AH Challenge: Make Lord Randolph Churchill Prime Minister of Great Britain

After the Conservative defeat in the general election of November 1885 Lord Randolph Churchill (the father of Winston) said: "I shall lead the Opposition for five years. Then I shall be Prime Minister for five years. Then I shall die."

He had a glittering political career which was fatally damaged by his resignation as Chancellor of the Exchequer from Lord Salisbury's government in December 1886. He died in January 1895 at the age of 45. Traditionally his death has been attributed to tertiary syphilis, but modern medical authorities diagnose his fatal illness as a brain tumour. Here is his wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Randolph_Churchill .

If he had died of tertiary syphilis then that could be butterflied away by him not contracting it. Then he would have remained in good health and could have lived into his seventies or eighties. In that scenario he could have become Prime Minister when Salisbury resigned in 1902. Alternatively if Balfour became PM then as in OTL, and he resigns the Tory leadership in !912, as in OTL, then Churchill could have become leader. I assume that he would have led his party into coalition under Asquith and Lloyd George, but how long he would have kept the coalition in office after the general election of December 1918 is debatable. So he could have become Prime Minister sometime between 1919 and 1923.

Howver if his fatal illness was a brain tumour and his early death was more or less inevitable, then he must become Prime Minister before his illness had become too serious for him to function effectively in politics, which was 1893 or 1894.

If Randolph Churchill didn't die at a relatively young age and had become Prime Minister that would have significantly affected the life and career of his son, Winston. If he had died as in OTL, (when Winston was 20 years old) but had still become PM, by his absence he would have been less important in Winston's life, though more important than in OTL.
 
Edt, I have skimmed through or read Fight or be Right. It is interesting, though of course only one ATL in respect of Lord Randolph's political career and the subsequent butterflies in British and world history. You did not enter into the controversy as to whether Lord Randolph Churchill in OTL died relatively young of tertiary syphilis or of a brain tumour. In your TL that fatal illness is butterflied away.
 
You did not enter into the controversy as to whether Lord Randolph Churchill in OTL died relatively young of tertiary syphilis or of a brain tumour. In your TL that fatal illness is butterflied away.

No, I've side-stepped that one, although I've covered my bases in case it was syphillis through Randolph's African jaunt and subsquent malaria. Personally, I think either cause is perfectly plausible, although the tumour is marginally more likely. My own view is that given his appallingly unhealthy lifestyle, Randolph was going to be pretty lucky to see much of the 20th century; he was very much a 'live fast, die young' sort of person and if he's not PM by the 1890s it's probably not going to happen, him having self-destructed either physically or politically by that point.

I think the drink, smoking or related cancer will get him long before the first world war. Although that said, his son lived to 90 and was just as bad. Hm. If Randolph did that well he'd die in 1949, which might be fun...
 
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