Heavy
Banned
Deliberately unclear. If there was, Labour don't seem to take credit for it like they do IOTL. Make of that what you will.
I suppose it depends on whether Major still succeeded Thatcher here.
Deliberately unclear. If there was, Labour don't seem to take credit for it like they do IOTL. Make of that what you will.
Lovely work, although I fear it is very much for us. Although that is not a bad thing
I think my favourite bit was the Closed Shop for the 21st Century. That is a phrase we don't hear enough!
I suppose it depends on whether Major still succeeded Thatcher here.
Brilliant Meadow. Absolutely brilliant.
A neat inversion with enough extra bits to make the world interesting. Like Shadow First Senator in an elected Lords. I imagine that's like Minority Leader is it? Shadow First Senator gets a shot at being First Senator if their party is in government?
And Mair in the Morning as an alt Andrew Marr. Brilliant.
Yes, I was thinking on those lines myself - judged on its own merits it works here.I won't really apologise for the Mili-D analogy here as it's unavoidably perfect. The whole thing is Turtledovian paralellelism and while I probably do bring it up in multiple TLs I've written, it's, as I say, too perfect not to be done here. Whoever Labour's leader was ITTL 2010-2015 was going to be described as an Ed analogue, and there's rarely a better analogue than a member of a character's OWN FAMILY
So while I take the 'we get it, you think David could lose too' point, I stand by its presence here. There isn't really another option to play the role his 'character' needs to, unless we get Clever-Clever.
Well, I've always viewed Burnham as head and shoulders above Cooper in credibility terms, but I suspect both of us are suffering from preconceived biases here: I found myself being far more forgiving of Burnham's often rather pathetic moves during the OTL contest than I should have been.Coopham was fun to do, it will probably strike future historians (IOTL and ITTL) as odd that Yvette kept delivering more effective versions of Andy's speeches and came third while he came second.
Yes, I liked that, I think it worked well as a comparison. Also as KC says 'Mair in the Morning' was a lovely bit of analogism (is that a word?)Thanks to everyone who's read and commented on this. I had the idea a while ago and it was fun to get it finished. I'm also glad I seem to have gotten away with 'the UK becomes at least quietly anti-American, Frank remains pro-intervention' as an inversion of Corbyn's 'friends problem'. That was the hardest part, and I know it's not a perfect fit.
Did you ever actually mention who the Tory Prime Minister is at this point? Apologies if I missed that.
In my head it was Hurd Because Butterflies, FWIW.
A nice little piece, Meadow, if I'm being frank.
I'm interested in Caroline Lucas the Labour leadership candidate. Did she join Labour rather than the Greens or has TTL seen people bleed away from the Greens to Labour, including her?
I thought the explanation was implicit in the whole 'Labour being historically much more left-wing' ITTL.
I didn't have anything else to say btw, because most of it was self-explanatory and the rest was covered above. So.. yeah. Good!
Spot on, Lucas joined the Greens as a student in 1986 IOTL, so did not do so ITTL.
Indeed. I would have thought it was more Green pro-environment ideology than leftism for her at that point, but I don't know her at all and could well be wrong.That's interesting, I didn't know that.
Given the date I have to wonder if it had more to do with Chernobyl (the cause of the first and still greatest Green surge) than ideology, though.
In 1995, many on all sides of the House wept when they heard Gwyneth Dunwoody had died.
Spot on, Lucas joined the Greens as a student in 1986 IOTL, so did not do so ITTL. It was indeed an implicit explanation, as I hear from many (more upbeat these days) left-Labourites that 'we should have sewn up the Green vote years ago'. Whether TTL's Labour has good small-G green credentials, or has just never vacated the space the Greens moved into on the left, that's probably determinable by reading between the lines - the Unions still have a lot of power over Labour, and there are probably a few artificially sustained (and not particularly environmentally friendly) industries still going strong.
I've just realised that if I do rewrite this, I'm going to need to add a question on whether Field will commit to campaigning for a 'No' vote in Liam Fox's referendum on re-entering the European Union next year...
Glad you liked it, Veej, you're a discerning customer.