Best post war Britain

A little challenge- how do we make the best UK possible starting from after WW2?
Assume WW2 goes completely as per OTL however as soon as the war is over changes can start being made.

The post war period...was quite a horrible time. It started nice and bright with the formation of the NHS and all that yet somehow nothing worked quite out.
Rationing continued into the 50s, the governments in the 50s...I can't really say a nice word about them. Even the 60s for all the gained ground and finally getting back on track they are known for had things such as the beeching axe.
 
Answers are going to depend on what values people use to define "best."
But if you mean, how can the U.K avoid the major economic problems it faced in that period, that's a bit easier to answer.

The major economic problems were:

  • huge war debts (exacerbated by the end of Lend-Lease and the establishment of the Anglo-American loan)
  • bad timing of the convertibility of the pound and the liberalization of trade barriers that lead to alternating runs and overvaluations
  • a lot of damaged infrastructure from the war
Now some of this is probably unavoidable without PoDing the war itself - you're going to have damaged infrastructure and debt. If you PoD the Blitz, then you're better off on infrastructure, but you're still going to have huge war debts anyway.

On the other hand, a lot of this has to do with public policy, which can be altered. For example, if the U.S decides to forgive U.K war debt (or keeps Lend-Lease going or the equivalent) in exchange for concessions on other policy areas (possibly on the colonies), then a lot of money is freed up for rebuilding, which should spur economic growth. Likewise, if convertibility is delayed or advanced so that it doesn't coincide with the really bad winter in 1946-7, such that conversion happens in a more favorable economic climate, then perhaps the U.K can avoid the recurrent currency crises that were especially damaging to an export-dependent economy.

There are a lot of other possibilities - if the U.K withdraws faster from the colonies instead of trying to hang onto them, then that also frees up a lot of money, which obviates the need for the Anglo-American loan and counter-balances the effects of conversion.
 

Hyperion

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If the goal is to attempt to salvage some part of the old British Empire, ie keep Britain in direct control of a couple more odd colonies as opposed to OTL, one thing that would probably help, would be to early on have the politicians accept the changed reality of the world and decide to cut their losses abroad.

Most colonies, even with military operations prior to handing them over to locals, are going to turn out similar to OTL in a lot of cases. Decide early on which places are a waste or resources and cut them loose. This would probably see African holdings being given independence sooner.

Belize, Guyana, Sri Lanka. All of them gone. Basically, aside from maybe a handful of small islands or island groups in the Caribbean, or maybe some other odd hole in the wall place like Seychelles or the Maldives, some place that's literally out in the middle of nowhere, all colonial holdings are going away.
 
Does postwar mean post-VE-Day or post VJ-Day? The British election of July 1945 was in many ways a crucial turning point. I suspect that one's opinion on whether or not it turned the right way is probably dependent on their opinion of British politics and policies. Britain couldn't afford both an empire/major role in world politics and the type of domestic society Labor wanted. Actually, at the end of World War II it couldn't afford either of those two things.

Would Churchill have done better as prime minister post-war? I'm guessing that he would have wasted a lot more of the national resources trying to hang onto the empire. Militarily Britain might remain more powerful, but financially it would have been at least as much of a basket case.
 
There was a lot of bungles with lend lease, convertability and the like but all countries have these issues.

I think Britain could have pushed things like jet aircraft and other advanced industries to capitalise on the lead they'd built up in the war. Despite the damage they'd sustained Europe had sustained worse damage and Britain was without commerical rivals like Germany and Italy, uit would have been a great opportunity to grab market share.

In foreign policy I think they should have converted the Empire into a series of alliances like CENTO and SEATO with joint projects to maximise their benefit to Britain.
 
Rationing continued into the 50s, the governments in the 50s...I can't really say a nice word about them. Even the 60s for all the gained ground and finally getting back on track they are known for had things such as the beeching axe.

How so?

I mean MacMillan did have a point with his 'you've never had it so good' quote.

I'm always surprised at how so many British people always seem to view the post-war period as one of terrible decline economically.

I would suggest that during this period, rather than being a decline compared to pre-war, it saw a massive increase in the living standards of the vast majority of British people.

Indeed, on a variety of indicators I would argue that the period say from the start of MacMillan's last term in 1959 until the start of Wilson's second term in 1966, was the 'high point' on a variety of economic indicators that the British economy did not see again until the mid-late 1990's.*



* Whilst from 1966 until the mid-1990's, economic growth continued quite well most years, it is during this time that what might be termed 'Misery Index' style indicators (I'm not sure if there is such an Index in the UK), worsened.
 
One of the main mistakes the UK made in our timeline was spending money like the Marshal Aid or US loans not on rebuilding the national infrastructure or modernising industry but on massive military spending, trying to maintain their position in the Commonwealth and on the world stage, and generally whatever they wanted to spend money on but taxes wouldn't cover.

Rationalise spending on the armed forces - massed infantry isn't really needed any more especially after post 1952 when they developed their own nuclear bomb, scrapping obsolete ships rather than keeping large numbers of them in the reserves for ages eating up money and manpower, scrap a lot of the battleships keeping only a couple of the most advanced and move decisively to carriers etc. I don't think you could wrap up the Empire in a much shorter time than they did and still do a half decent job of it, and they still made a number of mistakes. I'm not really knowledgeable about the economic environment of the time to say whether the nationalisation of segments of industry by the government was a good or bad thing for the economy overall. Make sure that some strong limits are put on the unions - you need them strong enough so that employees get a fair deal but also so that you don't get the stupid working practices and strikes that seemed to epitomise the late 60s and 70s.
 
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Make sure that some strong limits are put on the unions - you need them strong enough so that employees get a fair deal but also so that you don't get the stupid working practices and strikes that seemed to epitomise the late 60s and 70s.

I agree with everything else you said.

However, there are a couple of additional possibilities here:

1. If the Labour Party can get its act together and really implement full employment a la Sweden, then the working practices can be dealt with (you don't need to protect every printer or every miner if you have some confidence that there are going to be jobs for everyone) ahead of time and a lot of strikes will be obviated (for example, the really brutal miner's strikes in the 70s and 80s).
2. If inflation can be dealt with more effectively (possibly by adopting Keynes' wages to bonds method of dealing with inflation at full employment), then you can avoid the vicious cycle of inflation --> wage strike --> inflation.
3. If Labour can sack up and force through price and wage policy as the Swedish Social Democrats did at the same time (interesting comparison: in Sweden, the unions really emerged out of the Social Democratic Party and thus the party had more credibility within the working class to go up against the unions and win, in the U.K the opposite happened), then the crisis might be dealt with without the class warfare of Thatcherism.
4. Ironically, a stronger union movement might begin to develop more corporatist attitudes and take responsibility for economic management.
 
2. If inflation can be dealt with more effectively (possibly by adopting Keynes' wages to bonds method of dealing with inflation at full employment), then you can avoid the vicious cycle of inflation --> wage strike --> inflation.

I've never actually heard of this proposal by Keynes; how exactly did it work and was it actually implemented anywhere?
 
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