1991, Number 10 hit

this have likely been done before but whatever, in February 1991, the Provisional IRA launched a mortar shell at 10 Downing Street, inside John Major and his Cabinet were meeting about the Gulf War, in OTL they missed, but what if it had been a dead on hit

People Killed
Prime Minster: John Major
Chief Secretary to the Treasury: David Mellor
Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs: Douglas Hurd
Secretary of State for Defence: Tom King
Chancellor of the Exchequer: Norman Lamont
Secretary of State for Trade and Industry: Peter Lilley
Secretary of State for Energy: John Wakeham
Cabinet Secretary: Robin Butler
Marshal of the Royal Air Force: David Craig
Attorney General: Patrick Mayhew
Percy Cradock
Charles Powell
Press Secretary to the Prime Minister: Gus O'Donnell


so who becomes PM? how does this change the Gulf War (if at all) and how does it change Northern Ireland.
 
How big a shell is this? A 3 incher would have to go right through a window to kill 15 people wouldn't it? Still, I guess it's possible.
 
How big a shell is this? A 3 incher would have to go right through a window to kill 15 people wouldn't it? Still, I guess it's possible.

to wit, "Each shell was four and a half feet long, weighed 140 pounds (60 kg) and carried a 40 pounds (20 kg) payload of the plastic explosive Semtex. The type of device used by the attackers was a Mark 10 homemade mortar, according to the British designation" there were 3 of those, 2 failed to go off number 3 hit the rear garden of 10 Downing Street.
 
The Home Secretary, Kenneth Baker would be the highest ranking member of the government left. Avoiding a repeat of the 1990 leadership contest, he becomes Prime Minister unopposed. However, he didn't have the same qualities as Major or Thatcher and he'd have been defeated in the April 1992 election with a Neil Kinnock Premiership.
 
The Home Secretary, Kenneth Baker would be the highest ranking member of the government left. Avoiding a repeat of the 1990 leadership contest, he becomes Prime Minister unopposed. However, he didn't have the same qualities as Major or Thatcher and he'd have been defeated in the April 1992 election with a Neil Kinnock Premiership.

The new Secretary of State for Defence would probably be Alan Clark - be scared, be very scared.
 
The Home Secretary, Kenneth Baker would be the highest ranking member of the government left. Avoiding a repeat of the 1990 leadership contest, he becomes Prime Minister unopposed. However, he didn't have the same qualities as Major or Thatcher and he'd have been defeated in the April 1992 election with a Neil Kinnock Premiership.

You sure about that? Considering IOTL Major did well enough to win nearly the same popular vote as the previous election, blowing him up is just going to elicit sympathy votes (and "crack down on terrorist" votes) for the Tories, cutting into Labour's advances.

The larger question is not whether the Tories will win but will Baker still be in charge when they go to the election...
 

Thande

Donor
I doubt Baker would become the new leader unopposed.

The problem is there isn't any constitutional setup for what happens if a PM is killed, especially not if the entire cabinet is killed with them.
 
Baker had a torrid time as Home Secretary with prison riots, being held in contempt of court and ridiculed for his use of Brylcreem in his hair. The public pretty much found him intolerable; if you look at Major's first Cabinet there is Michael Heseltine and Ken Clarke to take over but they both would have known that the party was essentially screwed at the next election with a Baker Premiership and wouldn't want to increase that with a leadership contest.

Both would have preferred to wait until after the election and let Kinnock deal with the problems they had and to hopefully lead an energised Tory opposition.
 
So far, people are only talking about what the new UK government would look like. What happens in Northern Ireland? I imagine after the slaughter of so many government officials, public opinion in the UK will demand a much stronger policy against the terrorists. What will the response be?
 
one might also ask what happens with Hong Kong and China, Percy Cradock was the man behind the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984, and spent the years between that and 1997 making sure the turn over the smooth, in OTL Major fired him 1992 and made Chris Patten the last Governor of Hong Kong the man who, with out Chinese say so, instituted Democratic reforms, the Pro-Beijing Cradock was very much against that and went after him over it in the last years of British Rule.
 
IIRC (admittedly I'm a Yank) one of the issues there was also the fact they'd just recently replaced the windows with shatterproof glass, so it wouldn't it be possible that the cabinet could have been shredded ?
 

MacCaulay

Banned
to wit, "Each shell was four and a half feet long, weighed 140 pounds (60 kg) and carried a 40 pounds (20 kg) payload of the plastic explosive Semtex. The type of device used by the attackers was a Mark 10 homemade mortar, according to the British designation" there were 3 of those, 2 failed to go off number 3 hit the rear garden of 10 Downing Street.

FUCK ME!

I wouldn't want to be above the barrel when that thing lets go...you'd be one deaf Paddy after that...
 
I doubt Baker would become the new leader unopposed.

Agreed. The advantage here though is that a Conservative leadership election at this time was confined to the MPs, so could in theory happen very quickly.

The problem is there isn't any constitutional setup for what happens if a PM is killed, especially not if the entire cabinet is killed with them.

Strictly speaking, in constitutional theory the most senior surviving member of the cabinet is Lord MacKay of Clashfern, the Lord Chancellor. The obvious problem of a PM sitting in the House of Lords need not arise if the Queen only asks him to do the job only for as long as it takes the Conservative party to organise a leadership election - two weeks tops, I would have thought. Baker could take PMQs if necessary in the Commons I would have thought in the meantime, but I would have thought it would be more likely that the sitting of the House would be suspended while the funerals were under way.

MacKay then gets immortalised in trivia quizzes as the last PM to sit in the House of Lords. I think there will be probably be some other changes caused by the POD though.
 
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