AHC: UK Parliament outside London

The difference being that it is geographically central for the British Isles and that the Royal Navy would be more than able to defend it easily by 1600. Also the Crown had to buy the kingship of the island for a *lot* of money - more direct control would be plausible, maybe an early version of the A.C.T. of Canberra or District of Columbia but more militarized

The Royal Navy could defend the whole British Isles, so that's not really an advantage for the Isle of Man over anywhere else in Britain. And whilst it is geographically central, in demographic terms the population and wealth very clearly tilted towards the south-east, making London closer to the actual centre of power. Moving to the Isle of Man because it looks more central on a map would be like the Australian government moving to the middle of the desert because geographically speaking that's in the centre of Australia.
 
One possible POD occurs in the early 13th century, when the French invaded England in support of the claim to the English throne of the Dauphin Louis, the future French King Louis VIII.

OTL, they made some progress before being thrown out. What if they had taken London and installed Louis as King but the English rallied under Henry III and obtained control of the rest of the country, but NOT the Southeast. Eventually the capital would have become permanent in the Midlands or Oxford.

Stalemates are possible in Queen Maud's War, the Wars of the Roses, and the English Civil War, where London was controlled by the Blois faction, the Yorkists, and the Roundheads but their opponents had some strength in the north and the west. But except for Queen Maud's war, these conflicts were always resolved in favor of whoever controlled London and the Home Counties, so I don't see how you get a stalemate. The 13th century war is possible because of the French support.
 
As mentioned above, originally Parliament met wherever the king chose to call it. Suppose that in a dynastic struggle, a faction comes to power, supporting their candidate, on the condition that this king take steps to guarantee that Parliament does not have a single fixed site, but is moved to a different host location every time, much as the Olympics are. In this case I suppose some list of towns or castles/cathedrals deemed suitable to host the gathering would be drawn up at the time, with either an agreed upon rotation, or rotation by lottery (always excluding the current location). The purpose of this would be the coalition of lords and other interests backing the winning candidate being jealous of the prestige and power of London and the Home Counties, and forcing Parliament to visit other regions of the kingdom to achieve balance.

Obviously it would be quite impractical for the Cabinet system of government to arise on the basis of a moving Parliament; it would be (if grudgingly) accepted that administration must have a fixed center--originally this would be the person and household of the King, obviously, but over time the desirability of setting up central offices would become decisive, and I suppose that indeed London would be where these would accrue. But Parliament, being a gathering of the notables of the kingdom, a sort of grand council of the loyal and important subjects, is kept moving, perhaps with London pointedly excluded from the list of sites it can move to, so as to balance out the burdens on those who must travel to get to it versus locals conveniently near it, and to force all the members of the body to visit and see for themselves conditions in the various counties, even those far from the southeast.
 
For an early POD you need a monarch who opts not to live in Westminster and the surrounding area - a monarch who perhaps opts to build a new residence somewhere other than the south east for political or practical reasons. Parliament meets near the monarch (as do the early structures which went on to form English government and administration) and overtime that becomes the centre but it has to be fairly early i suspect.
 
With the devolution of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales the Union adopts,a federal structure and decides on a neutral location for the Capital that's not part of any of the four union members. York is selected and is officially known is simply know as York United Kingdom Capital. This ends up being largely symbolic as all the administrative apparatus is in London.

In such a situation I think you would be much more likely to have the English Parliament in a new city and London turned into a Federal Zone. Though as a its a pre-1900 POD I guess that doesn't really matter. It is difficult as others have said there is no real precedent. Putting the capital in 'secondary' cities is quite a modern thing (Brasilia, Ankara). Best bet, Godwinson wins in 1066 (or it just never happens), the royal capital remains at Winchester. However as the centuries go even if Winchester gets bigger than OTL due to royal patronage, London is booming into the dominant city in England, hell the entire British Isles. This could lead to tension and an ECW analogue could easily revolve around the burghers of London rebelling against the rural squire dominated royal court in distant Winchester.

I think eventually though, seeing the distance it creates between economic/cultural and official power a reforming modernising monarch might move directly into the city. Or in said ECW analogue or through peaceful democratic reform, Parliament may itself sit permanently in London, leaving the powerless king to rot in Winchester, in a purposeful snub and sign of parliamentary surpremacy remembering that Commons-Monarch relations are riddled with alarmingly prickly customs and precedents. An historical Parliament that hasn't diverged too far from OTL could easily mount such a move.

Coming right back round very long term, this would at least give Winchester a strong historical precedent and maybe somewhere down the line 'modern' reformers might use it, motivated by weakening the traditional centre, practical needs (war damage) or Blairite style radical but token reform.
 
There are so many ways to do it. But if you want a UK Parliament (so after the Acts of Union, and when Ireland/N.Ireland is still a factor), then I'd suggest during the Dominions and Home Rule pushes of the mid-to-late 1800s, offer Federalisation. Each of the parts of Canada, Australia, Ireland, and Great Britain (later India, Scotland, Wales with GBs falling to England) all get a representative in a Council of Dominions, or some other name that isn't as provocative (Council of British Nations?)

So loads of devolution goes to the Dominions, or in this case, the parts of Canada, etc - with the pre-condition being the roll-out of telegraph lines between the 'First Minister's and their 'Representatives'.

At which point it comes down to how powers are devolved, but the first iteration retains GB's First Minister as Prime Minister (and as such leader/deciding vote, vote of double the weight, whatever). Later iterations can have the council, or each region vote for the Prime Minister out of the First Ministers, or as a seperate office all together.

Basically, have the Liberal party keep themselves together, and take advantage of higher requirements, and bring forth Federalism as a solution earlier.

As time rolls on, Westminster is basically the halls of power for everything, and England demands its own Parliament, which would likely be in Birmingham (being reasonably central). Westminster is filled with bureaucrats and representatives, and England is governed from Birmingham.

(A bit round-about, but I got there eventually).
 
So it is more likely for there to be a UK HoP in London with English (1 or more) outside London than vice versa?
London is just too strong not to house the UK HoP in any union scenario?
Would Liverpool be considered in the 1800s?
 
Britain falls under the sway of an African strongman type dictator, who builds a new capital, named after himself, on the Isle of Man and forces all the government offices to move there. There is also a building there for his rubber stamp parliament to meet.
 
No one likes the idea of the English Parliament being forced by a few generations of non-Home Counties nobles and their hangers-on who manage to dominate the succession somehow making it customary for Parliament to be rotated around the whole country forever? And all the deep consequences and constraints that will put on the English system?

Because of the inconvenience of the deliberative/consultive body being variously located and moved around and generally distant from necessary administrative centers, that puts considerable strain on it and means that over time, powerful kings and their supporters are likely to either break the rule and make it stay put in or near London, or simply discard it and go straight for absolutism. In premising this happens and that Parliament still exists as a relevant thing, I have been supposing that it picks up adherents who won't tolerate either its abolition or its being in fixed location, the idea being that its function as a check on royal power as well as a mechanism for tying royal power to the ruled people (it works both ways after all) becomes associated with its mobility as an essential aspect of what makes it representative and therefore useful.

Surviving, Britain is different because of it, and insofar as the Westminster system is the model for most European and former colony state systems OTL, either in the ATL English influence in this is less, or the whole world's concept of how the democratic element works is radically different.

So for instance, it would have seemed natural to the Virginia colonists, assuming some such analog existed, that their colonial House of Burgesses would meet in various places in the colony, and a lot of history that relates to conflict between the Tidewater regional dominance and the disgruntled western settlers might have gone very differently; similarly in Massachusetts and other Congregationalist colonies--it would be assumed that English people naturally must have an assembly that visits every corner as soon as there is adequate development there to house it, and Boston is just the biggest city, but not the automatic seat of democratic governance. Similarly if some analog of the revolutionary USA came into being and developed a Constitution analogous to ours, the idea of a single national capital might apply only to the executive branch, and it too might be made as decentralized as possible consistent with reasonable efficiency, while Congress and the Senate (and the Supreme Court, why not) rotates all over the Union. Presumably each state would have to prepare a suitable meeting site as a condition of admission or promotion from being a mere territory, and be encouraged to host it in a different site the next time Congress comes to that state, if they have grown enough to warrant it anyway--New York City would house Congress just for one 2-year session, and next time it comes to New York state it would be in Buffalo or Utica or someplace else. Meanwhile with the national fixed capital being strictly a center of executive power, it too might be more easily movable--no huge investment in developing DC, the Administrative center might be moved steadily westward every 20 or 40 years or so. Perhaps it would be allowed to settle in some fixed location that otherwise commands no particular reason to be developed, to stress that the power of the Federal state depends on the will of the governed to support it--so, out in the middle of Kansas, for instance, or at Colorado Springs (defensible in the nuclear age, after all, buried under Cheyenne Mountain perhaps)--someplace central but otherwise not desirable.

Oh, it may be impossible, but I'm suggesting the only way to break the logic of political power being sited at centers of other forms of power is to make the damn thing move around. And that the obvious inconveniences of that might be offset by an appeal to democratic ideology and the self-interests of the majority of the nation who will not have the privilege of living in the Center.
 
So it is more likely for there to be a UK HoP in London with English (1 or more) outside London than vice versa?
London is just too strong not to house the UK HoP in any union scenario?
Would Liverpool be considered in the 1800s?
Doubtful. It is too out of the way, doesn't have very much history going for it and over time became progressively more dominated by Irish Catholics, which I'm not sure is something that would appeal to the sensibilities of the nineteenth century political class. Manchester or Birmingham would be more likely, but if one was to choose a capital of the UK that was not London, it would likely be in an effort to either get away from the clutches of potentially revolutionary urban areas, or to unite the country around a location that is deliberately designed not to be dominant or offensive to most people, which rules out the largest cities, and leaves you with smaller cities with more history like Nottingham, York, Leicester, or Oxford.
 
Thinking this over, is England the hardest major country to get the capitol in a different location, without doing something like just nuking the city?

Since Edward the Confessor based himself at Westminster even before the Norman Conquest, its been at Westminster for over a thousand years as of present. Part of the building where Parliament now meets, Westminster Hall,was built 920 years ago. Construction of the Abbey across the yard started earlier. This has to involve several records.

Kyoto was built earlier, but the capitol of Japan later moved from Kyoto. And that is the only possible competition I can think of at present.

The capitol of Egypt has usually been in the area of what is now Cairo, but sometimes it has been on the Mediterranean so there is still an alternative location.

Plus London was the most important city on the island even during the Roman period. And there was no question about it being affected by natural events such as earthquakes, rivers shifting courses, hurricanes, and changes in the sea levels.

And London is important for the obvious reason that if you want to leave (or arrive in) England from another country by the most direct route, you have to cross the Thames about where London is at present. There is no way to change that.

So getting the capitol of England out of London is a big ASB challenge, and I'm not sure if you can do it without doing ASB stuff like changing the geography of the area.
 
Thinking this over, is England the hardest major country to get the capitol in a different location, without doing something like just nuking the city?

Since Edward the Confessor based himself at Westminster even before the Norman Conquest, its been at Westminster for over a thousand years as of present. Part of the building where Parliament now meets, Westminster Hall,was built 920 years ago. Construction of the Abbey across the yard started earlier. This has to involve several records.

Kyoto was built earlier, but the capitol of Japan later moved from Kyoto. And that is the only possible competition I can think of at present.

The capitol of Egypt has usually been in the area of what is now Cairo, but sometimes it has been on the Mediterranean so there is still an alternative location.

Paris is comparable. (Unless you count Versailles as a separate capital.)
 
"Paris is comparable."

Mostly, but not really.

The Capets, who forged the Kingdom of France, were based in Paris. Just have another family fulfill that role other than the Capets, and the capitol of France winds up whereever they started out.

The Merovingian and Carolingian capitols were in Soissons and Reims, and either could have remained the French capital. But any place in north central France could have fulfilled that role, with Rouen and Blois also as candidates. The Dukes of France could have decided to base themselves out of Orleans. Autun or Bourges were possibilities.
 
Some good suggestions.
So essentially we have to devalue London as the English Parliament,

Or emphasize the distrust of London.
If London is on the wrong side of civil war (1642...1646), or infested by plague (1665), and Westminster is too near London, then where else?
You might get the lords and country gentlemen to agree on their distrust of City. US Congress sat in New York and Philadelphia, but then moved to purpose built Washington. Most US state capitals are in small towns - on purpose.

Yet sitting of English Parliament means congregation of lords and gentry, with their retinues and servants. They want accommodation and shopping. Holding Parliament in a completely country manor house can get logistically uncomfortable.
Hm - a midsized city that already specializes in accommodating a large number of outsiders? Oxford fits the bill... as does Cambridge. Note that London had no university before 1830.

How would it work if Cambridge according to season has university and Parliament? I. e. when university has breaks between terms, Parliament meets, and vice versa?
 
How about the Tunguska meteor hitting London in 1908 and the 'temporary' capital becomes permanent?
 
Top