AHC: Major's Tories defeat Blair's Labour in 1997

God reveals that, not only is he undoubtedly and certain to be 100% real to everyone, but he is a Tory and even then it's probably a 1992 victory.
 
Blair is caught publicly fornicating with a goat or Robert Mugabe is put in charge of the counts! ;)

In all seriousness it's very very difficult. Black Wednesday is often seen as the day the Tories were doomed, but IIRC, the polls of the time showed the Tories recovering during the winter of 1992/93 and were closing in on Labour, until the budget of 1993 and the imposition of VAT on fuel that broke a key election promise, that was when their poll ratings went off a cliff and never recovered. Even if you can avoid that you still have a near unmanageable party in which the Eurosceptics feel they've been vindicated and are not prepared to toe the line, so constant splits over Maastricht, the rest of the backbencher are full of has-beens and never-wheres, an unwelcome legacy of Thatcher's huge majorities, who can't be induced with the prospect of ministerial office. You may still have the sleaze issues but if the press hadn't turned on the Government then some of those stories mightn't have come out. Finally you've got the BSE scare still to come, at that time people really believed that thousands were going to die from vCJD and the Government was held responsible for being too slow to respond to the initial BSE outbreaks in the late 1980's.

So you have a multitude of potential problems to overcome and even then you're still left with a tired Party that has in truth been in power too long and needs to reinvent itself in opposition. The best they can hope for realistically is to prevent 1997 being the massacre OTL and keep Labour's victory more modest.
 
God reveals that, not only is he undoubtedly and certain to be 100% real to everyone, but he is a Tory and even then it's probably a 1992 victory.

Pretty much this. We were ludicrously unpopular and had been in government for too long. You'd need an act of God or Tony Blair to be caught in bed with Gordon, a live boy and a dead girl. And for the Labour Party to rally around them.
 
I remember this time really well and although a Labour victory was predicted many refused to believe it until it happened.

There was still the issue of whether Labour had really turned into a one Nation Conservative Party sorry New Labour or whether the changes were superficial.

The economic expansion that would last until 2008 was well under way and unemployment was falling and inflation was at historic lows and in any other election the existing government would have won.

The problem was John Major. He was out of his depth as PM and had no ideas to inspire confidence or direction. He talked about cricket because it seemed to be the only thing he knew. The Tories were also lacking strong characters after years of Thatcher forcing out everyone who didn't share her vision.

You would need to find a way of replacing John Major with someone new. The problem was that HE was supposed to be the someone new after Thatcher. Replacing him after winning the '92 election would look odd to the electorate and maybe split the Tories more than they already were.
 
If it is before black wednesday and the budget, then it should be easy.


We are talking 1997 here, the Major government had suffered five years of one PR disaster after another, starting with the 1992 election campaign that seemed to have been designed on the assumption that the Conservatives were going to lose so they could say/promise anything because they weren't going to have to deliver. When they won and had to explain that the huge tax rises they had warned labour were going to introduce were going to happen regardless they pretty much went ever faster downhill from there.
 
Major seriously considered resigning after Black Wednesday but decided against it, if he had then like Eden after Suez, the blame would have stuck to him, Lamont would have had to go to in those circumstances, no real loss.

The problem then is you are going to cause an almighty fight for the Leadership, Hurd would probably have been too associated with the ERM policy so he's out. The obvious candidates are Heseltine and Clarke but their views on Europe are way out of line with the views of the Parliamentary Party on Europe, never mind those of the rank and file, had either of them become Tory Leader, with the Maastricht Treaty still to be ratified then the Party could have split. The only possible compromise candidate, one who has been discussed on here before, is Malcolm Rifkind but this may have been before he really came to prominence.

Major had many faults, but rather like Michael Foot a decade earlier, he was just about the only Leader who could have held the Party together.
 
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How could the Tories have plausibly pulled off a fifth election victory in a row?

They couldn't have, even without Black Wednesday imho.

The only way Major beats Blair in 97 is if Kinnock wins in 1992, Major holds on to the Tory leadership, Kinnock becomes deeply unpopular and resigns (making way for Blair) and Major comes back in 97 as a result of Labour's unpopularity-Blair not having done enough to save Labour's prospects.

Failing that, the only alternative is some sort of crisis where a national government is preferable-and in those circumstances, I doubt the Tories would want Major leading it.
 
I'm a long standing Tory from the Maggie era, and unfortunately it was impossible. Eveyone's brand goes off after so long in power. I do however think that Tony B.liars landslide could have been considerably cut with a better leader than John Major.
 
FTR, the Labour campaign actually had some jitters after an ICM poll released about ten days before the election suggested their lead had been cut to just five points. Of course, it turned out to be a rogue poll, but imagine if politicalbetting had been around back then....
 
I'm a long standing Tory from the Maggie era, and unfortunately it was impossible. Eveyone's brand goes off after so long in power. I do however think that Tony B.liars landslide could have been considerably cut with a better leader than John Major.

You could make your point just as well without the juvenile slur.
 
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