How could the Liberal Party remain a major party in UK politics? What would become of Labour? And how would these still-dominant Liberals perform electorally in the later 20th century?
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I'd like to discuss two points in this thread:
~How could the Liberals be kept around as the main opposition to the Tories, with Labour being the third wheel in the UK's party system?
~If the Liberals stayed a major party, how often would they form governments and what would their general electoral performance look like?
Personally, I imagine a major Liberal party would be more electorally successful than OTL Labour and give the Tories a run for their money.
Well, no, because the factors that destroyed the Liberals are still there, and won't go away if you just handwave the party into sticking around as a relevant force. A working class movement was going to rock British politics sooner or later, and it's probably easier to keep the Liberals around in place of the Tories than in place of Labour.
Now, if the Liberals can successfully keep their late-19th century proto-Labour links going and turn into a far broader alliance of trade unionists and middle class businesspeople (herein lies the problem of why the Tories survived the rise of Labour and the Liberals did not - the Liberals' support could jump into the Tories, not so much the other way around, and Labour's could sit with neither), then... maybe. Perhaps there's a TL to be written about a de facto 'British US Democratic Party' coming into being. I don't know.
What I do know is that the Liberals, especially if Labour are the third party, are not going to be giving the Tories a run for their money any more often than Labour did IOTL. That seems like a wish-fulfilment desire, not one based on facts - the makeup of Britain is such that the Tories and Liberals would eventually be so similar that Labour would break through, as per OTL, just later. To avoid all this would require changing Britain - arguably Europe and the rest of the world, because of international trade and WWI - to such an extent that this exercise becomes pointless.
EDIT: You've edited your OP to remove your assertions, but I'll let this post stand.
Point taken.
Out of interest, would the Tories falling to Labour instead of the Liberals be at all possible?
Well, no, because the factors that destroyed the Liberals are still there, and won't go away if you just handwave the party into sticking around as a relevant force. A working class movement was going to rock British politics sooner or later, and it's probably easier to keep the Liberals around in place of the Tories than in place of Labour.
Now, if the Liberals can successfully keep their late-19th century proto-Labour links going and turn into a far broader alliance of trade unionists and middle class businesspeople (herein lies the problem of why the Tories survived the rise of Labour and the Liberals did not - the Liberals' support could jump into the Tories, not so much the other way around, and Labour's could sit with neither), then... maybe. Perhaps there's a TL to be written about a de facto 'British US Democratic Party' coming into being. I don't know.
What I do know is that the Liberals, especially if Labour are the third party, are not going to be giving the Tories a run for their money any more often than Labour did IOTL. That seems like a wish-fulfilment desire, not one based on facts - the makeup of Britain is such that the Tories and Liberals would eventually be so similar that Labour would break through, as per OTL, just later. To avoid all this would require changing Britain - arguably Europe and the rest of the world, because of international trade and WWI - to such an extent that this exercise becomes pointless.
There was once a Tory socialist in the 19th century and later on the Tory central office funded some proto-Labour candidates to split the Liberal vote and ensure Tory gains, but this was an abject failure.
The best option I can come up with is for the Liberals under either Lloyd George or Asquith to form an electoral pact with the nascent Labour party as with the Liberal and National parties in Australia.
So have the two parties agree to not stand in each others districts and whichever party gets the highest seat count brings the other into the Government. It would create a nigh on permanent coalition, but it works in Australia.
Ah, yes, the Tory Socialist in the 19th century. Yeah it was kind of hard to miss that one. The Cross-Temporal Policing Agency HQ in 2759 certainly didn't miss it when they did their review of possible renegade time-traveller cases, and indeed, Thande was caught and his time machine confiscated to prevent him from going back to the 19th century again and standing for Parliament.