AHC WI pasokify UK Labour

The challenge is for the UK Labour Party to undergo the same process of pasokification that affected many continental European socialist parties.

Specifically, change things so that Labour in the most recent election (2017, though ITTL the timing might be butterflied to a different year) gets under 20% of the popular vote and is widely viewed as either/ or politically irrelevant or lackies of the Tories. You can either have an alternative challenger to the Tories, or just fragment the British party system so that Labour still comes in second.
 
One interesting thought, at least to me, is that the UK electoral system could be a problem here since a party has to maintain some relevance with the general public to continue winning seats and get back into government. Its not as easy to drift along in a 6% (or thereabouts) ghetto and become the go to smaller party in coalitions, which is a viable path for party organizations to take in proportional systems.
 
I see two possible PODs for this to happen (both of which are in the 20th century, so granted not exactly what you asked for, but these are the ideas which first came into my head):

The first is 1931 - in our timeline, when the National Government won the largest majority in British political history, Labour fell to a mere 52 seats, still the second-largest party although miles behind the Conservatives (who held a whopping 470 seats, the largest achieved by a single party at a general election ever). Now, an interesting fact about the 1931 general election was that the Liberal Party split three ways during the election - the pro-tariff Liberal Nationals who won 35 seats, the anti-tariff Official Liberals who won 33 seats (both the previous factions participated in the National Government) and the anti-National Government Lloyd George Liberals who won 4 seats. Combined, these factions won 72 seats - more than Labour. Therefore, if we managed to stop the Liberal Nationals splitting from the Liberals (keeping Lloyd George on side is not as necessary), which would require the Party to become more receptive to the idea of tariffs (at least for the time being), then we would see the Liberals return to the position of the second-largest party (assuming that all the seats won by the Liberal Nationals in OTL are won by the Liberals ITTL). Of course, the Liberals would still be in the National Government and so Labour, after this alternate 1931 general election, would still be the Official Opposition, yet if we assume that the Liberals still walk out of the Government at the same time ITTL, then they would take the mantle of Official Opposition from Labour, and Samuel would become Leader of the Opposition. Consequently, the Liberals would once again become the main opponent of the Conservatives, while Labour would go down in history as a Party which briefly enjoyed a period relevance before proving itself to be incompetent in Government and then declining into irrelevance - in short, the 1920s would be seen as a fluke before the old Conservative-Liberal divide returned.

The second is in the 1980s and involves Tony Benn defeating Dennis Healey for the Labour Party leadership. If this were to happen, then it is likely that 1983 would result in a slightly larger Conservative landslide (perhaps with Mrs. Thatcher securing over 400 seats in the Commons) as Labour would possibly be even further left wing than IOTL. This would also benefit the Liberal-SDP Alliance somewhat too and they could possibly secure over 30 seats, giving them a somewhat better than OTL performance. Yet the main difference would be that Benn would be able to secure a safer seat and would therefore remain in the Commons after 1983, remaining Deputy Leader of the Labour Party to (if we assume butterflies do not affect the Labour leadership election ITTL) Neil Kinnock. The two would then battle over the ideological direction of Labour - with Kinnock attempting to modernise the Party and bring it away from the hard left and militant control and Benn attempting to stop this happen. Such Labour infighting would almost certainly put the electorate off voting Labour and therefore at this ATL 1987 there a larger Conservative majority than OTL, as Mrs. Thatcher would return to Downing Street most likely losing no seats to Labour - instead, the infighting within Labour would probably lead to the Party falling back further, paving way for the Alliance to (based on the grounds of a more successful 1983) secure second place and overtake Labour. Therefore, 1992 would see John Major duke it out against whoever the Alliance (or the Liberal Democrats, if the merger of the two parties still occurs ITTL) have as their leader, while Labour would still be paralysed by infighting and unable to send out a cohesive message. Once again, like in my first scenario, we see the Conservative-Liberal divide return.
 
Brittanicus, these scenarios are both good but not quite what I had in mind as you noted.

To address confusion about the term "pasokify", it is an actual, though new, political science term. An online dictionary describes it as "reducing a country's main social democratic party to the smallest party in parliament as a result of the rise of a more radical left party" (https://www.collinsdictionary.com/submission/16117/pasokification) and in fact gives the Scottish Labour Party as an example. The Wikipedia article on PASOK (the Panhellenic Sociaist Movmeent) itself might be helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PASOK.

Replacing Labour with a more centrist party opposing the Tories doesn't help. To keep within the definition, Labour, or at least its leadership, has to move to the center and see its support collapse due to no longer being on the left. Some variation of this has affected just about all the continental European parties.

The 1930s could be an opportunity, but a different scenario is if the National Executive of Labour stuck with MacDonald and Snowden. Essentially "National Labour" remains as official Labour and its the socialists that break away, maybe under the Independent Labour banner. IOTL, Snowden and I think MacDonald were expelled so National Labour was essentially the break-away faction. I think there are two other opportunities in the 00s. The first is that Blair is forced into coalition with the Conservatives to get the Iraq War through but, unlike MacDonald, somehow retains control of the party. Either the voters defect to the Liberal Democrats, or the left breaks away, maybe joining later with a faction of the Lib Dems. A more difficult scenario is that the wrong Milliband becomes leader after Brown, the party never repudiates Blairism, and then things become difficulty because UKIP then picks up the pieces and now you really have to change UKIP.
 
Basically, when Labour and Social Democratic Parties start to lose their grips on organs of a nationalized economy, be it the unions or the state owned enterprises, they start to be seen as less and less important to the daily work and bread of its voters, and that doesn't help. The UK Labour party, however, because it evolved in the 1990s, was able to avoid this to some extent.

I reject the term Pasokification because it refers to one extremely incompetent party in an extremely dysfunctional political culture in which tax evasion and patronage became normal and expected in ways that it wasn't elsewhere. The Greek example is an extreme one.

UK Labour has never been able to be outflanked on the left in modern times because the hard left in Britain is divided to an extreme degree, and once the trends for its resurgence started appearing, Corbyn coming in was able to negate that. For UK Labour to be afflicted with growing irrelevance, it would need to have made a big swing to the centre in 2010 and then been discredited on the left, leading to a party split and a group like TUSC taking a bunch of votes. Or, rather, it would have needed to do something like make Dianne Abbott the party leader rather than Corbyn in its move left, and then become all about identity politics issues, which would have made it impossible for any UKIP voters to come back and perhaps would have made Lib Dem voters balk at voting Labour.
 
"Or, rather, it would have needed to do something like make Dianne Abbott the party leader rather than Corbyn in its move left, and then become all about identity politics issues, which would have made it impossible for any UKIP voters to come back and perhaps would have made Lib Dem voters balk at voting Labour."

The interesting thing about that comment is that is sort of what happened to the French Socialists. Corbyn turned out to have some campaign and political skills that Benoit Harmon didn't have. So you could do something like have a really incompetent version of Corbyn.

Continental European party systems also features previously existing, or in the case of Germany a revived, Communist Parties that could be incorporated or aligned with parties to the left of the socialist/ social democratic parties and provide a location for politicians and voters to defect to. That wasn't the case with the UK, so if you can find a way to make more of the UK Communist Party during the Cold War, or a distinct Independent Labour Party, that might help shrink Labour if it moves to the right.
 
The main problem with Pasokifying Labour is that there is no viable left wing party to replace them. As has been suggested, the best opportunity to create this would likely be in 1930s, with a socialist breakaway from a moderate Labour party that participates in a national government.

Other than that, I think our current era is the best opportunity to displace Labour with a more left wing alternative. It's difficult to create a strong socialist challenge in periods like the 1980s, because the left was in the ascendancy, and had no incentive to leave.


Its possible that the Lib Dems could position themselves as a centre left alternative to a centrist Labour Party, if Charlie takes the pledge, makes gains at the expense of Labour in 2010 and 2015 whilst the Tories somehow win and retain their majority or at least can operate a minority without the support of the LDs, Britain votes for Brexit, a more popular pro Brexit PM like Boris Johnson takes over, and the Lib Dems can place themselves at the head of anti-brexit, anti austerity sentiment against a Labour Party who has an indecisive leader that is trying to please all sides, like Burnham or Ed Miliband. To make thing worse, maybe you could spark a left wing resurgence within the party that means more infighting, but keeps the electoral college so that they the leadership itself remains in the hands of the moderates.

Or you could have a more classically socialist party emerge to challenge them. I am going to use this opportunity to plug a Respect wank idea for a TL I've been planning, where Ken Livingstone joins them rather than coming back to Labour in early 2004, and they become a viable fourth party, before leapfrogging the LDs in the following decade to become the third largest group in parliament, and create a left wing alternative to Labour. I hadn't planned to take Labour to under 20%, but I suppose that is doable in a situation where Britain votes remain, Farage remains as UKIP leader and the party surges, whilst a left wing alliance of a moderated Respect and the Greens run on an anti austerity platform, and the Tories corner the socially liberal middle englander vote under someone like Cameron or Osborne. There would be an awful lot of coincidental events involved though.

In any case, I'm not sure I can see Labour dropping below 20% purely due to the rise of a party to their left. There would need to be a more competent UKIP, or a pro Brexit Tory Party involved to threaten both sides of the Labour vote. Or maybe you could just make the UK an economic basketcase, not unlike Greece.

I definitely think the scenario of Burnham as leader, caught between an anti European populist right, and an anti austerity, pro European populist left, has potential.
The interesting thing about that comment is that is sort of what happened to the French Socialists. Corbyn turned out to have some campaign and political skills that Benoit Harmon didn't have. So you could do something like have a really incompetent version of Corbyn.
From what I gather, the main difference between Hamon and Corbyn was that the former had the image of a career politician, which allowed him to be easily outflanked by Le Pen to the right and Melenchon to the left, and Macron in the centre, whilst Corbyn had impeccable anti establishment credentials. So giving Labour a leader like a later Ed Miliband, Owen Smith, or Andy Burnham, who adopts radical rhetoric but come across as being a regular, triangulating politician, could do a great deal to weaken the party.
 
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Perhaps Common Wealth survives and gains after a Gaitskell leadership of the Labour Party?
 
A different solution: the Liberals do a bit better in 1923, and edge ahead of Labour. They introduce proportional representation. Long term, Labour subsequently becomes the larger party anyway, due to class-based voting - but with a different electoral system, it becomes more vulnerable to being displaced on the Left.

A more modern possibility:

  • The Tories gain an outright majority in 2010. The Liberal Democrats don't destroy themselves via Coalition.
  • A worse Eurocrisis keeps the EU in the news, in a bad way. UKIP overhaul themselves, so as to embrace more left wing economics to go with the social conservatism.
  • More Labour infighting.
 
A different solution: the Liberals do a bit better in 1923, and edge ahead of Labour. They introduce proportional representation. Long term, Labour subsequently becomes the larger party anyway, due to class-based voting - but with a different electoral system, it becomes more vulnerable to being displaced on the Left.

A more modern possibility:

  • The Tories gain an outright majority in 2010. The Liberal Democrats don't destroy themselves via Coalition.
  • A worse Eurocrisis keeps the EU in the news, in a bad way. UKIP overhaul themselves, so as to embrace more left wing economics to go with the social conservatism.
  • More Labour infighting.
But how? In order to create a UKIP which is actually enthusiastically left wing on the economy (rather than just paying lip service to the odd thing here and there) you'd need to fundamentally change the nature of British euroscepticism, or make it a much more efficient force that is actually capable of being overhauled. Maybe you could have no Thatcher, keep opposition to the EU as a more left wing thing, and in time, a left wing equivalent of UKIP pops up, which becomes increasingly socially conservative on issues like immigration.
 
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