I would love to but sadly. I have 3 projects going atm myself even when Disney ends, there's the poltical one which will be even harder.
Alternate Wikipedia Infoboxes VI (Do Not Post Current Politics or Political Figures Here)
- Status
Finally, I was able to get the write up for my Yeti infobox post completed. If you guys want to check it out, go right ahead!
I really wish I could get my infobox writeup done the same day I post the infoboxes, but time always gets in the way (Time goes by WAY too fast these days!
).Not to mention I always end up either getting distracted by other projects or just blow it off 'cause I'm not in the mood to do it or find it too stressful to do all at once. Anyone else have this problem?
I really wish I could get my infobox writeup done the same day I post the infoboxes, but time always gets in the way (Time goes by WAY too fast these days!
).Not to mention I always end up either getting distracted by other projects or just blow it off 'cause I'm not in the mood to do it or find it too stressful to do all at once. Anyone else have this problem?
The 1942 negotiations saw theKMT agree to use the PRC's flag. Built the small wikibox on those negotiations.
The bidding process to host the 2026 Olympiad received a record ten bids for host cities by their respective Olympic National Committees (ONC), with ultimately the American bid for Philadelphia/Bear Mountain being selected at the 118th IOC Session in Accra.
The bidding process for the Olympiad begins with a convocation by each individual ONC about six months before the bid deadline, wherein a decision is made as to propose a bid for the Olympiad. Each bid is comprised of two cities, one for the Summer Olympics and one for the Winter Olympics, though joint efforts between two collaborating nations is not uncommon. The bid are then presented to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in time before the bid deadline, wherein the list is refined over the subsequent year and a half before a decision is reached an announced at the Closing Ceremonies of that year's Summer Olympics, thus giving host cities eight years to prepare.
The awarding of the 2026 Olympiad to the United States marks the fourth time the United States has hosted the games, and celebrates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Prior US hostings have been marred with tragedy - the 1918 Olympiad (Chicago) occurred during the Summer of Blood syndicalist uprisings, and the 1942 Olympiad (Baltimore/Bear Mountain) ended with the assassination of President Henry Longmile and the start of the Years of Lead. The 1994 Olympiad (Denver/Aspen), meanwhile, was a calm affair in contrast. The 2026 Olympiad marks the second time Bear Mountain, New York has hosted the Winter Olympics, the most for any US location. The United States has submitted a bid for every Olympiad except the first three, the most of any nation.
Of the other bids, Austria turned down an offer with Tyrol for a joint effort, seeking instead to host the its first Olympiad all on its own. Likewise, Morocco, New Zealand, Hungary, and Japan all sought to host their first Olympiad, as did the Kurdistan-Georgia joint effort (a first for both) and Andorra (first for itself, second for Spain). France meanwhile sought its third Olympiad, the second for Grenoble and the third for Paris. Sweden's bid was its first as solely Sweden, for its prior two Olympiads were the 1922 Stockholm Summer Olympics and the 1934 Oslo Winter Olympics (complemented with that year's Amsterdam Summer Olympics), both times hosting as Sweden-Norway.
As for the 2026 games themselves, tragedy struck yet again with the Odyssey 9 disaster the prior year. While four astronauts did return home from Venus in time for the Summer Olympics, the deaths of six astronauts was a dark cloud to overcome, and likely contributed to President Roberta Castro's electoral defeat in 2028 to the traitorous David Teller.
It's been a while, but here's the next infobox for this TL!
*
Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock of Bedwellty, is a Welsh politician who served as leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1985 to 1987. He is the most recent of the three Welshmen to serve as Prime Minister (after David Lloyd George and Aneurin Bevan), and the earliest former British Prime Minister to still be alive as of 2021. Born and raised in Tredegar in South Wales, he was first elected to Parliament in 1971, serving until 1989 first for Bedwellty and then after that constituency was abolished for Islwyn.
From 1979 to 1983 he served as an education minister in the first Jenkins government, and proved a strong public speaker, leading to his promotion to Education Secretary in 1982 and him playing a prominent role in the campaign that led to Labour's landslide victory in 1983. While he was a left-winger in the party, formerly aligned with the Tribune magazine, he differed from many older figures on the Labour left in several notable ways, most prominently his pro-Europeanism.
Consequently, Jenkins was much more trusting in him than many other figures on the Labour left, and encouraged him to stay in the Cabinet rather than leading Labour in the first election to the Welsh Assembly as he had considered doing. A reshuffle by Jenkins in 1984 saw him promoted to Foreign Secretary, and in this capacity he sought to ally with continental socialist leaders like Jacques Delors and Felipe González while eschewing cooperation with US President Reagan. This helped keep both Jenkins and the Labour left, which was becoming increasingly pro-European, mostly sympathetic to him, as did his influential role in convincing Jenkins to settle a strike by miners in early 1984. (He would later admit in his memoirs that he encouraged Jenkins to convince the NUM to sack its ardently left-wing leader Arthur Scargill after this, though at the time this was not known and Jenkins took the blame for the decision.)
As the Jenkins government became more unpopular in the mid-1980s due to its controversial homosexual law reforms and the increasingly vocal Labour left, Kinnock steadily grew to be seen both by Jenkins and by the party as a whole as a good compromise candidate. Sure enough, in December 1985 he won the leadership election against the then-Deputy Prime Minister Roy Hattersley, Chancellor of the Exchequer Giles Radice, and stalwart of the party left Tony Benn.
At 43 years old, Kinnock was the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool, and quickly pursued an ambitious agenda to reform Labour and improve its standing in the polls; it was frequently coming around 8 to 10 points behind the Conservative Party, which had been led since 1983 by Michael Heseltine and was increasingly popular with ‘yuppies’ who saw Labour as out of touch with people concerned with social mobility. On the 15th February 1986, the 80th anniversary of the Labour Party’s foundation, Kinnock held a press conference at Caroone House in London, were the party had been founded, in which he announced his first major reforms to the party as Prime Minister. He unveiled its new logo- a rose, the traditional symbol of social democracy- and announced a budget he and Radice had organized which would stimulate economic growth through tax cuts to the working and middle class, as well as announcing a reform by which the party membership would vote for the leader rather than MPs as had been the case.
Despite these ambitious changes, doing this only alienated the left from Kinnock; Liverpool MP Eric Heffer described him as a ‘traitor’ in a widely-publicized interview; and did not do as much as hoped to rejuvenate Labour’s support among the political centre. The move was also undermined by Kinnock’s predecessor as Foreign Secretary, David Owen, quitting the party a few weeks later, saying it had moved too far to the left and announcing his own party, the Social Democratic Party (SDP), which despite its name was largely neoliberal and Atlanticist.
The ‘Caroone House rebrand’, as it has become known, was generally seen as severely undermining Kinnock’s leadership right from the start. He quickly acquired the derisive nickname of ‘the Welsh Windbag’ due to perceptions that his public speaking had become increasingly rambling and tedious. Despite this, he used Labour’s still comfortable majority from the 1983 election to pass several reforms, most notably one protecting the rights of public sector employees from redundancy or lack of union access should their industry of work be privatized.
The challenge from the SDP slowly started to falter, as despite a shock victory in a July by-election at Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire, it badly failed to repeat this success in Knowsley North in November, and despite an aggressive campaign Labour narrowly held Greenwich in February of 1987.
The Greenwich result convinced Kinnock to take a gamble. Heseltine had frequently accused him and his party of seeking to ‘hang on until 1988’, and consequently Labour’s new campaign director Peter Mandelson believed that the Tories’ campaign would not be fully funded for another year. Consequently, he encouraged Kinnock to call a snap election, believing he could take the Tories by surprise and pull off an upset victory. This was not to be- Labour’s campaign was widely seen as poor, with a campaign ad entitled ‘Kinnock: The Movie’ in which Kinnock and his wife Glenys walked along the Great Orme in Llandudno accompanied by audio of his speeches at the Labour Party Conferences in 1985 and 1986 being particularly mocked. The 1987 election saw the biggest swing in a British general election since 1906, with the Labour majority of 140 being replaced by a Tory majority of 136; Kinnock resigned as Labour leader as a result, and Labour would not return to power for a decade.
While Kinnock was widely regarded at the time he left office as a failure as both Labour leader and Prime Minister, he has been credited by later scholars as ‘the architect of Britain’s place in Europe’. In 1989 he was appointed as a Vice-President of the European Commission, serving in this role until 2004 (and consequently becoming one of the first six Vice-Presidents under the European Union) and he was noted for a productive relationship with its Presidents, Delors, Santer and Prodi. Kinnock’s intervention helped force the British government to accept devaluation of the pound to stay in the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) and ratify the Maastricht Treaty with the worker’s rights protections of the Social Chapter in place, two issues which were bitterly opposed by the Conservatives with the ‘Black October’ economic unrest prompted by the former contributing to their defeat in 1997. Heseltine went as far as to joke ‘Kinnock is the only man ever to become Prime Minister after he left Parliament’.
While deeply contentious at the time, Kinnock’s role in the Delors Commission meant he is widely considered the most important British politician to be involved with the EC or EU, and to have been instrumental in the UK’s adoption of the Euro when it was introduced in 2002. In 2005 he was elevated to the House of Lords as a life peer.
Very nice! I'm curious to know what the US subnational teams are like.The 2021 Rugby World Cup kicked off on 17 September 2021. It was the tenth edition of the quadrennial world championship for men’s rugby union. It was hosted in the Empire of China (which in 2020, announced that after discussions, several matches would be hosted in the Republic of Hong Kong), and was the first Rugby World Cup to be hosted in Asia.
The top three teams from each pool of the 2017 World Cup automatically qualified for 2021, with China receiving a placement as the host nation. Six of the remaining seven spots were filled by regional qualifying tournaments, with the last determined by a play-off tournament. The four pools for the the World Cup were as follows:
After pool play finished, the top two teams from each pool advanced to the knockout stage.
The quarter-finals saw host-nation China defeated by a strong Ireland side, and the defending champion Australia side defeat Japan, despite the latter pulling into a first-half lead. The quarter-finals also saw two highly contested, incredibly hard fought matches, California vs. England and Vietnam vs. France. The California vs. England match, which saw California score the winning try and successful conversion with three minutes of play remaining, and thereafter pin England behind its own 22-meter line, is widely considered to be one of the biggest upsets in the history of rugby. France’s loss to Vietnam was decided by a single drop goal from Vietnam’s scrum-half, Pham Vinh, a World Cup record 51-meter attempt; the hit went viral an hour after upload to VidAfe, obtaining ten million views within 24 hours. France’s loss to Vietnam led to disappointment for hopefuls for a 2001 redemption rematch.
In the semi-finals, Australia continued its march along the path to a repeat championship, decisively defeating the California side, never trailing from the start of play. Vietnam continued its own Cinderella story, defeating the Irish side in another close, trench-battle match. In the match to decide third place, Ireland eventually defeated California after a high-scoring shootout, bringing a somewhat disappointing end to California’s resurgence from rugby purgatory, though Coach Rowan Lehner, in a statement to North American sports press, declared his pride in his side’s showing.
The final saw Australia and Vietnam - David and Goliath, Jack and the Giant - face each other down in Peking International Stadium, to a roaring crowd of over 110,000, the largest crowd on record for a rugby match. The world of rugby was divided roughly evenly between those cheering on the Wallabies to become the first side to win back-to-back World Cups, and those rooting for the underdog Golden Dragons to take their phenomenal journey all the way to the Webb Ellis Cup. Both sides left it all on the pitch, but ultimately Australia had more left in the tank in the second half, and won a two-try victory. The Webb Ellis Cup would belong to Australia for another four years.
The United States takes Cuba from Spain, and instead of leading a revolution Castro works to make Cuba a state (and engages in some old fashioned, strong man, single family controls the levers of power for 20+ years, politics but what's so bad about that)
I've been working on a timeline in which the New Zealand Labour party, lead by Bill Rowling, wins the 1975 New Zealand General election and remains in Government for another term. I've been busy and haven't really been able to devote much time to it lately, so I've just been making a few infoboxes in my spare time until I get some actual good time to work on the TL. This seemed like the most plausible choice for who Rowling would nominate to replace Sir Dennis Blundell as Governor-General if he was still Prime Minister when Blundell's term was up. IOTL Prime Minister Robert Muldoon (Who lead the National party to victory against Rowling in 1975 ITOL.) nominated former National Prime Minister Keith Holyoke as Blundell's successor. This was met with harsh criticism due to the seemly political nature of the nomination to what was meant to be an apolitical role. ITOL Rowling (Who was opposition leader at the time of Holyoke's nomination) didn't hold back in criticizing Muldoon's choice of Holyoke, publicly suggesting Sir Edmund Hillary, who had become the first person (alongside Tenzing Norgay) to summit Mount Everest and had since become quite the national hero in New Zealand, so I figured this was the most likely way it would go. ITTL Rowling's nomination of Hillary gets criticism from the opposition and some of the public due to Sir Hillary's involvement with the Labour party and Rowling, although his status as a Kiwi hero means most of the public is behind his serving in the role, and he goes on to become one of the most icon Governors-General in New Zealand's history.
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Three Years is a long time in politics, and nothing exemplified this more than the King Years. Often joked of as the 'Invisible Man', Tom King had been probably one of the success stories of the Walker Cabinet, as the Secretary of State for Employment, King had overseen a number of Walker's Employment schemes, as Transport Secretary he had overseen the partially privatisation of British Transport system and in the 88-89 period he had been the Chancellor of the Exchequer during a time of relative prosperity and stable markets. He was made Deputy Prime Minister in 1988, as Walker begun to be critical of the growing power base of the Home Secretary Michael Heseltine. When Walker and Gow were injured by a car bomb attack in Mid February 1989, King was thrust into power and his reaction to the bombing provided decisively it seemed, the supposed perpetrators would be arrested in the coming weeks and the Conservative election would see King defeat Heseltine rather handily after Norman Tebbit's attempt at bringing back Thatcherism going down like a lead balloon.
King felt optimistic about his time in office as 1989 went on, rather friendly with President George Bush as the pair oversaw seeming content economy, the Warsaw Pact collapsed and Labour was in the midst of it's crisis over the future of there party. It seemed that King was on a roll, and talk of another Tory Majority in a snap 1990 election seemed likely. Then the Poll Tax would be implemented.
A policy that had been formulated since the Mid 80s as the Conservatives set about reforming the British Council system away from Rates, the Community Charge to many of One Nation, Walkerite Tories seemed like a good idea (given it helped deal with unruly Labour Controlled Councils was additional benefit). In end of 1989 the Poll tax would be implemented in Scotland with plans to implement it in England and Wales during 1990. Instantly, problems would begin to occur as many people viewed the scheme as unfair, people in Scotland wouldn't pay as they left for England, Council offices being filled with thousands of unprocessed 'Gone Aways' and a confusion over how to pay lead to several protests. To make things worse, Michael Heseltine had been shuffled into the Foreign Secretary position from the Home Office and as a sop to the Tory Right, Jonathan Aitken, Son in Law to Thatcher had been placed into the Home Secretary role. His 'Tough On Crime' rhetoric would lead to Police and Magistrates being rather brutal in the enforcement of the Tax collection leading to resistance, riots and general brutality. As King saw his poll numbers plummeting a housing market bubble that had emerged during the Walker years would burst and help cause a recession. To make things worse, the lead proponent of the Housing Bubble had been Jim Slater, a former business partner of the Prime Minister who it seemed had never let go of the link as it became apparent that Slater had help from Government Officials with creating a housing monopoly. Additionally the men arrested for the Walker-Gow bombing would later to have had confessions forced out by a apprehensive intelligence service with the arrests becoming part of a number of arrests pardoned in the coming years.
Government Incompetence and Poll Tax Riots were a poor look for a man who had campaigned as the Competent and Consummate professional and the only thing that had stopped the Prime Minister being ousted in a leadership challenge was Heseltine suffering from a health scare and the only challenger in the end being Jerry Hayes in a maverick attempt. Whilst King had survived, many of the Wets were preparing themselves for the coming electoral Armageddon.
Labour it seemed was about to become the next Government, but not because people particularly wanted them too. In the September of 1988, Neil Kinnock would resign after a year of depression and an unruly cabinet. Hopes amongst the Labour Right that they would become the new leaders of the Labour Party would be quickly dashed by John Smith's death from a heart attack, as the only Labour Right candidate with any potential of unifying the Soft Left and Right it quickly became apparent that new candidate was needed. Meanwhile the Labour Action Group would put up Ken Coates who quickly managed to sidestep the Soft Left Bryan Gould to became the candidate of the Left, with policy platform that included further Trade Union power, Municipal Socialism and ideas that were a far cry from the Bennite State Socialism that the Left had espoused a few years earlier. Panic set in as Polls predicated the possibility of the former Trotskyist winning and the finding of a unity candidate became paramount.
David Blunkett didn't particularity want to be leader, viewing his blindness as a detriment but he was the only candidate viewed by the Soft Left and Right as potential Unity candidate with other suggestions like Jack Straw, John Prescott, Gordon Brown or Jack Cunningham being viewed as too alienating to the party at large. Whilst he hadn't been an MP for long, Blunkett's success as a Council Leader in Sheffield endeared him to the party at large. Blunkett would win by a margin of 58% which for many was too close for a Unity Candidate. Many on the Labour Right began to create plans to subdue the increasingly powerful Labour Action Group, but others viewed it as a lost cause.
One of those was David Owen who had found himself increasingly sidelined in numerous Shadow Cabinet elections, despite it all he had managed to stay on as Health Secretary and made a name for himself in the late 80s as the man who managed to lead a successful campaign to deal with the Governments actions on 'HIV Blood Transfusions' becoming the face of justice for many people. As Owen found himself pushed out in the ensuing 1989 Shadow Cabinet elections, he would decide to go about forming his own party in the Spring of 1990. Amusingly a party that was mainly a party of Labour Defectors (ranging from Mike Thomas to John Cartwright) found itself becoming the voice of disaffected Tories who in response to King's mishandling, decided to support the rather charismatic and syncretic David Owen as he went on barnstorming tours around the country calling out the two major parties as irresponsible and ineffective. But Owen wasn't the only one to be doing this...
David Penhaligon had become a hero to the Liberal Party, there surge in 1986 had been unprecedented and he had managed to do what Thorpe and Steel had failed to do, cement the Liberals as the true Third Party of Britain. But things weren't all sunshine and rainbows within the Liberals, the force that had helped his reforming and modernising of the party, the National Young Liberals had fallen under the control of the Green Guard who had been discussing with Green Party officials about a possible Liberal Green Party since the mid 80s. Penhaligon wasn't particularly fond of this, whilst he had been a firm campaigner on green issues he found the Green Party's Anti-NATO stances and general eccentricity off putting. Meanwhile the Green Party viewed Penhaligon as stealing there thunder. But discussion of an electoral alliance would occur anyway, Parkin viewing the possibility of swallowing pride and having electoral victories being better than being overtaken by the Liberals completely. The 1989 Green and Liberal Conference that decided the electoral pact were toxic affairs, Penhaligon would be heckled as he spoke about an alliance between and in the Greens, David Icke and Derek Wall would walk out of the conference proclaiming Sara Parkin as devaluing the Green cause. Despite it all, this awkward and hasty marriage of convivence would survive, becoming the 'Alliance 90' in 1990, inspired by the Germany Movement of the same name.
The 1991 Election Campaign was a bitter one, with many people guessing that the Tories would lose outright with the topic turning more towards whether Labour would have to rely on the support of the Alliance or the support of the SDLP. Discussion of a coalition was everyone’s lips. Blunkett didn’t help matters by replacing Bryan Gould with Gordon Brown halfway through the campaign and a manifesto who’s mild Social Conservative undercurrent putting off many more Liberal voters and with green issues once more a thing, Blunkett’s support for striking miners in the run to the election causing many to see Labour as old fashioned.
Meanwhile the Alliance saw a surge in support alongside the Reform party, with many people disappointed with the Tories and Labour deciding to lend the nascent organisations support, with the Alliance gaining support from the shires to Liberal university towns.
In the end the Tories would collapse to 212 seats, a major embarrassment to the usually sturdy party and the Alliance would surge to an impressive 77 seats of the back of anger towards the Tories and the failure of Regional parties to capture that discontent. But Labour would gain a Majority, a slim one of seven, but a majority all the same. It seemed the Reform party had bit into the Tory and Alliance in several areas allowing for slim Labour victories.
As Blunkett stepped into No10 it was an uneasy moment for the nation. A Prime Minister who didn’t have control of his party, who had gained a majority thanks to Third Parties surging in response to discontent and with a economy in the midst of a recession, it seemed that Blunkett maybe not be long as leader.
And within three years, this would turn out to be correct...after all, three years is a long time in politics.
—//—
Thanks @CrushTheSaboteurs for the wikibox with the wonderful Alliance surge. This is part of the background for For A Friend which you can read on the first drafts section, writing will resume shortly for it. Any questions about the setting and stuff, please ask on my test thread or on the First Draft itself. Anyway hope you’ve enjoyed this little triptych of Election wikiboxes.
King felt optimistic about his time in office as 1989 went on, rather friendly with President George Bush as the pair oversaw seeming content economy, the Warsaw Pact collapsed and Labour was in the midst of it's crisis over the future of there party. It seemed that King was on a roll, and talk of another Tory Majority in a snap 1990 election seemed likely. Then the Poll Tax would be implemented.
A policy that had been formulated since the Mid 80s as the Conservatives set about reforming the British Council system away from Rates, the Community Charge to many of One Nation, Walkerite Tories seemed like a good idea (given it helped deal with unruly Labour Controlled Councils was additional benefit). In end of 1989 the Poll tax would be implemented in Scotland with plans to implement it in England and Wales during 1990. Instantly, problems would begin to occur as many people viewed the scheme as unfair, people in Scotland wouldn't pay as they left for England, Council offices being filled with thousands of unprocessed 'Gone Aways' and a confusion over how to pay lead to several protests. To make things worse, Michael Heseltine had been shuffled into the Foreign Secretary position from the Home Office and as a sop to the Tory Right, Jonathan Aitken, Son in Law to Thatcher had been placed into the Home Secretary role. His 'Tough On Crime' rhetoric would lead to Police and Magistrates being rather brutal in the enforcement of the Tax collection leading to resistance, riots and general brutality. As King saw his poll numbers plummeting a housing market bubble that had emerged during the Walker years would burst and help cause a recession. To make things worse, the lead proponent of the Housing Bubble had been Jim Slater, a former business partner of the Prime Minister who it seemed had never let go of the link as it became apparent that Slater had help from Government Officials with creating a housing monopoly. Additionally the men arrested for the Walker-Gow bombing would later to have had confessions forced out by a apprehensive intelligence service with the arrests becoming part of a number of arrests pardoned in the coming years.
Government Incompetence and Poll Tax Riots were a poor look for a man who had campaigned as the Competent and Consummate professional and the only thing that had stopped the Prime Minister being ousted in a leadership challenge was Heseltine suffering from a health scare and the only challenger in the end being Jerry Hayes in a maverick attempt. Whilst King had survived, many of the Wets were preparing themselves for the coming electoral Armageddon.
Labour it seemed was about to become the next Government, but not because people particularly wanted them too. In the September of 1988, Neil Kinnock would resign after a year of depression and an unruly cabinet. Hopes amongst the Labour Right that they would become the new leaders of the Labour Party would be quickly dashed by John Smith's death from a heart attack, as the only Labour Right candidate with any potential of unifying the Soft Left and Right it quickly became apparent that new candidate was needed. Meanwhile the Labour Action Group would put up Ken Coates who quickly managed to sidestep the Soft Left Bryan Gould to became the candidate of the Left, with policy platform that included further Trade Union power, Municipal Socialism and ideas that were a far cry from the Bennite State Socialism that the Left had espoused a few years earlier. Panic set in as Polls predicated the possibility of the former Trotskyist winning and the finding of a unity candidate became paramount.
David Blunkett didn't particularity want to be leader, viewing his blindness as a detriment but he was the only candidate viewed by the Soft Left and Right as potential Unity candidate with other suggestions like Jack Straw, John Prescott, Gordon Brown or Jack Cunningham being viewed as too alienating to the party at large. Whilst he hadn't been an MP for long, Blunkett's success as a Council Leader in Sheffield endeared him to the party at large. Blunkett would win by a margin of 58% which for many was too close for a Unity Candidate. Many on the Labour Right began to create plans to subdue the increasingly powerful Labour Action Group, but others viewed it as a lost cause.
One of those was David Owen who had found himself increasingly sidelined in numerous Shadow Cabinet elections, despite it all he had managed to stay on as Health Secretary and made a name for himself in the late 80s as the man who managed to lead a successful campaign to deal with the Governments actions on 'HIV Blood Transfusions' becoming the face of justice for many people. As Owen found himself pushed out in the ensuing 1989 Shadow Cabinet elections, he would decide to go about forming his own party in the Spring of 1990. Amusingly a party that was mainly a party of Labour Defectors (ranging from Mike Thomas to John Cartwright) found itself becoming the voice of disaffected Tories who in response to King's mishandling, decided to support the rather charismatic and syncretic David Owen as he went on barnstorming tours around the country calling out the two major parties as irresponsible and ineffective. But Owen wasn't the only one to be doing this...
David Penhaligon had become a hero to the Liberal Party, there surge in 1986 had been unprecedented and he had managed to do what Thorpe and Steel had failed to do, cement the Liberals as the true Third Party of Britain. But things weren't all sunshine and rainbows within the Liberals, the force that had helped his reforming and modernising of the party, the National Young Liberals had fallen under the control of the Green Guard who had been discussing with Green Party officials about a possible Liberal Green Party since the mid 80s. Penhaligon wasn't particularly fond of this, whilst he had been a firm campaigner on green issues he found the Green Party's Anti-NATO stances and general eccentricity off putting. Meanwhile the Green Party viewed Penhaligon as stealing there thunder. But discussion of an electoral alliance would occur anyway, Parkin viewing the possibility of swallowing pride and having electoral victories being better than being overtaken by the Liberals completely. The 1989 Green and Liberal Conference that decided the electoral pact were toxic affairs, Penhaligon would be heckled as he spoke about an alliance between and in the Greens, David Icke and Derek Wall would walk out of the conference proclaiming Sara Parkin as devaluing the Green cause. Despite it all, this awkward and hasty marriage of convivence would survive, becoming the 'Alliance 90' in 1990, inspired by the Germany Movement of the same name.
The 1991 Election Campaign was a bitter one, with many people guessing that the Tories would lose outright with the topic turning more towards whether Labour would have to rely on the support of the Alliance or the support of the SDLP. Discussion of a coalition was everyone’s lips. Blunkett didn’t help matters by replacing Bryan Gould with Gordon Brown halfway through the campaign and a manifesto who’s mild Social Conservative undercurrent putting off many more Liberal voters and with green issues once more a thing, Blunkett’s support for striking miners in the run to the election causing many to see Labour as old fashioned.
Meanwhile the Alliance saw a surge in support alongside the Reform party, with many people disappointed with the Tories and Labour deciding to lend the nascent organisations support, with the Alliance gaining support from the shires to Liberal university towns.
In the end the Tories would collapse to 212 seats, a major embarrassment to the usually sturdy party and the Alliance would surge to an impressive 77 seats of the back of anger towards the Tories and the failure of Regional parties to capture that discontent. But Labour would gain a Majority, a slim one of seven, but a majority all the same. It seemed the Reform party had bit into the Tory and Alliance in several areas allowing for slim Labour victories.
As Blunkett stepped into No10 it was an uneasy moment for the nation. A Prime Minister who didn’t have control of his party, who had gained a majority thanks to Third Parties surging in response to discontent and with a economy in the midst of a recession, it seemed that Blunkett maybe not be long as leader.
And within three years, this would turn out to be correct...after all, three years is a long time in politics.
—//—
Thanks @CrushTheSaboteurs for the wikibox with the wonderful Alliance surge. This is part of the background for For A Friend which you can read on the first drafts section, writing will resume shortly for it. Any questions about the setting and stuff, please ask on my test thread or on the First Draft itself. Anyway hope you’ve enjoyed this little triptych of Election wikiboxes.
The centenarian, The Puppeteer, The Veteran
(From; What if everything went right series: The Greatest Showpeople)
(From; What if everything went right series: The Greatest Showpeople)
Too Soon
Okay, apparently it needs to be explained. My point was that after Andre Gardes, a heavily armed French physicist, had carried out a much more significant terrorist attack than in reality, the game about a heavily armed French physicist would have been banned in the UK. Gordon Freeman could have been named Dyson Poincaré.
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Even after googling what connects André Gardes with Sark and Dyson Poincaré with Gordon Freeman?
The thing with Andre Gardes actually happened. He was an unemployed nuclear physicist who apparently convinced himself he was the rightful heir and "Seigneur" of the small formerly feudal state of Sark. So in 1990 he attempted a one-man invasion but was stopped by the locals. He tried again a year later but was stopped in Guernsey.
According to the Half-Life Fandom wiki: "The name "Gordon Freeman" was coined by Gabe Newell. When looking for a name for the character, Marc Laidlaw wanted it to evoke some famous scientists. So he took inspiration in the names of his "heroes": the name of physicist/philosopher Freeman Dyson mixed with that of the French mathematician Jules Henri Poincaré, ending up with "Dyson Poincaré." Gabe Newell disliked it and suggested "Gordon Freeman" instead."
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