It would take a lot more for MPs to elect Benn as leader. The left could only win the leadership under that system if it had a candidate willing to compromise with the more centrist elements of the PLP, hence why Foot or Shore would always be chosen ahead of him in such a scenario.Britain votes to leave the EEC in '75. Wilson quits as PM and Labour leader. Benn becomes the left's choice and with the right in disarray following the referendum loss Benn takes over (*)
(*) plenty of butterflies.
Or, maybe if Tony had been very "game on" about economic growth and middle class jobs -- this while you're also advocating fairness in distribution.Another option is that Benn never has his 1970s conversion to the Left, and remains a technocratic moderate.
Economic growth is something that pretty much everybody is going to be at least nominally in favour of but I'm not so sure that talking about middle class jobs to crowds of miners and steelworkers is really going to go down all that well. Remember that Labour's natural constituency is unionised workers and this goes doubly for a candidate from the left - as Benn was from the beginning ( he didn't go to the far left until the 70's but he was always against the Gaitskellite right)Or, maybe if Tony had been very "game on" about economic growth and middle class jobs -- this while you're also advocating fairness in distribution.
I'm a Yank. Don't know whether this two-fold combo is already a major thread in UK politics.
I think of a unionized mining job as squarely middle class.. . . not so sure that talking about middle class jobs to crowds of miners and steelworkers is really going to go down all that well. Remember that Labour's natural constituency is unionised workers . . .