AHC: Have Labour and the Liberal Party as the two main parties in British politics.

Apparently the Liberals considered merging into the Tories in the 1950s and becoming an associate party like the National Liberals were back then and the cooperative party are to Labour now. Later, Michael Heseltine apparently supported reviving the National Liberal tag for Tory moderates.

An interesting way to do this would be for the Liberals to emerge as a dominant party in alliance with the Tories. Admittedly it is quite difficult, given where they start out, but perhaps it could be done if the Tories suffer a long period of division, and wets adopt the liberal tag, eventually evolving into an australian coalition type arrangement with them as the larger party.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
Another POD: Lloyd George died in 1910. Pipisme had done a TL about this, and by 1913 Richard Haldane, Asquith's personal friend and the most talented minister of the Cabinet, became Chancellor of the Exchequer.
 
In the United States, the Progressive Era was from the early 1900s to the early 1920s.

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I generally think the UK is a decade or two earlier in progressive reforms, with all kinds of interesting exceptions on both sides of the Atlantic! :)
 

Thomas1195

Banned
In the United States, the Progressive Era was from the early 1900s to the early 1920s.

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I generally think the UK is a decade or two earlier in progressive reforms, with all kinds of interesting exceptions on both sides of the Atlantic! :)
No, not earlier, because Salisbury ruled during the late 1890s.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
I believe that eliminating the Tories is much harder than the Labour, because the former tend to be very flexible, and they make decisions based on opportunities and pragmatism rather than ideology, unlike both Labour and Liberal. The Tory, for example, may support Free Trade in elections for political advantage despite being protectionists.

To strangle Labour so that they could not even become a kingmaker, you can just have someone who still supported reforms but opposed any kind of Lib-Lab pact as Leader of the Liberal Party before 1903. I am not sure if Asquith and Haldane would allow this kind of pact if they became leader from 1898 instead of Campbell-Bannerman.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
hmm change the public, well that could work. Suppose Chamberlain's Imperial Federation somehow happened, then the colonial public(s) demands the vote. The Conservatives for Anglo-centric reasons do not support it. But it happens anyway and as the party of the English minority the Conservatives are consigned to history drowned under the tide of votes from India. It could even work with just the core Dominions and Ireland if the Tories played it incorrectly. Lots of potential Liberal voters in Canada and Ireland. for eg.
Canada would vote for Liberals, if you can look at how Liberal Party dominated their politics. South Africa under Smuts would vote for Liberal because they still admired Liberal Party for granting them Dominion status, and for opposing Boer war. Ireland, IPP were already a Liberal ally. ANZAC were not very Liberal so I am not sure.
 
How about a scenario where Labour and the Liberals are becoming parties solely based on class rather than politics?

Labour starts out as a pure working-class party (with less influence of the Fabian Society or the Socialist League), but not with a distinct left-wing ideological platform. It might even be dominated by working-class puritans. Likewise, the Liberals become the party of the middle and upper classes, while also not maintaining a coherent political ideology.

Throughout the decades, the Liberals would end up becoming an economically right-wing, but socially/culturally liberal outfit, with people like Roy Jenkins or Tony Blair eventually popping up in the Liberal Party. Meanwhile, Labour remains more traditionalist and economically left-wing and becomes something like Paul Nuttall wants UKIP to be nowadays.
 
The Simplest way that I can see is for Asquith to step aside at the start of WWI in favour of Lloyd George before Asquith invited the conservatives into Coalition. That way the pure Liberal government could survive long enough to take credit for an improving war record and Lloyd George wouldn't gut the Asquith Liberals in 1918.

Three way fights are always higly unstable and it's usually the middle party which collapses as it's members split. The Liberal party was that middle force so to remain relevant in the long term they would have to supplant the Conservatives a the force of the political right. This has been achieved by Liberal parties in Australia and Japan but in doing so they became Conservative parties with Liberal flavouring. To ensure the Conservative vote in Britain do not take over the Liberals ideologically you would need to change the British public to become even more liberal which with the maintenance of their Empire was a difficult thing to ask for.
Something like this.
With the Liberals taking the leftist (or centrist) block of the Conservatives and becoming centre-right in politics, the right-wing of the Conservatives becoming something else (Nationalist? Unionist?) and Labour taking the centre-left/left space.
 

Deleted member 94680

Something like this.
With the Liberals taking the leftist (or centrist) block of the Conservatives and becoming centre-right in politics, the right-wing of the Conservatives becoming something else (Nationalist? Unionist?) and Labour taking the centre-left/left space.

It would work but if the left of the Conservatives has joined the Liberals wouldn't the right just stay as the Conservatives? Or is there some "dissolution of the Consevative Party" moment and the survivors need to start a new party to begin again?

Unionist would be my vote as it's technically part of the Conservative Party's name (or at least was).
 
It would work but if the left of the Conservatives has joined the Liberals wouldn't the right just stay as the Conservatives? Or is there some "dissolution of the Consevative Party" moment and the survivors need to start a new party to begin again?
Quite possibly, maybe even multiple right-wing parties. To me it'd depend on whether the rump Conservatives (and now I'm having an image of Churchill's rear :oops:) coalesce around a strong leader or continue to fragment.

Unionist would be my vote as it's technically part of the Conservative Party's name (or at least was).
A good point, maybe the absorb the Ulster Unionists or the two groups exist independently to confuse foreigners (like the Australian Liberals).
 
After the Conservatives had been defeated badly in 1945, Harold Macmillan suggested that the party change its name to the "New Democratic Party"; the idea was to make it possible for the party to "unite those who rejected Socialism but wanted progress." https://books.google.com/books?id=0OJUXw6SpYEC&pg=PA172 POD: Macmillan succeeds in getting the name changed, and the New Democratic Party does indeed attract many Liberals, as he had hoped. But a rump Liberal Party remains. Finally, in the 1950's the New Democratic Party unites with the rump-Liberal-Party under the title "Liberal Democratic Party"...
 

Thomas1195

Banned
After the Conservatives had been defeated badly in 1945, Harold Macmillan suggested that the party change its name to the "New Democratic Party"; the idea was to make it possible for the party to "unite those who rejected Socialism but wanted progress." https://books.google.com/books?id=0OJUXw6SpYEC&pg=PA172 POD: Macmillan succeeds in getting the name changed, and the New Democratic Party does indeed attract many Liberals, as he had hoped. But a rump Liberal Party remains. Finally, in the 1950's the New Democratic Party unites with the rump-Liberal-Party under the title "Liberal Democratic Party"...
This new party will look like Japanese Liberal Democratic, which is conservative in nature

If we want the Liberal Party to be liberal in British/American sense (either social liberalism or middle of the road liberalism, but not classical liberalism), we must shift the whole electorate to the left.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
In NZ, the Liberal and Reform (business/right) parties basically merged in the 30s due to the rise of Labour

Or like France before ww2. The true conservatives (Royalists, Bonapartists...) were basically wiped out long before. The right-wing party was the Republicans, which originated from liberal revolutions.

The similar case was Denmark, where both main parties were non-Conservative.

If you want a social democrat party and a social liberal one, you can adjust Canadian politics a little bit, make Conservative the smallest party.
 
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