AHC: More women as major party leaders in the UK

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Could more women have been leaders of major parties in the UK? In OTL we've only had Margaret Thatcher as a permanent party leader and Margaret Beckett and Harriet Harman as temporary leaders. I don't class Caroline Lucas leading the Greens as being a "major party".

The obvious ones that get mentioned as ATL possibilities are Barbara Castle and Shirley Williams. I can't really think of anyone else.
 
Its been discussed elsewhere but if you can have Archibald Sinclair keep his seat in 1945, then the Liberals wont be stuck in limbo under Clement Davies for a decade. This allows them to retain some cohesion and probably some seats to boot. While the 'Nationals' will probably head off to the Conservatives eventually anyway, a lot of the left-wing emigres could be kept hold of, including Megan Lloyd-George. She jumped over to Labour on the ground she saw the Liberals dead, more than any new found ideological unity.

With her social liberalism and her father's name, I can see her succeeding Sinclair in the early 1950s as Leader of the Liberal Party, having been Deputy Leader IOTL from the late 1940s.
 
Depends how you define major party (but then they're still bigger than the Liberals in the 1950's...), but Roseanna Cunningham came second to Alex Salmond in the SNP leadership election of 2004 after Alex reneged on a previous promise not to run as a candidate. All you probably need is for Alex to honour his promise and Roseanna wins. For that matter, if Alex fell under a bus any time in the last five years or so the most likely candidate to succeed him would be another woman, Nicola Sturgeon.

For that matter, and again pushing the definition of "major" party, but the current leader of Plaid Cymru is Leanne Wood who while being a batshit crazy republican is at least tolerably easyon the eye. By the standards of Welsh politics at least.
 
Depends how you define major party (but then they're still bigger than the Liberals in the 1950's...), but Roseanna Cunningham came second to Alex Salmond in the SNP leadership election of 2004 after Alex reneged on a previous promise not to run as a candidate. All you probably need is for Alex to honour his promise and Roseanna wins. For that matter, if Alex fell under a bus any time in the last five years or so the most likely candidate to succeed him would be another woman, Nicola Sturgeon.

For that matter, and again pushing the definition of "major" party, but the current leader of Plaid Cymru is Leanne Wood who while being a batshit crazy republican is at least tolerably easyon the eye. By the standards of Welsh politics at least.

I'd probably consider the SNP a major party, in Scotland at least. Plaid, less so.
 
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