AHC: Snap UK election, 1990

Let's say, on November 17, 1990, Thatcher requests a snap dissolution for December 1st. Presumably the Tory leadership contest is cancelled as everyone moves onto a war footing. I see a Tory minority propped up by Unionists and some Liberals before the Gulf War helps boost the Tories, and a khaki election in April or May restores the Tories with a reduced majority of 30. Or would Kinnock, who got curbstomped 3.5 years earlier, be the new PM of a Lab minority government?
 
Would the Queen be minded to grant it, especially given what Thatcher is presumably planning (making an internal assessment of her performance as leader of the Conservatives to one about her position as Prime Minister of the country - though the two are linked)?

Personally, with the Poll Tax still very very fresh, I think it's a Labour government. No minority. Labour majority government with Neil Kinnock as PM.
 
Even if the leadership election was cancelled (which it is not within the power of the leader to do) she would be going into the election with the issue totally unresolved, which would mean constant media speculation. She would also be going into the election anywhere between ten and twenty points behind in the polls - an election which the Tory Party would be totally unprepared for, I might add.

By precisely what process do you assume she would come out of this with a Tory minority?
 
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Even if the leadership election was cancelled (which it is not within the power of the leader to do) she would be going into the election with the issue totally unresolved, which would mean constant media speculation. She would also be going into the election anywhere between ten and twenty points behind in the polls - an election which the Tory Party would be totally unprepared for, I might add.

By precisely what process do you assume she would come out of this with a Tory minority?
I have to agree, going to the polls at this point would be utterly insane. The Tories would be destroyed and Thatcher may even lose her seat.
 
It wouldn't be so much insane as gut-knifingly insane.

Even assuming Thatcher gets over the fact that she's just called a snap general election with absolutely no warning to her party, or the country, or anybody - which would be an act of sheer panicky madness, and would be seen as such, and you should never be seen to panic in politics - she then has to enter into negotiation with her own backbenches to get the leadership election cancelled. If they don't, she's stuffed, if they do, (presumably they would have to, albeit effectively under duress; probably a 'we'll leave it until after the result' deal is hammered out) the entire backbench of the party will erupt at this flagrant invasion on the prerogatives of the '22, even above and beyond the usual suspects. The party has just been 'bounced' out of it's traditional right to select who it's leader is in the crudest way possible, and it will be naturally very pissed off at this. (Not to mention the rather pointed fact that all the polls suggest that half of them are going to lose their seats in an election which nobody wanted right now)

Great start to an election campaign; the Prime Minister has just alienated most of her party. Then we have the media with it's constant "Who will be leader of your party after this election, Mrs Thatcher?"-style questions. Along with the above, cue a 1997-style implosion of the campaign as Heseltine supporters take to the airwaves and the right responds in kind. Labour wins with a majority above a hundred. The Tories continue the civil war into opposition. Even years later, Tories are still scratching their heads over how such an electorally successful PM managed to lose her political marbles and her political nerve in such spectacular fashion.
 
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