Always on about Europe: British Political TL

Shads

Shads

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The Final Week
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Following the debates, Hague could proudly take home a strong second place that had managed to hold his own against the other parties. He spent the final week of his campaigning leading a tour of several Tory held marginals in order to strengthen them against the chance of losing them to another party. The PM too found his personal ratings rise with a narrow 49% to 47% approval rating widely reported in one poll, the first positive approval of the prime minister since the negotiations for Brexit started. Things looked a little better than previous weeks.

For the Liberals, the debates had been nothing short of a disaster. Wheway had no new policies and the party was forced to stay away from the topic of Brexit with a ten foot pole to avoid being ripped to shreds by the SDP. The last week for Wheway was spent doing otherwise unnecessary damage control against the SDP and the Conservatives. By this point it was almost inevitable the party would lose seats, but how much would this injury bleed before it clotted?

4th of May 2008 Poll: Which Party will you vote for in 2008 General Election?

Labour: 37%
Conservatives: 30%
SDP: 16%
Liberals: 13%
Other/Won’t Say/Don’t Know: 4%

The rise of the SDP had blunted a steady rise of another, the Greens. Following the EU Referendum the Green Party had found a consistent 2-3% of support for their overwhelmingly pro-EU views but following the SDP this stance had been rendered moot by the far more well known MPs in the SDP. Following the calling of the general election things went from bad to worse as many prominent Green Party members announced their decision to campaign under the “cooperation banner” of the SDP. This led to a tough decision by the leadership to only field candidates where they had got more than 3% of the vote in the last election and where the SDP didn’t stand a good chance of winning the seat. With many of its more prominent members fighting for the SDP, the Greens looked even more like a faceless organisation than ever before. The party would have to resolve this in some way or another.
 
Shads

Shads

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Election Night 2008
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9:50pm

“Good Evening. Welcome to BBC Election Night 2008. I am David Dimbleby and I’ll be hosting the Election Night program. Just a year ago we saw that interesting set of results where despite all the pollsters predicting Gordon Brown would hang on for another term we had that coalition between the Conservatives and the then Democratic Party, now the Liberals. This year of course a new challenger by the name of the Social Democratic Party stepped up and offered a pro European view on the future. Who will have succeeded by the time tomorrow morning comes? Well we can get our first clue with the exit poll very soon. This year we aren’t going to give you the exact seat numbers due to the political earthquake made by the SDPs birth. It will be hard to calculate swings given the nature of this election but we will give you a general idea of how the night may proceed if we’ve gotten it right.”

10:00pm

“And now as Big Ben strikes ten we can reveal our exit poll.

And the exit poll says a Labour Government. Andy Burnham has won his party a majority meaning that we will be seeing a Labour Government for the next 4 years at least. As we said earlier we can’t give you precise figures but we predict the majority to be roughly 40-80 seats but of course take that prediction with a pinch of salt.”

1:03am

“And you just saw that, another Conservative seat falls to Labour. Just like how we saw Cleethorpes a few minutes ago, home of that famous by election that brought down William Hague’s Government, be returned to Labour with a slightly bigger majority. However what we are seeing here as the night proceeds is a rare phenomenon that Conservative losses to Labour are actually being balanced out by Conservative gains from the Liberals! Many thought the Prime Minister May be done and dusted after tonight but if this keeps up throughout the night he might just cling on.”

2:48am

“Up comes two leaders seats. Rob Wheway in his Yardley seat and Nick Griffin who is standing in Kensington, home of the Notting hill race riots.

Quite astounding results. Rob Wheway, a party leader, barely hangs on by just over 100 votes from a strong challenge by Labour as Liberal MPs are wiped out all across the country.

And Nick Griffin is unable to win Kensington but has managed a remarkable 17% that has taken votes from all parties, with Labour just inching the seat out of the Conservatives grasp.”

3:13am

“Let’s now turn to Scotland where an interesting set of results has been observed. Labour have made gains in the Highlands from the Liberal decline but have lost in the heavily remain voting areas of Scotland, with Steve Burgess of the SDP nabbing the previously safe seat of Edinburgh South by around 1,500 votes.

Oh?

We can now also report that Duncan Hames has held his seat in Chippenham by 2,000 votes, narrowly beating the split opposition of the Liberals and Conservatives in this leave voting seat.”

3:28am

“And that gain in Dover is Labour’s 326th seat of the night, meaning they have an overall majority. Quite good timing as Andy Burnham is giving his victory speech in Leigh. Let’s go to him now.”

“I am so honoured by all my constituents that have re-elected me in Leigh with an increased majority of 24%. I have also just heard a report that we have won our 326th seat.”

*cheers*

“Meaning we have enough for a majority government. The people of Britain have voted for a government that will usher in a new era of truth and pride in politics. We will create and boost up public services to be proud of. We will honour your democratic decision to LEAVE the European Union. I must thank everybody who has spent countless hours campaigning for this day and their hard work has payed off. Labour has been returned to power, let’s make it a successful four years.”

4:30am

“As there are now less than 100 seats left to declare we have a clear idea of how the night has gone. Labour has been returned to power with a clear majority and therefore will form the next government. Labour has been gaining all across the country but we notably strong performances in Wales, Scotland and leave voting parts of England. It is clear Labour’s position of a hard Brexit that respects the referendum result has won over many leave voters.

However, some right wing leave voters who perhaps couldn’t stomach voting Labour have cast their vote for the British National Party who are doing surprisingly well and are actually holding their deposit in several seats, of course remembering Nick Griffins strong 17% earlier tonight. This is particularly odd as we did not hear much of the BNP beyond the usual party political broadcast. Perhaps in a way they ran a “campaign of silence” and it appears to have worked.

With just a handful of rural seats as well as Northern Ireland left to go, we will be here tomorrow morning to show and tell you the results as they were...”
 
Shads

Shads

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Result: Labour Majority of 72

(And here is the 2008 Election. This is my first wikibox so I hope it looks ok but I wanted to do something special for this election. Unfortunately there were no pictures of Wheway on Wikipedia so I’ve left his box blank. Thank you so much to you all for your continued support for this timeline, it means the world.)​
 

Chris S

Great updates by the way. It will be certainly interesting to see how an openly Leave supporting Labour party lead by Burnham now handles negotiations and being able to do so with a fairly comfortable majority at that (and not being beholden to any interest in Northern Ireland.....)
 
Shads

Shads

Chris S said:
Now I see what you mean. He lost the election but won more seats than before.
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Chris S said:
Great updates by the way. It will be certainly interesting to see how an openly Leave supporting Labour party lead by Burnham now handles negotiations and being able to do so with a fairly comfortable majority at that (and not being beholden to any interest in Northern Ireland.....)
Click to expand...

It does give the Conservatives a particularly odd position. Hague’s technically lost the election but the party is the strongest it’s been since 1997.

On another note I’m going to be making and posting more wikiboxes now that I’ve finally figured them out. I’m doing all general elections from 2001-2008 but if anybody wants to make a request for something else I’d be happy to give it a go.
 

Chris S

Shads said:
It does give the Conservatives a particularly odd position. Hague’s technically lost the election but the party is the strongest it’s been since 1997.

On another note I’m going to be making and posting more wikiboxes now that I’ve finally figured them out. I’m doing all general elections from 2001-2008 but if anybody wants to make a request for something else I’d be happy to give it a go.
Click to expand...

That would be great.

By the way, in the last wikibox at the top you will notice it has arrows pointing to the last and next general elections which in the wikibox show "2005" and "2012" respectively - I think you overlooked them as the last election should have been 2007 surely.
 

Chris S

Shads said:
It does give the Conservatives a particularly odd position. Hague’s technically lost the election but the party is the strongest it’s been since 1997.

On another note I’m going to be making and posting more wikiboxes now that I’ve finally figured them out. I’m doing all general elections from 2001-2008 but if anybody wants to make a request for something else I’d be happy to give it a go.
Click to expand...

They should just stick with Hague. ;)
 
Shads

Shads

Chris S said:
That would be great.

By the way, in the last wikibox at the top you will notice it has arrows pointing to the last and next general elections which in the wikibox show "2005" and "2012" respectively - I think you overlooked them as the last election should have been 2007 surely.
Click to expand...
Ah yes, there’s always one little thing. Well pretend that 5 is a 7 and we’ll all be ok :)
 
mymatedave10

mymatedave10

Oof, Wheway on top of barely scraping a win in his own constituency, he also oversaw a loss of 79 seats, a total wipeout. I can't imagine he'll refuse to fall on his sword after this defeat. Shads, you are a cruel man.
 
Shads

Shads

mymatedave10 said:
Oof, Wheway on top of barely scraping a win in his own constituency, he also oversaw a loss of 79 seats, a total wipeout. I can't imagine he'll refuse to fall on his sword after this defeat. Shads, you are a cruel man.
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And to think people thought this would be another “Lib Dems do really well” TL. *evil laughter*
 
Shads

Shads

Chris S said:
Whewa...who? Who are you are talking about? :p
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To be fair he’s such an obscure figure in politics this TL might be his first brush with relevance since that 1997 party political broadcast where he seems more than a little scary and robotic.
 

Southern pride

Well this puts Hauge in a situation as his party technically lost the election as they were the incumbent government but at the same time they gained seats.
 

jammci

I wonder how long until the credit crunch starts to hit. Then we'll see what Burnham is made of. Also, did the labour government get a note of 'there's no money' from the Conservatives
 
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