Early election games only came in crazy varieties on this site. Freaking Lovecraft.
Alternate Wikipedia Infoboxes III
- Thread starter shiftygiant
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In this universe the 1922 General election, with the liberal party still united together under Wilde, they are able to win a few extra seats over Labour, giving them power of opposition. However, DLG, begins wanting to become leader of the liberals proposes a vote of no confidence against Wilde and wins, but in doing so, he loses support of the Wildlings (not serious but a little bit am
) this split leaves the party in a state leading to Ramsay MacDonald to form a strong opposition.King-Beyond-The-Wall
Well the idea was that the Republican and Democratic parties explode during that four-year time span, so McMullin forms his own party.
The Dying of the Light
Tim Farron/Harold Saxon
Perhaps one of the few confirmed examples of reincarnation, it is beyond reasonable doubt that the current Leader of the Opposition, Harold Saxon, himself a politician with a long career, is the reborn incarnation of Tim Farron, one of the most well-known non-PM figures in British political history...
Tim Farron's leadership of the Liberal Democrats was a long one and with very little flashy success. Still, by the 2030 election he brought them up to 30 seats, perhaps aided by the Labour Party becoming harder and harder left, with Corbyn followed by McDonnell and then Milne. The Gove-Johnson rivalry brought down the Conservative Party from its dominance and brought Labour, an unrepentantly far-left party, in with a minority. The party's long tensions between the dominant left-wing and the utterly weak "moderates" flared up as they entered government. Milne's rebranding of the Labour Party as Momentum, "showing the final unity of the group and the party" led to some "True Labour" MPs leaving. The genesis of the National Party perhaps could be credited to Farron, as he managed to unite the nationalists, the greens [by this point vaguely centrist] and his own Lib Dems together into a "National Alliance" that reached great success...
The National Alliance became a formalised political party (although the SNP and Plaid Cymru would still be distinct for a few decades) and Farron handed over to Fergus MacAdam, the National Party's first leader [and a SNP man]. As the Nationals prospered while Momentum collapsed, Farron was named the Nationals' first Shadow Foreign Secretary and when Harry Palmer led them to outright victory despite criticism of his own hawkish tendencies, he named Farron Foreign Secretary to appease the doves in the party. Nevertheless, Palmer tended to override Farron and if it wasn't for that unfortunate event, Farron would probably have resigned.
The zombie apocalypse in Britain was thankfully brief before the Devil's Pact was agreed upon, but it did claim several people, amongst them the unfortunate Foreign Secretary. Still conscious, he desired to continue his post but was dismissed by Palmer himself on grounds of "you died, Tim." The by-election saw him win re-election handily as an Independent as his constituencies could get through their uneasiness about having a zombie MP if the zombie was the guy who served them for fifty years. Isolated in Parliament due to being the sole undead Member of Parliament, he became distrusted by most MPs and ended up losing his seat due to redistricting and a bill explicitly banning the undead from being in Parliament.
Tim Farron ended up joining the pressure group Citizens for Undead Rights and Equality, originally founded as a party mocking politicians [and connected to a zombie game] in the 2000s, it found new life as a genuine movement for rights for the undead. Farron, as Britain's most well-known undead politician, led them to enter politics. Fielding "human" politicians in the areas where they could reasonably win, he ran for the successor to his old seat but was disqualified by Parliament due to his undead nature despite huge majorities. At its high in the last parliament before the SKYNET dictatorship, CURE had 19 MPs [not counting the disqualified undead ones], a remarkable acheivement given they only started running in the last election.
Farron's collaboration with the SKYNET dictatorship remains controversial. The Undead-Britons tend to paper over this or in some cases outright defend it when talking about Farron. By the time SKYNET seized absolute control, Farron was growing increasingly disillusioned with CURE, especially the human-dominated structure - "We are a party for undead rights and equality, and yet they don't have much of a voice in the party". With SKYNET allowing pro-Synthesis parties to run in the election of 2080, Farron moved for CURE to embrace Synthesis. In the end, he ended up breaking the party in doing so, creating the Undead Synthesis League which won 23 seats and the first qualified elected undead Members of Parliament since the Representation of the People Act (2058) disqualified them. Farron was not one of them as a Synthesis "core consciousness" was representing Westmorland and defeated him.
In the aftermath of the fall of SKYNET, robot rights and undead rights took a big step back as the people turned onto them. Farron ended up being killed by a mob of angry people in Kendal where he was hiding in one of his descendants' homes. Thus the life and times of Tim Farron ended.
In 2127, on the sunny plains of Proxima Centauri b [often referred to simply as "Proxima"], Harold Saxon was born. The area was freshly settled, having been terraformed a few decades before. It was commonly seen as the "New Frontier", and people seeking a new life signed up for the lengthy journey [this was before FTL engines were invented]. Saxon was the child of two of the first Proxima pioneers, both British citizens and helping the UK properly establish the Proxima Territory.
Seen as a remarkably intelligent child, he was one of the first Proximans to qualify for the "Pioneer Scholarships" funded by the UK government, and entering the University of Redford, Mars, he achieved great success. Joining the Young Nationals, he ended up establishing the party's branch on Proxima by the time he was 27 [Thanks to the new and popular FTL engines] and ran as a National when the Proxima Territory was granted three seats. Entering Parliament, he was seen as one of the wunderkinder of the National Party. Rising rapidly in the ranks of the party, he was appointed Foreign and Interstellar Secretary [an apt post due to his being from one of the Third British Empire's major space colonies] by PM Oso and dominated that office through Oso's successor Wendy Darling and managed to keep the post in the Druidic Values-National coalition led by Prime Minister Merlin and Deputy PM Vanellope von Schweetz. As the Nationals staggered after a major loss in where they fell to third behind the rising Techno-Tories led by John Smith, Saxon made his move...
Elected as leader of the Nationals, he was then discovered to be the reincarnation of Tim Farron. In the end, this only managed to help him as membership with the undead community soared and in the next election they went from a swing community to solidly-National. The "Vote Saxon" campaign was a strongly effective one, and with the collapse of the Druidic Values Party as their main raison d'etre, bringing Britain back to the Old Faith, was seemingly complete, Saxon brought the Nationals back to a comfortable second. Time will tell if the political career of two centuries, of two lifetimes, will conclude with the Prime Ministership.
Tim Farron/Harold Saxon
Perhaps one of the few confirmed examples of reincarnation, it is beyond reasonable doubt that the current Leader of the Opposition, Harold Saxon, himself a politician with a long career, is the reborn incarnation of Tim Farron, one of the most well-known non-PM figures in British political history...
Tim Farron's leadership of the Liberal Democrats was a long one and with very little flashy success. Still, by the 2030 election he brought them up to 30 seats, perhaps aided by the Labour Party becoming harder and harder left, with Corbyn followed by McDonnell and then Milne. The Gove-Johnson rivalry brought down the Conservative Party from its dominance and brought Labour, an unrepentantly far-left party, in with a minority. The party's long tensions between the dominant left-wing and the utterly weak "moderates" flared up as they entered government. Milne's rebranding of the Labour Party as Momentum, "showing the final unity of the group and the party" led to some "True Labour" MPs leaving. The genesis of the National Party perhaps could be credited to Farron, as he managed to unite the nationalists, the greens [by this point vaguely centrist] and his own Lib Dems together into a "National Alliance" that reached great success...
The National Alliance became a formalised political party (although the SNP and Plaid Cymru would still be distinct for a few decades) and Farron handed over to Fergus MacAdam, the National Party's first leader [and a SNP man]. As the Nationals prospered while Momentum collapsed, Farron was named the Nationals' first Shadow Foreign Secretary and when Harry Palmer led them to outright victory despite criticism of his own hawkish tendencies, he named Farron Foreign Secretary to appease the doves in the party. Nevertheless, Palmer tended to override Farron and if it wasn't for that unfortunate event, Farron would probably have resigned.
The zombie apocalypse in Britain was thankfully brief before the Devil's Pact was agreed upon, but it did claim several people, amongst them the unfortunate Foreign Secretary. Still conscious, he desired to continue his post but was dismissed by Palmer himself on grounds of "you died, Tim." The by-election saw him win re-election handily as an Independent as his constituencies could get through their uneasiness about having a zombie MP if the zombie was the guy who served them for fifty years. Isolated in Parliament due to being the sole undead Member of Parliament, he became distrusted by most MPs and ended up losing his seat due to redistricting and a bill explicitly banning the undead from being in Parliament.
Tim Farron ended up joining the pressure group Citizens for Undead Rights and Equality, originally founded as a party mocking politicians [and connected to a zombie game] in the 2000s, it found new life as a genuine movement for rights for the undead. Farron, as Britain's most well-known undead politician, led them to enter politics. Fielding "human" politicians in the areas where they could reasonably win, he ran for the successor to his old seat but was disqualified by Parliament due to his undead nature despite huge majorities. At its high in the last parliament before the SKYNET dictatorship, CURE had 19 MPs [not counting the disqualified undead ones], a remarkable acheivement given they only started running in the last election.
Farron's collaboration with the SKYNET dictatorship remains controversial. The Undead-Britons tend to paper over this or in some cases outright defend it when talking about Farron. By the time SKYNET seized absolute control, Farron was growing increasingly disillusioned with CURE, especially the human-dominated structure - "We are a party for undead rights and equality, and yet they don't have much of a voice in the party". With SKYNET allowing pro-Synthesis parties to run in the election of 2080, Farron moved for CURE to embrace Synthesis. In the end, he ended up breaking the party in doing so, creating the Undead Synthesis League which won 23 seats and the first qualified elected undead Members of Parliament since the Representation of the People Act (2058) disqualified them. Farron was not one of them as a Synthesis "core consciousness" was representing Westmorland and defeated him.
In the aftermath of the fall of SKYNET, robot rights and undead rights took a big step back as the people turned onto them. Farron ended up being killed by a mob of angry people in Kendal where he was hiding in one of his descendants' homes. Thus the life and times of Tim Farron ended.
In 2127, on the sunny plains of Proxima Centauri b [often referred to simply as "Proxima"], Harold Saxon was born. The area was freshly settled, having been terraformed a few decades before. It was commonly seen as the "New Frontier", and people seeking a new life signed up for the lengthy journey [this was before FTL engines were invented]. Saxon was the child of two of the first Proxima pioneers, both British citizens and helping the UK properly establish the Proxima Territory.
Seen as a remarkably intelligent child, he was one of the first Proximans to qualify for the "Pioneer Scholarships" funded by the UK government, and entering the University of Redford, Mars, he achieved great success. Joining the Young Nationals, he ended up establishing the party's branch on Proxima by the time he was 27 [Thanks to the new and popular FTL engines] and ran as a National when the Proxima Territory was granted three seats. Entering Parliament, he was seen as one of the wunderkinder of the National Party. Rising rapidly in the ranks of the party, he was appointed Foreign and Interstellar Secretary [an apt post due to his being from one of the Third British Empire's major space colonies] by PM Oso and dominated that office through Oso's successor Wendy Darling and managed to keep the post in the Druidic Values-National coalition led by Prime Minister Merlin and Deputy PM Vanellope von Schweetz. As the Nationals staggered after a major loss in where they fell to third behind the rising Techno-Tories led by John Smith, Saxon made his move...
Elected as leader of the Nationals, he was then discovered to be the reincarnation of Tim Farron. In the end, this only managed to help him as membership with the undead community soared and in the next election they went from a swing community to solidly-National. The "Vote Saxon" campaign was a strongly effective one, and with the collapse of the Druidic Values Party as their main raison d'etre, bringing Britain back to the Old Faith, was seemingly complete, Saxon brought the Nationals back to a comfortable second. Time will tell if the political career of two centuries, of two lifetimes, will conclude with the Prime Ministership.
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If Peter Mensch had moved to London in 2012...
Louise Mensch MP is the incumbent Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party, having assumed both offices following her victory in the 2016 Conservative leadership election, triggered by David Cameron's resignation after the result of the 2016 EU referendum in the UK. Mensch, who supported the Vote Leave campaign during the EU referendum, defeated Theresa May in the ballot amongst Conservative Party members, having succeeded previously in July 2016 by becoming with May one of two candidates chosen by Conservative MPs to progress to the membership, defeating Michael Gove, Sajid Javid and Liam Fox in the process.
Prior to her service as Prime Minister, Mensch had served in Cameron's Cabinet as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from March to September 2016 after the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith, and as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport from April 2014 to March 2016. Her previous other ministerial roles included Minister of State for Employment from October 2013 to April 2014, and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Sport, Heritage and Tourism from September 2012 to October 2013.
Louise Mensch MP is the incumbent Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party, having assumed both offices following her victory in the 2016 Conservative leadership election, triggered by David Cameron's resignation after the result of the 2016 EU referendum in the UK. Mensch, who supported the Vote Leave campaign during the EU referendum, defeated Theresa May in the ballot amongst Conservative Party members, having succeeded previously in July 2016 by becoming with May one of two candidates chosen by Conservative MPs to progress to the membership, defeating Michael Gove, Sajid Javid and Liam Fox in the process.
Prior to her service as Prime Minister, Mensch had served in Cameron's Cabinet as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from March to September 2016 after the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith, and as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport from April 2014 to March 2016. Her previous other ministerial roles included Minister of State for Employment from October 2013 to April 2014, and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Sport, Heritage and Tourism from September 2012 to October 2013.
I don't think any of my (recent) TL's have been dystopian.
Yes, I do include Hopkins as awful - I'm not that sort of 'right'-winger.
Terry Dicks' stewardship of the United Kingdom will forever bitterly divide political opinion, with some decrying him as a socially decrepit monster who tried to roll back years upon years of social progress, and others praising him as the only man who could've taken control of the country in the time he was given.
The resignation of Margaret Thatcher upon the loss in 1978 led to few tears being shed in the tea rooms of Westminster. Her replacement, the beyond the grave Keith Joseph, fares much better as internal divisions threatened to wreck the governing party. The appointment of freshman Dicks to the cabinet raised many questions, many of which were ignored upon the loss of the Falklands later on in the year. The Labour party, only teetering on the edge of a split months before, was now united in condemnation of a flustered government, now headed up by Willie Whitelaw.
Dicks counted himself lucky to have a weak, scandal-ridden Labour opponent. He held his head down until being appointed to Howe's Shadow Cabinet, at which point he started acting up again, notably breaking with the rest of the leadership to vote against Healey's sanctions on Hussein in 1990, something that almost caused him to leave the cabinet against his will.
The arrival of 63 year-old John Nott to Downing Street signaled a bright new future for the Conservative party. His death, along with 95% of the cabinet, in a meeting of the cabinet only months later signaled the arrival of a dark era for the country. Dicks, as the most senior cabinet member remaining, took over the leadership of a depressed party and country. His premiership would see a crackdown on those supposedly responsible for the explosion, the Irish Republican Army (when in actuality it was later revealed to be a gas leak). At home, state subsidies to industry were rolled back and services were denationalized at a rapid rate. A lingering sympathy bump on top of a decent majority secured him for re-election against a feckless Labour party, creaky from years of complacency.
His abrasive manner would lead to a number of international crises, not least with President Eastwood, who had little time for Dicks' antics. He retired in 2001 after a stinging election defeat to Harriet Harman's Labour, jumping out of politics all together later in the year.
The resignation of Margaret Thatcher upon the loss in 1978 led to few tears being shed in the tea rooms of Westminster. Her replacement, the beyond the grave Keith Joseph, fares much better as internal divisions threatened to wreck the governing party. The appointment of freshman Dicks to the cabinet raised many questions, many of which were ignored upon the loss of the Falklands later on in the year. The Labour party, only teetering on the edge of a split months before, was now united in condemnation of a flustered government, now headed up by Willie Whitelaw.
Dicks counted himself lucky to have a weak, scandal-ridden Labour opponent. He held his head down until being appointed to Howe's Shadow Cabinet, at which point he started acting up again, notably breaking with the rest of the leadership to vote against Healey's sanctions on Hussein in 1990, something that almost caused him to leave the cabinet against his will.
The arrival of 63 year-old John Nott to Downing Street signaled a bright new future for the Conservative party. His death, along with 95% of the cabinet, in a meeting of the cabinet only months later signaled the arrival of a dark era for the country. Dicks, as the most senior cabinet member remaining, took over the leadership of a depressed party and country. His premiership would see a crackdown on those supposedly responsible for the explosion, the Irish Republican Army (when in actuality it was later revealed to be a gas leak). At home, state subsidies to industry were rolled back and services were denationalized at a rapid rate. A lingering sympathy bump on top of a decent majority secured him for re-election against a feckless Labour party, creaky from years of complacency.
His abrasive manner would lead to a number of international crises, not least with President Eastwood, who had little time for Dicks' antics. He retired in 2001 after a stinging election defeat to Harriet Harman's Labour, jumping out of politics all together later in the year.
Love it @spookyscaryskeletons - I take he's the first PM with a physical disability then?
I was going to say something to that effect, but I didn't think it was in taste. Especially if someone takes it out of context.
You should have had him be his successor.
*Pig's bladder on a stick intensifies*
Christ alive, @spookyscaryskeletons.
Can I ask about the PMs? Who's the PM between '86 and '95? Is it, as I fear, an SDP-Liberal Alliance government?
Can I ask about the PMs? Who's the PM between '86 and '95? Is it, as I fear, an SDP-Liberal Alliance government?
I'm hoping @Ares96 will like this one! My long awaited newest installment in the Nordic Federal Elections series!
The 1887 Election
The election of 1885 had given Sønderheim and his Liberals enough seats for none of Bille-Brahe's combinations to threaten him by presenting a credible alternative of their own, but it was still little over a dozen short of a majority, and as such, to get his bills passed both houses of the imperial Unionsdag, Sønderheim constantly needed to court the support of other parties. For the most part, this wasn't a problem. There were sufficient Radical members in the lower house and independent members of the upper house for him to be able to work out deals on budgetary matters. Still, Sønderheim, ever the believer in the two-party system and having spent much of the past two decades of his political career allying the various fractured liberal parties across the Nordic Empire into a single credible force united under a single banner and campaigning on a single manifesto, was incredibly annoyed by this situation, feeling that every compromise bill he composed with Radicals represented a breach of the electoral contract he had made with the voters. Furthermore, at his core a believer in laissez-faire, he was increasingly frustrated by the Radicals' demands for social legislation.
Sønderheim thus set out to continue implementing his grand agenda for liberal reform begun 5 years earlier, and having been interrupted for two years. Much to his relief, Bille-Brahe had only tinkered very minutely with his trade policy, and of the many tariffs Sønderheim had spent his first three years in office abolishing, few had been reintroduced under Bille-Brahe, and then only in watered down versions. Though Sønderheim much disliked the clientelism of Bille-Brahe's fiscal policy, he couldn't help but acknowledge that the Danish nobleman, liked himself, favoured a very tight purse and balanced budgets. Still, Sønderheim concluded there was opening here for change, change that could actually be very beneficial for his own party.
Suffrage in the Nordic Empire was still, despite efforts by both Liberals and Unionists to make the suffrage uniform, very much decided by the local authorities in charge at the constituencies, meaning that a man (or a woman) who had the vote in Stockholm, might not have it in Copenhagen, and a farmer in Denmark might lack it in Finland. Often, these restrictions came down to matters of taxation, with people who weren't paying income tax being barred from the vote.
This Sønderheim thought deeply unfair, seeing, as he argued in private, these people were paying taxes in terms of taxes on foods and tariffs on imported goods, and yet they were not given a say in how these de facto taxes were administered and set. Thus, Sønderheim devised a strategy to get around the restrictions and widen the franchise by cutting sales taxes and imports even further, and to make up for lost revenue, extend the income tax to the lower levels in society. This was a radical move, but Sønderheim treated carefully. He was still immensly popular among the farmers of the nation for having removed tariffs on various imported tools they needed for their work on the farms, and many of his own members of the Unionsdag were skeptical of the idea. Still, Sønderheim and his Finance Minister Vilhelm V. Harhoff worked hard to come up with an approach that would satisfy their core electorate, and finally, Sønderheim sprinkled his argument with some of his own “tight purse” philosophy to win over the more politically skeptical in his own caucus. People who have to pay taxes will be more keen to find out how that money is actually being spent, and they are less likely to be tempted to vote for Unionists or Radicals if its with their money that these people are funding their crazy schemes.
As Sønderheim waited for the right moment to make use of this widely expanded franchise, the political landscape was changing. Though Radikale Højre continued to dominate Danish politics on a state level, on federal level, they had gone backwards and backwards in successive elections. Not even the popular State Minister of Denmark who had been recruited to lead the party on a federal level, Hannes Hedegaard, had proven capable of fixing the matter, and embarrassingly, in 1885, the party of Nicolas Andersen had ended up sixth.
Hannes Hedegaard believed that the big problem lied in the fact that since the end of the Friends of the Union electoral alliance, Radikale Højre no longer could offer voters a clear ticket to government (nor, for that matter, could they offer one to wealthy donors who might want to influence government policy), but merely act as a clientele party of regional Danish interests, and while that might appeal to some, most people would probably prefer to cast their vote to decide what government they wanted, rather than cast their vote for a party that pledged to protect their interest and work with whatever party might actually end up forming the government. As a solution to all their problems, Hedegaard decided, a full merger with the Unionist Party seemed the best course of action.
When he presented his idea at the 1885 Convention of Radikale Højre, the delegates were deeply skeptical to say the least. There wasn't a single applause, and people murmured openly before the speech was even finished. Still, Hedegaard had the backing of the leadership of the party in the Unionsdag, and after a debate between two sides suspicious of one another, Hedegaard got the delegates to vote for an exploratory committee to be formed to negotiate with the Unionist Party the possibility of a merger. Over several months in the smokefilled rooms of the Tricorne Club in Stockholm, the Unionists and Radical Rightmen worked on a detailed proposal, and finally, in 1886, it was presented to the delegates at the 1886 Convention of Radikale Højre. This time there were no murmurings. This time, there was anarchy. Leading Radical Rightmen got up and walked out of the convention hall, and on the floor, fist fights broke out. Finally, a ballot was organized and when the results were read out, 61% against 39% had voted against official merger.
This was all that Hedegaard could take. Him and most of the parliamentary leadership in the Unionsdag resigned from the party within a week, and soon moved over to sit with the Unionists. The rump Radikale Højre would continue to sit as their own party for another year, before finally a merger was agreed to, this time not with the Unionists but with the Swedish Radical Party under the leadership of Anton Hasselqvist.
Despite this boost for the Unionists in that they now had Danish members of the Unionsdag, it remained an open question as to whether or not they could actually form the next government. Bitter by his loss of power, Landsgreve Bille-Brahe had retired to his palatial manor on the island of Hven to brood and write pamphlets critical of Sønderheim's foreign policy. Ulrik Lundeberg, leader of the Unionist, was trying to make overtures to Bille-Brahe to get his and the Skepticals to agree to support a Unionist government if they held the balance of power, but Bille-Brahe seemed to be doing his best to frustrate the desires of the Unionists to form the government. In particular, Bille-Brahe deeply despised Hedegaard and the Danish Radical Rightmen who had joined the Unionist Party. As State Minister for Denmark, Hedegaard had governed from the centre, a position far too left-wing for Bille-Brahe's tastes, and though by formally joining the Unionists, Hedegaard had taken a step closer to Bille-Brahe's position, this had actually just ended up making Bille-Brahe dislike the man more. “I find it difficult to view a man change sides without the word treachery springing to mind”, he said, “any politician worth his salt will stick to his guns”. His demand was therefore that the former Radical Rightmen under no conditions be granted seats in the cabinet for the Skepticals to support a Unionist government. And then there was the matter of the Unionists' ideological commitment to protectionism. Though Bille-Brahe had no problems with protectionism per se, “there are good tariffs and there are bad tariffs”, he was quite convinced that many of the tariffs the Unionists had put up during their 13 years in power between 1867 and 1880, had been pretty stupid, helping industries that Bille-Brahe was skeptical of there was really any use for the Nordics to get into, and also resulting in retaliatory tariffs on Nordic goods, in particularly agricultural produce, which tended to have an adverse effect on the economies of the Skeptical's base, wealthy landowners. As such, much of Sønderheim's trade policy, Bille-Brahe didn't actually mind, and he and his Skepticals had supported Sønderheim as he had abolished many Unionist tariffs. Lundeberg tried his very best to work out a compromise nonetheless, on two occasions visiting Bille-Brahe in his estate on Hven, but it never lead anywhere. According to Bille-Brahe's own diary kept at the time, at one point Lundeberg actually broke down into tears.
By autumn 1887, Sønderheim decided to test his luck. He deliberately instructed his Finance Minister to come up with a budget with all the various factors that would ensure that neither Radicals, Skepticals, nor Unionists could be able to stomach it, and sent it to the Unionsdag. As expected, it failed to go through, and the Unionists tabled a motion of no confidence, which, much to Sønderheim's delight, the government lost. The Empress agreed to Sønderheim's request of fresh elections, and throughout September the Liberals fought a vigorous campaign.
The election proved a victory for the Liberals, who regain their lost majority, but was still a disappointment to Sønderheim. The widened franchise did not, as hoped, lead to any Skeptical seats in Denmark being won for the Liberals, as the landlords there still thoroughly controlled the political scene in many Danish rural constituencies, and though the Skeptical share of the vote fell, they still managed to actually pick up a few seats through careful campaigning, becoming the third biggest party in the Unionsdag with less than 6% of the actual votes cast. Furthermore, thanks to vote splitting and a surge of the Liberal vote, both Unionists and Radicals lost seats in Denmark. Though the former ended up with more or less the same number of seats as they had had prior to the election, the later were absolutely devested in Sweden owing to vote splitting and having to compete with the Liberals. Despite the Radicals gaining twice as many votes as the Skepticals, they had less than half the number of seats, much to Hasselqvists anger. The Radicals would soon put it into their manifesto to call for a change of the electoral system.
Some other interesting things happened also in this election. Women campaigners felt that the widening of the suffrage still hadn't gone far enough, in particular since socio-economic factors still limited a far greater share of women from actually paying tax than men, and so formed the Lavender List, which entered into an electoral pact with the Radicals, together winning 5 seats throughout the Empire.
As a final note, a mere footnote in this election of course, something nobody really paid much attention to at the time, was the election of one single shipyard worker by the name of Hakon Kirstein to one of Malmö's borough seats. Kirstein was a bastard child of a Pomeranian shoemaker and a Danish linen factory worker, a man with no formal schooling to speak of. Yet he was engaged in his union, and after having given a particularly angry speech while somewhat intoxicated one Friday night, complaining about the owner of the shipyard, a wealthy Liberal donor who nonetheless refused to increase his worker's wages despite Sønderheim's trade and tax policies having made sure that he had to spend much less on materials, someone had pointed out to him that he ought to run for the Unionsdag, because “it would be much better if the wealthy gentlemen in that august hall have to listen to your damned rants than that we should have to”. And for some reason, the idea refused to leave his head. Not even on Monday the week after when he was informed that on account of his radical preachings while drunk he was now to be laid off. If anything, it just hardened his resolve.
And so it was that Hakon Kirstein was elected under the banner of the Malmö Radical-Workingmen's Association, a small little success that were to lay the foundation of a political party that would come to play a major role in 20th century Scandinavian politics, the Nordic Labour Party.
One single fix idea, sometimes, that's all it takes.
The 1887 Election
The election of 1885 had given Sønderheim and his Liberals enough seats for none of Bille-Brahe's combinations to threaten him by presenting a credible alternative of their own, but it was still little over a dozen short of a majority, and as such, to get his bills passed both houses of the imperial Unionsdag, Sønderheim constantly needed to court the support of other parties. For the most part, this wasn't a problem. There were sufficient Radical members in the lower house and independent members of the upper house for him to be able to work out deals on budgetary matters. Still, Sønderheim, ever the believer in the two-party system and having spent much of the past two decades of his political career allying the various fractured liberal parties across the Nordic Empire into a single credible force united under a single banner and campaigning on a single manifesto, was incredibly annoyed by this situation, feeling that every compromise bill he composed with Radicals represented a breach of the electoral contract he had made with the voters. Furthermore, at his core a believer in laissez-faire, he was increasingly frustrated by the Radicals' demands for social legislation.
Sønderheim thus set out to continue implementing his grand agenda for liberal reform begun 5 years earlier, and having been interrupted for two years. Much to his relief, Bille-Brahe had only tinkered very minutely with his trade policy, and of the many tariffs Sønderheim had spent his first three years in office abolishing, few had been reintroduced under Bille-Brahe, and then only in watered down versions. Though Sønderheim much disliked the clientelism of Bille-Brahe's fiscal policy, he couldn't help but acknowledge that the Danish nobleman, liked himself, favoured a very tight purse and balanced budgets. Still, Sønderheim concluded there was opening here for change, change that could actually be very beneficial for his own party.
Suffrage in the Nordic Empire was still, despite efforts by both Liberals and Unionists to make the suffrage uniform, very much decided by the local authorities in charge at the constituencies, meaning that a man (or a woman) who had the vote in Stockholm, might not have it in Copenhagen, and a farmer in Denmark might lack it in Finland. Often, these restrictions came down to matters of taxation, with people who weren't paying income tax being barred from the vote.
This Sønderheim thought deeply unfair, seeing, as he argued in private, these people were paying taxes in terms of taxes on foods and tariffs on imported goods, and yet they were not given a say in how these de facto taxes were administered and set. Thus, Sønderheim devised a strategy to get around the restrictions and widen the franchise by cutting sales taxes and imports even further, and to make up for lost revenue, extend the income tax to the lower levels in society. This was a radical move, but Sønderheim treated carefully. He was still immensly popular among the farmers of the nation for having removed tariffs on various imported tools they needed for their work on the farms, and many of his own members of the Unionsdag were skeptical of the idea. Still, Sønderheim and his Finance Minister Vilhelm V. Harhoff worked hard to come up with an approach that would satisfy their core electorate, and finally, Sønderheim sprinkled his argument with some of his own “tight purse” philosophy to win over the more politically skeptical in his own caucus. People who have to pay taxes will be more keen to find out how that money is actually being spent, and they are less likely to be tempted to vote for Unionists or Radicals if its with their money that these people are funding their crazy schemes.
As Sønderheim waited for the right moment to make use of this widely expanded franchise, the political landscape was changing. Though Radikale Højre continued to dominate Danish politics on a state level, on federal level, they had gone backwards and backwards in successive elections. Not even the popular State Minister of Denmark who had been recruited to lead the party on a federal level, Hannes Hedegaard, had proven capable of fixing the matter, and embarrassingly, in 1885, the party of Nicolas Andersen had ended up sixth.
Hannes Hedegaard believed that the big problem lied in the fact that since the end of the Friends of the Union electoral alliance, Radikale Højre no longer could offer voters a clear ticket to government (nor, for that matter, could they offer one to wealthy donors who might want to influence government policy), but merely act as a clientele party of regional Danish interests, and while that might appeal to some, most people would probably prefer to cast their vote to decide what government they wanted, rather than cast their vote for a party that pledged to protect their interest and work with whatever party might actually end up forming the government. As a solution to all their problems, Hedegaard decided, a full merger with the Unionist Party seemed the best course of action.
When he presented his idea at the 1885 Convention of Radikale Højre, the delegates were deeply skeptical to say the least. There wasn't a single applause, and people murmured openly before the speech was even finished. Still, Hedegaard had the backing of the leadership of the party in the Unionsdag, and after a debate between two sides suspicious of one another, Hedegaard got the delegates to vote for an exploratory committee to be formed to negotiate with the Unionist Party the possibility of a merger. Over several months in the smokefilled rooms of the Tricorne Club in Stockholm, the Unionists and Radical Rightmen worked on a detailed proposal, and finally, in 1886, it was presented to the delegates at the 1886 Convention of Radikale Højre. This time there were no murmurings. This time, there was anarchy. Leading Radical Rightmen got up and walked out of the convention hall, and on the floor, fist fights broke out. Finally, a ballot was organized and when the results were read out, 61% against 39% had voted against official merger.
This was all that Hedegaard could take. Him and most of the parliamentary leadership in the Unionsdag resigned from the party within a week, and soon moved over to sit with the Unionists. The rump Radikale Højre would continue to sit as their own party for another year, before finally a merger was agreed to, this time not with the Unionists but with the Swedish Radical Party under the leadership of Anton Hasselqvist.
Despite this boost for the Unionists in that they now had Danish members of the Unionsdag, it remained an open question as to whether or not they could actually form the next government. Bitter by his loss of power, Landsgreve Bille-Brahe had retired to his palatial manor on the island of Hven to brood and write pamphlets critical of Sønderheim's foreign policy. Ulrik Lundeberg, leader of the Unionist, was trying to make overtures to Bille-Brahe to get his and the Skepticals to agree to support a Unionist government if they held the balance of power, but Bille-Brahe seemed to be doing his best to frustrate the desires of the Unionists to form the government. In particular, Bille-Brahe deeply despised Hedegaard and the Danish Radical Rightmen who had joined the Unionist Party. As State Minister for Denmark, Hedegaard had governed from the centre, a position far too left-wing for Bille-Brahe's tastes, and though by formally joining the Unionists, Hedegaard had taken a step closer to Bille-Brahe's position, this had actually just ended up making Bille-Brahe dislike the man more. “I find it difficult to view a man change sides without the word treachery springing to mind”, he said, “any politician worth his salt will stick to his guns”. His demand was therefore that the former Radical Rightmen under no conditions be granted seats in the cabinet for the Skepticals to support a Unionist government. And then there was the matter of the Unionists' ideological commitment to protectionism. Though Bille-Brahe had no problems with protectionism per se, “there are good tariffs and there are bad tariffs”, he was quite convinced that many of the tariffs the Unionists had put up during their 13 years in power between 1867 and 1880, had been pretty stupid, helping industries that Bille-Brahe was skeptical of there was really any use for the Nordics to get into, and also resulting in retaliatory tariffs on Nordic goods, in particularly agricultural produce, which tended to have an adverse effect on the economies of the Skeptical's base, wealthy landowners. As such, much of Sønderheim's trade policy, Bille-Brahe didn't actually mind, and he and his Skepticals had supported Sønderheim as he had abolished many Unionist tariffs. Lundeberg tried his very best to work out a compromise nonetheless, on two occasions visiting Bille-Brahe in his estate on Hven, but it never lead anywhere. According to Bille-Brahe's own diary kept at the time, at one point Lundeberg actually broke down into tears.
By autumn 1887, Sønderheim decided to test his luck. He deliberately instructed his Finance Minister to come up with a budget with all the various factors that would ensure that neither Radicals, Skepticals, nor Unionists could be able to stomach it, and sent it to the Unionsdag. As expected, it failed to go through, and the Unionists tabled a motion of no confidence, which, much to Sønderheim's delight, the government lost. The Empress agreed to Sønderheim's request of fresh elections, and throughout September the Liberals fought a vigorous campaign.
The election proved a victory for the Liberals, who regain their lost majority, but was still a disappointment to Sønderheim. The widened franchise did not, as hoped, lead to any Skeptical seats in Denmark being won for the Liberals, as the landlords there still thoroughly controlled the political scene in many Danish rural constituencies, and though the Skeptical share of the vote fell, they still managed to actually pick up a few seats through careful campaigning, becoming the third biggest party in the Unionsdag with less than 6% of the actual votes cast. Furthermore, thanks to vote splitting and a surge of the Liberal vote, both Unionists and Radicals lost seats in Denmark. Though the former ended up with more or less the same number of seats as they had had prior to the election, the later were absolutely devested in Sweden owing to vote splitting and having to compete with the Liberals. Despite the Radicals gaining twice as many votes as the Skepticals, they had less than half the number of seats, much to Hasselqvists anger. The Radicals would soon put it into their manifesto to call for a change of the electoral system.
Some other interesting things happened also in this election. Women campaigners felt that the widening of the suffrage still hadn't gone far enough, in particular since socio-economic factors still limited a far greater share of women from actually paying tax than men, and so formed the Lavender List, which entered into an electoral pact with the Radicals, together winning 5 seats throughout the Empire.
As a final note, a mere footnote in this election of course, something nobody really paid much attention to at the time, was the election of one single shipyard worker by the name of Hakon Kirstein to one of Malmö's borough seats. Kirstein was a bastard child of a Pomeranian shoemaker and a Danish linen factory worker, a man with no formal schooling to speak of. Yet he was engaged in his union, and after having given a particularly angry speech while somewhat intoxicated one Friday night, complaining about the owner of the shipyard, a wealthy Liberal donor who nonetheless refused to increase his worker's wages despite Sønderheim's trade and tax policies having made sure that he had to spend much less on materials, someone had pointed out to him that he ought to run for the Unionsdag, because “it would be much better if the wealthy gentlemen in that august hall have to listen to your damned rants than that we should have to”. And for some reason, the idea refused to leave his head. Not even on Monday the week after when he was informed that on account of his radical preachings while drunk he was now to be laid off. If anything, it just hardened his resolve.
And so it was that Hakon Kirstein was elected under the banner of the Malmö Radical-Workingmen's Association, a small little success that were to lay the foundation of a political party that would come to play a major role in 20th century Scandinavian politics, the Nordic Labour Party.
One single fix idea, sometimes, that's all it takes.
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