Search results

Mark Bonham-Carter was close to becoming a Conservative candidate until Suez intervened.

Well, since we're on querying peculiar responses, why did you seemingly butterfly away Iraq in your answer? I don't see much benefit for New Labour in Blair resigning in 2004, as he was reasonably close to doing - politically he was very weak then as the blowback from Iraq began to hit, and...

'That' speech was actually a very poor guide to Gaitskell's views on the issue. In any case, if he only lives until '61 it doesn't seem like a conclusive way of nuking entry.

Would have preferred if people had made an argument about one or two underappreciated individuals of merit in this thread, rather than just listing every single person who has ever ran for president.

Don't troll.

I don't think Labour would have self-destructed as badly as the early eighties in this scenario. By that point you had had an increasing ascendency of the left in the party since around about the 1970 defeat. By 1974, that process is still in its infancy. It would have been a lot easier for...

There was literally no way to remove a sitting leader until Heath lost in 1974 and the rules were changed due to the circumstances. He's certainly not being removed while he's still PM.

Implicit in your argument? Or are you just saying it would have been a better defeat mitigator? If so I guess we're pushing towards some sort of synthesis. You're certainly arguing that a more radical manifesto would have been more electorally successful and that Benn personally would have been...

I guess that makes it irredeemably reformist then? No wonder it failed! I mean it's great that you believe that if the manifesto had been appropriately even more radical in its policy detail it would have triumphed but I think you know that's not how bourgeois democracy or even how the actual...

I'm not really sure that what I'm sure you know is one of the most frequently-quoted, takeaway lines from that manifesto, that it would secure a "fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families" is a stodge-dodge from radical...

If the Falklands had been lost then, in combination with Benn (somehow) taking over Labour, that is really an *Alliance wank scenario, not something that would profit a hard left Labour. They would be too crippled by the cost of the right wing of the party quitting to start the *SDP. A lot of...

After a Hilary-Romney co-presidency, I'm surprised that someone like Rauner followed on from them. Surely that's a 'Trump or Sanders win 40+ states' scenario, right there.

I was trying to think of a scenario where America was more internationally-engaged early on in its history leading to a kind of analogue to the British commercial expat clubs phenomenon you got with football in South America and Europe. But then I remembered that when natives actually got...

Incidentally, given there's been a few of them that I recall, I really have serious trouble with the idea of Tony Benn winning an election in the early eighties. He pretty much wrote the OTL manifesto as chair of the Home Policy Committee, and we saw how that policy platform played out IOTL...

Are you aware of the existence of rugby? Over here, gridiron, in as much as it's a thing, is perceived as much less 'manly' than rugby, due to the wearing of armour. It's really not easy to second-guess cultures on what will or will not be seen as normative. In any case as has been pointed out...

Seen it.

If you were going down this route then I'm saddened you didn't have Caroline Lucas leading the Crystal Healing Party.

Is it a reference to something?

No.

We already have a lot of inter-university sporting competition. It's just nowhere near as high profile or relevant as college football is in the US because it doesn't feed into the professional game. Well, for some disciplines it kind of does, but not for the main national game. Football/soccer...