration rather than talk to their old friends and new enemies in the NLP. Although the Labour Party continued to exist, they did not put up a candidate for Lord Protector - one of their number stood as an Independent, but came third. The victor was Big Cyril, the 29-stone bachelor and sometime pop singer. His term was characterised by social issues, mounting to the point where two million men and women marched through central London in 1988 in protest at his bans on abortion, contraception, drugs and the depiction of 'non-standard' romance on television. Left-wing cartoonist Steve Bell took to depicting him as a large round condom, although Minister for Public Decency Mary Whitehouse banned his work soon enough.
1989-1993: Brig. Nicholas Soames (Independent)
1989 def: Unopposed
Seeing the crisis that was going on, and the fall of the French, American, Canadian and West German states to internal unrest (called the 'Autumn of Nations'), the Army had no choice but to step in to stop the liberals from toppling the Liberals. Winston Churchill's grandson was chosen to lead a unity government, and won the election for Lord Protector just after all political parties had been forcibly dissolved. He was unopposed. Smith's social policies were continued and extended, to the point where even extramarital sex could land you with a large fine. On foreign policy, Soames allied with some of the few outwardly capitalist nations left, including apartheid South Africa. Finally, in 1992, the Armed Forces took it upon themselves to embark on an ill-conceived seizure of Minorca: hundreds of British lives were lost when the Spanish took the place back. However, the detachment of Brits who occupied a bridgehead in Alicante held out under seige conditions for eight years, which eventually inspired a harrowing war drama series called Benidorm. With the Balearic War lost, Soames was forced to allow an Opposition party to come into the open.
1993-1997: Capt. Alan West (Democratic Front)
1993 def: Brig. Nicholas Soames (Independent)
Despite the experience of Soames' military rule, 43% of the population voted for him in 1993. But all the rest backed Captain West, and he did sterling work in restoring Britain's international position. It was also he who ensured that the Fifth International (the body which co-ordinates all the Communist ruling parties, from Washington to Moscow to Wellington) recognised the territorial integrity of the British State. But on matters of domestic policy, West was unable to govern. Soames' supporters had rebranded themselves as Republicans, in the Puritan/Cromwellian tradition, and demanded to be involved in the West Administration. For several years, West refused, but in 1995 his broad tent coalition fell apart, with liberals on the one side splitting off under Alan Beith, and socialists on the other side frequently rebelling against West's wishes. So for the second term of his Protectorate, Captain West appointed Republicans to his Cabinet and allowed them to dictate the best part of his policies. For this action, he lost the support of most of the Democratic Front, and his supporters were not numerous enough to win him the nomination for the 1997 election.
1997-2013: Alan Beith (Radical Reform)
1997 def: Dave Nellist (Democratic Front (Socialist)), Conrad Black (Republican)
2001 def: Michael Heseltine (Republican)
2005 def: Jon Trickett (Party of the Left), Richard Drax (Republican)
2009 def: Derek Holland (Political Soldiers' League), Ian Liddell-Grainger (Republican), Jon Trickett (Party of the Left)
The sixteen-year rule of Alan Beith was the first period of stability in over two decades. Beith finally liberalised the social policies left over from Cyril Smith over the course of his four terms. He also enacted liberalisation of the economy, so as to show the Communists who ruled most of the rest of the world how brilliant economic freedom was. His Land Value Tax was hailed across the world, while his war against what remained of the trade unions smacked a little of ideological vindictiveness. But he was a popular leader, in his old-school way, while both left and right struggled to define themselves ideologically in this new world order. When they did, there would be trouble.
2013-2014: John Cleese (Political Soldiers' League)
2013 def: Alan Beith (Radical Reform), Jon Trickett (Party of the Left), Owen Michael (Republican)
2014-2017: John Cleese (Democratic Independence)
In fact, it was the introduction of Single Transferable Vote in the legislative elections of 2009 which opened up the fall of the Radical Reform Party. The new Opposition was the Political Soldiers' League, an outgrowing of the old National Front, who had decided that in a world overcome by the fanatical ideology of Communism, what the Right needed was an equally crazy system. Cleese, a former actor, was recruited (some say brainwashed) in the 1980s and in 2009 was elected as an MP for Avon. The following election saw him win the PSL nomination, and (after a questionably legal airing of repeats of Fawlty Towers by WorkersTube, the official video streaming website of the Fifth International) the Protectorate. And so ensued a year of crackdowns, disappearances, and riots on the streets. The millions of people who had entered Britain since 1989 were literally decimated. It was unpleasant. Fortunately, after an intervention from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Paddy Ashdown, Cleese left the PSL and countermanded all the Black Orders that had not yet been executed. But he's still a bit of a dick.
To briefly jump on a promising bandwagon:
Britain Isn't Gainsborough North/Hill - Lords Protector of the British State
It got renamed with boundary changes, OK.
1973-1977: Jeremy Thorpe (Liberal)
1973 def: Michael Foot (Labour), William Whitelaw (Conservative)
Jeremy Thorpe had dreamed of becoming Prime Minister from an early age. He failed. The office was abolished in 1973 after the Balmoral Incident, along with the monarchy and half of the institutions that had governed the British since time immemorial. Replacing these, in the political sphere, was the role of Lord Protector, to be elected every four years, and a unicameral House of Parliament. Thorpe's previously irrelevant Liberals gained millions of votes due to a simple novelty factor and some very modern television advertising, and beat the two established parties in a three-cornered result. However, the Parliamentary elections were held a month later, and only returned 14 Liberals out of 480 seats in total. For four years, Thorpe was a powerless figurehead, cohabiting first with Labour and then with the Tories as the economic situation ran away from all efforts to control it. The Winter of Discontent in 1976, together with Thorpe's weak response to the Miners' Strike, made him so clearly unpopular that he didn't even dare contest the next election. To make matters worse, the Liberal Party was declared insolvent in January 1977 and the only Liberals in the next Parliament were Independents who subscribed to liberal values.
1977-1985: Airey Neave (Conservative)
1977 def: Tony Benn (Labour)
1981 def: Roy Jenkins (New Liberal), Albert Booth (Labour)
Replacing Thorpe was Airey Neave, who won 72% of the vote in the end, over the left-wing Tony Benn. Over eight years, Neave copied the 'neoliberal' policies of President Carter and Secretary Friedman, even going so far as to privatise parts of the the National Energy Service. However, another version of Liberalism was seizing the headlines. In 1979, the continued left-wing direction of Labour under the unprepossessing Albert Booth had alienated over half of the PLP, who were more frustrated by his poor polling than his policies. They followed Roy Jenkins into a new party together with the Liberal remnants, and ran Neave very close in the 1981 election. In fact, in the legislative elections shortly afterward, they denied Neave a majority, so he was forced to go into coalition with the few dozen remaining Labour MPs. As such, his efforts to continue the economic reforms of his first term were neutered. And the global recovery of the early 80s removed the need to do anything drastic about the unions and the basics of the economy.
1985-1989: Cyril Smith (New Liberal)
1985 def: Airey Neave (Conservative), Jeremy Corbyn (Independent)
The deal with Neave had crippled Labour. Already, all but the hard left had followed Jenkins out, and now the remaining MPs were supporting a Conservative administration rather than talk to their old friends and new enemies in the NLP. Although the Labour Party continued to exist, they did not put up a candidate for Lord Protector - one of their number stood as an Independent, but came third. The victor was Big Cyril, the 29-stone bachelor and sometime pop singer. His term was characterised by social issues, mounting to the point where two million men and women marched through central London in 1988 in protest at his bans on abortion, contraception, drugs and the depiction of 'non-standard' romance on television. Left-wing cartoonist Steve Bell took to depicting him as a large round condom, although Minister for Public Decency Mary Whitehouse banned his work soon enough.
1989-1993: Brig. Nicholas Soames (Independent)
1989 def: Unopposed
Seeing the crisis that was going on, and the fall of the French, American, Canadian and West German states to internal unrest (called the 'Autumn of Nations'), the Army had no choice but to step in to stop the liberals from toppling the Liberals. Winston Churchill's grandson was chosen to lead a unity government, and won the election for Lord Protector just after all political parties had been forcibly dissolved. He was unopposed. Smith's social policies were continued and extended, to the point where even extramarital sex could land you with a large fine. On foreign policy, Soames allied with some of the few outwardly capitalist nations left, including apartheid South Africa. Finally, in 1992, the Armed Forces took it upon themselves to embark on an ill-conceived seizure of Minorca: hundreds of British lives were lost when the Spanish took the place back. However, the detachment of Brits who occupied a bridgehead in Alicante held out under seige conditions for eight years, which eventually inspired a harrowing war drama series called Benidorm. With the Balearic War lost, Soames was forced to allow an Opposition party to come into the open.
1993-1997: Capt. Alan West (Democratic Front)
1993 def: Brig. Nicholas Soames (Independent)
Despite the experience of Soames' military rule, 43% of the population voted for him in 1993. But all the rest backed Captain West, and he did sterling work in restoring Britain's international position. It was also he who ensured that the Fifth International (the body which co-ordinates all the Communist ruling parties, from Washington to Moscow to Wellington) recognised the territorial integrity of the British State. But on matters of domestic policy, West was unable to govern. Soames' supporters had rebranded themselves as Republicans, in the Puritan/Cromwellian tradition, and demanded to be involved in the West Administration. For several years, West refused, but in 1995 his broad tent coalition fell apart, with liberals on the one side splitting off under Alan Beith, and socialists on the other side frequently rebelling against West's wishes. So for the second term of his Protectorate, Captain West appointed Republicans to his Cabinet and allowed them to dictate the best part of his policies. For this action, he lost the support of most of the Democratic Front, and his supporters were not numerous enough to win him the nomination for the 1997 election.
1997-2013: Alan Beith (Radical Reform)
1997 def: Dave Nellist (Democratic Front (Socialist)), Conrad Black (Republican)
2001 def: Michael Heseltine (Republican)
2005 def: Jon Trickett (Party of the Left), Richard Drax (Republican)
2009 def: Derek Holland (Political Soldiers' League), Ian Liddell-Grainger (Republican), Jon Trickett (Party of the Left)
The sixteen-year rule of Alan Beith was the first period of stability in over two decades. Beith finally liberalised the social policies left over from Cyril Smith over the course of his four terms. He also enacted liberalisation of the economy, so as to show the Communists who ruled most of the rest of the world how brilliant economic freedom was. His Land Value Tax was hailed across the world, while his war against what remained of the trade unions smacked a little of ideological vindictiveness. But he was a popular leader, in his old-school way, while both left and right struggled to define themselves ideologically in this new world order. When they did, there would be trouble.
2013-2014: John Cleese (Political Soldiers' League)
2013 def: Alan Beith (Radical Reform), Jon Trickett (Party of the Left), Owen Michael (Republican)
2014-2017: John Cleese (Democratic Independence)
In fact, it was the introduction of Single Transferable Vote in the legislative elections of 2009 which opened up the fall of the Radical Reform Party. The new Opposition was the Political Soldiers' League, an outgrowing of the old National Front, who had decided that in a world overcome by the fanatical ideology of Communism, what the Right needed was an equally crazy system. Cleese, a former actor, was recruited (some say brainwashed) in the 1980s and in 2009 was elected as an MP for Avon. The following election saw him win the PSL nomination, and (after a questionably legal airing of repeats of Fawlty Towers by WorkersTube, the official video streaming website of the Fifth International) the Protectorate. And so ensued a year of crackdowns, disappearances, and riots on the streets. The millions of people who had entered Britain since 1989 were literally decimated. It was unpleasant. Fortunately, after an intervention from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Paddy Ashdown, Cleese left the PSL and countermanded all the Black Orders that had not yet been executed. But he's still a bit of a dick.
- Uhura's Mazda
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