British Party Dominance

With a POD of 1900, how would it be possible for a single party in the UK to have majority governments for as long as possible? How long could such a party get into power in the first place and stay that way? What could such a party do in its time, depending on the circumstances?
 
Does a Conservative government from 1979 to 1997 suffice? That's a pretty long time in anyone's eyes. A Labour government from 1997 to 2010 as well, not exactly a few years.
 

Thande

Donor
An obvious one is that the Tories came surprisingly close to winning in 1964, which would have netted them an 18-year government (1951-1969), equal in length to Thatcher/Major in OTL (1979-1997). Which indeed happens in "Thaxted" and is then followed by an even longer period of Labour dominance.

One idea: Labour do less well in 1929 and Ramsay MacDonald (or a different alt leader) is unable to gain support from Lloyd George, with the result that Baldwin is persuaded to stay on leading a minority Conservative government with Liberal support. It is this government that gets the blame for the Great Depression, and Labour then proceed to win in a landslide when the government collapses. Say Labour manages to rearm the country earlier and WW2 starts over the Rhineland occupation/Anschluss/Sudetenland etc and the Nazis get beat after a short victorious war, giving Labour even more popularity, and then they start creating popular programmes like the NHS... They could be in power for a very long time.
 
What about the Canadian solution?

Have some butterflies in the run up to and during WW1 and you could end up with a Canadian style three party system. A small more left wing Labour party that never really breaks out of the heavily unionised industrial slums/pit villages, a more right wing Tory party* confined to the shires and Mayfair and a Liberal party that gains/maintains the loyalty of the vast majority of the upper working and middle class plus rural areas in the Celtic fringes. With such a set up there would be occasions were the Tories might get in for a parliament or two and sometimes the Liberals might have to deal with Labour but by firmly controlling the centre ground they are the dominant party for most of the century.


*Willie Whitelaw would be a Liberal in this scenario
 
With the rise of Labour in the 1900's. A possible centrist party of moderate Conservatives and Liberals could be formed and state to be the voice of the nation.

(NB in OTL in 1951 Rab Butler and Violet Bonham Carter of the Liberals had talks about the possibility of co-operation. It didn't lead anywhere but the talks were triggered by Liberals's post-WW2 fear of failure)
 
With the rise of Labour in the 1900's. A possible centrist party of moderate Conservatives and Liberals could be formed and state to be the voice of the nation.

The Unionist party could have been that coalition, but Joseph Chamberlain screwed it up. If you avoid the Khaki Election (which produced a huge majority for the Unionists in that election, but burned a lot of long-term good will with voters) and the Imperial Preference debate (which created a wedge issue that split the Unionist base and made the leadership look weak and ineffective), they may be able to hold a majority for some time.
 
The Unionist party could have been that coalition, but Joseph Chamberlain screwed it up. If you avoid the Khaki Election (which produced a huge majority for the Unionists in that election, but burned a lot of long-term good will with voters) and the Imperial Preference debate (which created a wedge issue that split the Unionist base and made the leadership look weak and ineffective), they may be able to hold a majority for some time.

One potential slip-up would have been Irish independence. Would a Unionist party have allowed it?
 
One potential slip-up would have been Irish independence. Would a Unionist party have allowed it?

Very unlikely in the short-to-medium term. The unifying principle of the Unionist Party (and the source of their name) was opposition to Irish home rule. Chamberlain (then the #2 man in the Liberal party) split the Liberal party over his opposition to Gladstone's proposal of Home Rule in Ireland (similar to the late 20th-century devolution in Scotland) and joined in a coalition with the Conservatives.

Some variation on Home Rule might be possible, if the issue became pressing. Chamberlain drew a distinction between the Home Rule proposal (in which Ireland would have its own parliament for internal matters, but would still send MPs to the London parliament which would govern internal matters in England, Scotland, and Wales as well as overall national matters) and American-style federalism (in which Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales would each have its own sub-national government). He was vehemently opposed to the former, but at one point expressed a willingness to consider the latter. He's probably a pretty good benchmark for the Liberal Unionists, but I'm not sure if the Conservative Unionists would have supported it.

In the long run, parties evolve. If the Unionists survived and dominated for a period of decades, who knows where they'd stand in the 1920s and beyond on Irish issues.
 
Some variation on Home Rule might be possible, if the issue became pressing. Chamberlain drew a distinction between the Home Rule proposal (in which Ireland would have its own parliament for internal matters, but would still send MPs to the London parliament which would govern internal matters in England, Scotland, and Wales as well as overall national matters) and American-style federalism (in which Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales would each have its own sub-national government). He was vehemently opposed to the former, but at one point expressed a willingness to consider the latter. He's probably a pretty good benchmark for the Liberal Unionists, but I'm not sure if the Conservative Unionists would have supported it.

The problem with this is that federalism was universally unpopular in Ireland - most Irish unionists were diehard intergrationists and even the most moderate of Irish nationalists would have found federalism to fall far short of their desires. This might be irrelevant in getting a bill through (after all in OTL the Government of Ireland Act 1920 was passed with three quarters of Irish MPs abstaining from Westminster altogether) but an Irish federal parliament(s) would have been in crisis from day one.
 
The problem with this is that federalism was universally unpopular in Ireland - most Irish unionists were diehard intergrationists and even the most moderate of Irish nationalists would have found federalism to fall far short of their desires. This might be irrelevant in getting a bill through (after all in OTL the Government of Ireland Act 1920 was passed with three quarters of Irish MPs abstaining from Westminster altogether) but an Irish federal parliament(s) would have been in crisis from day one.

Why was federalism unpopular with the unionists? It could be good for them.

Off-topic, but why have you only posted once in 7 years?
 
Why was federalism unpopular with the unionists? It could be good for them.

They were largely the descendants of English and Scottish colonists who had settled on land seized from the indigineous Gaelic Irish aristocracy, and they retained strong cultural, economic, and religious ties with their mother country. In an integrated Britain, they're part of a dominant ethnic and religious majority, but in a federalism or home rule scenario, they'd be a minority, and one that had accrued a fair amount of resentment from the Cathoic, Gaelic Irish majority.
 
Why was federalism unpopular with the unionists? It could be good for them.

The reasons were a mixture of ideological and economic. After a full generation of Home Rule agitation, political autonomy of any stripe was strongly linked with nationalist seperatism and would have left a very bad taste in the mouths of Irish unionists.

Perhaps more importantly the Ulster economy was very closely intertwined with the north of England and Scotland; setting up political barriers was looked upon with great alarm by Belfast industrialists as damaging free trade. To a lesser extent the same motivation would have been held by big business southern Irish unionists like Lord Iveagh (chairman of the Guinness brewery).
 
Slightly different POD (*)

Post WWI.

Anti Coalition Liberals make overtures to the new Labour party to create a formal left-centre alliance.

The alliance wins the 1924 election.
 
Slightly different POD (*)

Post WWI.

Anti Coalition Liberals make overtures to the new Labour party to create a formal left-centre alliance.

The alliance wins the 1924 election.

But that's going to create a dominant party system. You'll have a left wing Lib-Lab party and a right-wing Tory party alternating power for the rest of the century. To get a dominant Party system like Canada or Japan you need a single party dominating the centre ground with small, extreme left and right wings groups doomed never to win.
 
But that's going to create a dominant party system. You'll have a left wing Lib-Lab party and a right-wing Tory party alternating power for the rest of the century. To get a dominant Party system like Canada or Japan you need a single party dominating the centre ground with small, extreme left and right wings groups doomed never to win.

With respect. I thought that was the point of this thread. :)
 
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