Building Jerusalem Mk2.0

Surprised nobody has commented on the demise of the Dome. Or the fact that the Tories won in Thanet South for that matter...
Or Eastwood. Remember, mid-campaign in otl, the Tories had to change candidate after sitting MP Allan Stewart came out as homosexual, left his wife and had a nervous breakdown. Is that avoided ittl?

As to the Dome, was it not already being constructed by this point? That being said, it is a good idea to scrap the project as it was a waste of money.

As to Thanet South, how on earth did Aitken manage to stay in Pariament?????

:D
 
Or Eastwood. Remember, mid-campaign in otl, the Tories had to change candidate after sitting MP Allan Stewart came out as homosexual, left his wife and had a nervous breakdown. Is that avoided ittl?

As to the Dome, was it not already being constructed by this point? That being said, it is a good idea to scrap the project as it was a waste of money.

As to Thanet South, how on earth did Aitken manage to stay in Pariament?????

:D
As I remember there were two separate scandals in Eastwood. Allan Stewart, right at the beginning of the campaign, was revealed to have had an affair with a woman he met at an alcohol dependency clinic. He resigned, after which Sir Michael Hirst, the Chairman of the Scottish party, inherited the candidacy, and he in turn was embroiled in some kind of homosexual scandal which forced his resignation. So, avoid Stewart's scandal (maybe with Heseltine becoming PM he doesn't meet the woman at the clinic - butterflies and all that) and you have it.
 
As I remember there were two separate scandals in Eastwood. Allan Stewart, right at the beginning of the campaign, was revealed to have had an affair with a woman he met at an alcohol dependency clinic. He resigned, after which Sir Michael Hirst, the Chairman of the Scottish party, inherited the candidacy, and he in turn was embroiled in some kind of homosexual scandal which forced his resignation. So, avoid Stewart's scandal (maybe with Heseltine becoming PM he doesn't meet the woman at the clinic - butterflies and all that) and you have it.
That would make more sense. My memory is admittedly vague on Eastwood, after all it was hardly the most important issue of the '97 election. I've simply mixed the two together in an awful mish-mash.

Still, I'm guessing this would have to have been butterflied away for the Tories to win the seat.
 
Or Eastwood. Remember, mid-campaign in otl, the Tories had to change candidate after sitting MP Allan Stewart came out as homosexual, left his wife and had a nervous breakdown. Is that avoided ittl?

As I remember there were two separate scandals in Eastwood. Allan Stewart, right at the beginning of the campaign, was revealed to have had an affair with a woman he met at an alcohol dependency clinic. He resigned, after which Sir Michael Hirst, the Chairman of the Scottish party, inherited the candidacy, and he in turn was embroiled in some kind of homosexual scandal which forced his resignation. So, avoid Stewart's scandal (maybe with Heseltine becoming PM he doesn't meet the woman at the clinic - butterflies and all that) and you have it.

You are both quite right on the various goings-on in Eastwood - I must confess it hadn't occured to me that Stewart's scandals could be butterflied away at this distance. (Mickey Hirst's 'scandal' was, IIRC, of many-years standing, so no changes there) I get the impression that Stewart was on something of a downward spiral at the time, so I think it's likely he would have suffered the same problems in OTL and been forced out anyway.

As for the constituency itself, Eastwood only went to Labour in OTL by a little over 3,000 votes, and it was the Tories' safest seat in Scotland at that time. So not difficult for them to keep control, even assuming the scandal.

As is, the new MP for Eastwood (and, doubtless very shortly, shadow secretary of state for Scotland) is Paul Cullen.

As to the Dome, was it not already being constructed by this point?

No. The contract only went out for bidding in July 1997 in OTL, and work started the next year IIRC. So Labour had about two months in which to organise a big scalling back of the project - in OTL they actually expanded it.

As to Thanet South, how on earth did Aitken manage to stay in Pariament?????

He only lost by under 3,000 votes in OTL; this was before his action against the Guardian collapsed. Obviously, delightful news for the next Tory leader...
 
Interestingly my home constituency has avoided going to one of the most useless MPs (Bristol West was afflicted with Valerie Davey, Lab, for 8 years). I'll be interested to see what happens with it now a Lib Dem seat...
Not least as with rising student accommodation in the area, unless the Liberals piss off the student vote it's liable to stay with them for some time to come.

And YES no Dome. Yes, Yes, YES! Hehehe. I believe it's found quite the new lease of life as an immense music venue, but as designed it was one of the biggest white elephants imaginable.
 
Interestingly my home constituency has avoided going to one of the most useless MPs (Bristol West was afflicted with Valerie Davey, Lab, for 8 years).

I aim to please!

Not least as with rising student accommodation in the area, unless the Liberals piss off the student vote it's liable to stay with them for some time to come.

It's very likely - Bristol West is a very peculiar seat, though, being a three-way marginal. Might be one to watch next time round.

And YES no Dome. Yes, Yes, YES! Hehehe. I believe it's found quite the new lease of life as an immense music venue, but as designed it was one of the biggest white elephants imaginable.

Indeed - although ITTL Labour might come in for criticsm of how low-key the millennium celebrations are. Perhaps they'll be able to get the fireworks right ITTL though...
 
Hirst was the subject of nasty rumours and scaremongering which is why he didn't stand but his personal arrogance didn't help.

I have a certain fondness for Jim Murphy and would want him to be elected as MP for Eastwood but at the time he was sporting that dead caterpillar on his upper lip which could cost him a few votes...! But as you can see from the stats, Murphy was able to vastly increase his majority in the 2001 election so I don't think we'd have seen the last of him in government.

Stewart - I don't think he was on a downward spiral, rather events collaborated to rob him of his sanity. But I'm not sure he would have gone the distance to 1997, despite the pick-axe issue in 95.

You are both quite right on the various goings-on in Eastwood - I must confess it hadn't occured to me that Stewart's scandals could be butterflied away at this distance. (Mickey Hirst's 'scandal' was, IIRC, of many-years standing, so no changes there) I get the impression that Stewart was on something of a downward spiral at the time, so I think it's likely he would have suffered the same problems in OTL and been forced out anyway.

As for the constituency itself, Eastwood only went to Labour in OTL by a little over 3,000 votes, and it was the Tories' safest seat in Scotland at that time. So not difficult for them to keep control, even assuming the scandal.

As is, the new MP for Eastwood (and, doubtless very shortly, shadow secretary of state for Scotland) is Paul Cullen.
 
As to Thanet South, how on earth did Aitken manage to stay in Pariament?????

Hmmm, as I recall (and verified), Ladyman won Thanet South with a 3000 majority. Whereas the Referendum party could have tipped the balance for up to 50 Labour MPs in 1997, they interestingly enough didn't put forward a candidate in this ward. If they did in this TL, given their electoral balance nationally, Aitken would have been dumped, no two ways about it.
 
But as you can see from the stats, Murphy was able to vastly increase his majority in the 2001 election so I don't think we'd have seen the last of him in government.

No, I'm sure he'll get into Parliament at some point. He was only about thirty when he was elected in OTL IIRC, so plenty of time.

As you point out, Eastwood will be an interesting constituency to watch next time around.

If they did in this TL, given their electoral balance nationally, Aitken would have been dumped, no two ways about it.

Goldsmith didn't run RP candidates in seats where the Tory candidate had formally confirmed to him that they would never support a single currency; if you look at the OTL 1997 results, then you'll notice that Neil Hamilton, Alan Clark etc had no RP candidate running against them. Aitken will doubtless have done the same thing, so no change from OTL there.


I was going to post the next section today, but I still need to work on the footnotes. If not later this afternoon, then it'll arrive tommorow or Monday. It features an interesting interview from this timeline's 2010 which might peak your interest...
 
heh, an ambiguous title is always good - it draws people in. ;)

Will be posting on Monday now - I need to tidy up the shadow cabinet a bit.
 
1997



Taken from Tory Wars by Simon Walters, (Politicos, 2001)

The 1997 leadership contest was a traditional, recognisable Tory fight - perhaps the last contest fought under the relatively clear Thatcher-era ideological lines which had defined the party since the seventies. In the red corner was Ken Clarke, Crown Prince of the increasingly ageing band of old-style, pro-European Conservatives; in the blue corner, was Michael Portillo, the spiritual leader-on-earth of the party’s Thatcherite right.

Both men had waited a long time for their moment - although Portillo had only been a member of cabinet for five years, he had been a senior minister in the government for the better part of a decade, famously being the minister Mrs Thatcher had given the job of promoting the Poll Tax to during the dying days of her government. Many had talked about him going on to greater things ever since he had entered Parliament in 1984. Clarke was the more experienced, the older of the two, having been a cabinet minister under the last three Prime Ministers, a previous leadership candidate, and having held almost all the big jobs in government. In political terms, he easily outranked Portillo’s two years at the treasury. But Clarke’s pro-Europeanism was now passé in the Conservative Party. It had been for many years. Portillo, although far from being admired by everybody, was much more in tune with the party’s post-Thatcher ideological mainstream. The right of the party adhered to the dictum of ‘by a man’s works shall ye know him’, and they looked on Clarke’s two years as Foreign Secretary especially with horror. Although some of them had scuttled onto the Michael Heseltine bandwagon in 1995 to save their seats, they had no such incentive in respect of Clarke in opposition. Heseltine had been clever enough to court the right on occasion to suit his own ends; Clarke, if anything, expected the right to court him. Unlike his old boss, Clarke would never develop a broad following within the party, nor would he go too far out of his way to develop one. Ken Clarke was Ken Clarke. Take it or leave it. Portillo, on the other hand, had been polishing and waxing his campaign apparatus ever since his abortive leadership bid two years before. That bid and the events surrounding it had engendered suspicion of Portillo in some of his formerly die-had supporters, and had raised questions regarding his judgement and staying power. But the party in 1997 was a far easier nut to crack than that of 1995. The party was now demoralised, shocked at the scale of it’s defeat, irritated by the policies of Heseltine, and eagerly waiting a possible counter-revolution (or counter-counter-revolution) which would be lead by the dashing young heir to Thatcher. Clarke’s body of support, was, by contrast, on the backfoot.

Few others disturbed the predictability of the one-on-one fight between the two men. The only other possible challenger, who some mentioned as an unlikely ‘compromise choice’, was Michael Howard. But Howard’s campaign, run by the former Environment Minister, William Hague, [94] already had a sense of lethargy about it before Ann Widdecombe’s successful character assassination of her former boss at the Home Office, (“There is something of the night about him”, she was to comment, which, along with Howard’s Romanian background was to provide satirists and cartoonists with material for many a year.) [95] which effectively ended Howard’s chances in the race, such as they were…

Taken from The Longman Companion to the Conservative Party since 1830 by N.J. Crowson, (Longman, 2001) ‘1997 Conservative Leadership Election’

Triggered in the wake of the 1997 election defeat, and Heseltine’s subsequent decision to stand down as leader. The contest was seen from the beginning as a clear, straight fight between Portillo and Clarke as the only truly serious candidates, as it proved to be, although four other candidates stood in an attempt to set down markers, all meeting with little success. David Curry, the former Agriculture minister, also reportedly considered standing, but in the event endorsed Clarke.

The first ballot was held on the 10th of June. The results were: [96]

Kenneth Clarke 59
Michael Portillo 53
Michael Howard 38
Michael Mates 20
Norman Lamont 19 [97]
John Redwood 13
No Abstentions

No overall winner. Lamont withdraws and endorses Portillo. Mates and Redwood withdraw and endorse Clarke.

The second ballot was held on the 17th of June. The results were:

Michael Portillo 88
Kenneth Clarke 81
Michael Howard 32
1 Abstention

No overall winner. Howard eliminated under the rules and subsequently endorses Portillo.

The third ballot was held on the 19th of June. The results were:

Michael Portillo 112
Kenneth Clarke 85
5 Abstentions

Portillo elected.

Note: Sir Michael Shersby was returned as the Member for Uxbridge at the general election, but died a week later, on the 8th of May. The vacancy was not filled until a by-election in late July; hence the electorate for the 1997 leadership election was only 202 MPs, despite the Conservatives winning 203 seats at the general election. The constituency returned a Conservative and the numbers in the Commons were unaffected.

Taken from Devolution in Perspective - Regional and National Government in the United Kingdom ed. Paul and Singh, (Oxford University Press, 2007)

… Although Labour had been serious about it’s commitment to devolution for nearly two decades, even by the mid-nineties it was still not fully sure how it would execute it’s proposals should it return to government. Part of the problem stemmed from it’s experiences under James Callaghan. Pushing through the parliamentary licensing of the devolution referendums with little overall majority had been a process which, to put it mildly, had been fraught. Even Scottish Labour itself was divided over the merits of devolution. Because of the Callaghan Government’s minority status, the legislation had been fully open to the legislative amending process, a process which had the direct effect of wrecking the first attempt at devolving power to Scotland. The Cunningham Amendment - which had stipulated that 40% of the total electorate of Scotland, not merely of those voting, had to approve devolution for it to succeed - resulted in devolution in Scotland failing when put to the public. The Welsh proposal had been even less fortunate, being torn apart by the public in Wales at the ballot box and highlighting a total lack of appetite in Wales for such a proposal. Labour’s first attempt at devolution had proven a double failure. The defeats can be said to have had little precise effect on Labour other than to make it wary of how devolution would be framed, and cautious of over-elaborate framing of the issue. Under the Conservatives, however, Labour became more cohesive and united in it’s approach to devolution, and Scotland and Wales became much more favourable to the idea, with them increasingly believing that under the Conservatives that their distinct needs and values were not being met sufficiently within the existing constitutional framework. By the early nineties, John Smith could declare that devolution was the “settled will of the Scottish people” - and few people could have objected to that.

While Labour had, in essence, subcontracted out the details of how a Scottish Parliament would be elected and constructed - it’s participation in the Scottish Constitutional Convention essentially morally obligated it to follow it’s recommendations - Labour were still deliberating on how devolution would be advanced at Westminster when the Convention reported. The balance of expectation at that point rested with the idea that Labour would, with most Scots clearly favouring such a course through general election results, simply legislate a Parliament into being after a general election - but that posed problems. Many simultaneously believed that Labour would have a small majority at Westminster. It would have to convince the Lords, and possibly opposition parties, to assist in the passage of an act for a Scottish Parliament, and Labour’s proposals to give the Parliament the power to modify income tax was increasingly controversial. Labour’s leader, John Smith, had been responsible for pushing the Callaghan proposals through the Commons, and was aware of the difficulties created. A pre-legislative referendum seemed the most sensible way to proceed, and Labour so committed itself in September 1996 in it’s draft paper Scotland’s Future, Scotland‘s Choice. [98] The referendum would be a dual-question affair, with a separate question on the income tax-varying powers. Devolution in Wales, was, if anything, more difficult. Unlike in Scotland, public opinion in Wales was not ‘sold’ on the idea of devolution. The campaign would likely be competitive. Here the need for a referendum was, if anything, greater than in Scotland.

The replacement of Ron Davies as Labour’s spokesman on Wales, and his replacement by Ann Clwyd, however, disrupted the process of policy formulation within Labour. Clwyd was a radical devolutionist, favouring a Welsh Parliament along Scottish lines, a position which Smith viewed as understandable and admirable, albeit as an idea whose time had not yet come in Wales as in Scotland. Somehow, Labour’s strong advocacy of devolution would have to be reconciled with the Welsh public’s scepticism. Clwyd subsequently advocated an ‘all-inclusive’ referendum question. This would ask the Welsh on their views on all three options - the status quo, a Parliament, or an Assembly. Clwyd believed that it would simply be unfair to give Scots the ability to vote for their own Parliament without giving the Welsh a similar ability of expression. Such an approach risked, however, undermining the pro-devolution vote by splitting it, thus raising the prospect of devolution failing in Wales on a technicality, as it had with Cunningham in Scotland. It raised other, more basically political questions, such as: how exactly Labour members would be allowed to campaign - would Labour in the main be campaigning for a Parliament, or an Assembly? Would members be free to campaign as they wished? Clwyd’s solution was that Labour would treat the vote regarding the devolved options as cumulative - simply, if the two pro-devolution options combined received over fifty percent of the vote, then the government would legislate for whichever of the two ‘yes’ options received the majority of the ‘yes’ vote. Labour’s leadership and the government would campaign for an Assembly, but individual members would be free to campaign as they saw fit. This approach was received with intense scepticism within Labour, perhaps in part because it was viewed as a ‘concession’ to Welsh Nationalism, and the rivalry between Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru had often been intense. But John Smith gave it his cautious endorsement, and the tri-question referendum soon grew in acceptance as an equitable way of giving expression to pro-Parliament opinion in Wales at the same time as Scotland…

… Both referendums would, in the end, produce ‘yes’ votes, although the outcomes were wildly differing, with Wales taking a cautious approach to the issue, and Scotland wholeheartedly endorsing devolution. In Scotland, 73% voted ‘yes’ to a Parliament, and 61% to awarding it income tax-varying powers. [99] In Wales, 9% voted ‘yes’ to a Parliament, 42% to an Assembly, and 49% voted ‘no’ to either of the other two options. [100] Labour’s handling of the issue appeared astute, and parliamentary opposition was muted. A jubilant Smith claimed that the votes were “A publicly-mandated step towards a stronger and greater democracy”. Labour’s first forays into devolution had passed their first tests.

Taken from Clear Blue Water - the Conservative Party in the age of Portillo by Paul Powell (Pengiun, 2004)

Michael Portillo was unlike most Conservative leaders. Apart from the obvious fact of his background as the son of Spanish refugee, he was (arguably) the first leader since Eden to have been the clear heir-apparent when the vacancy sprung up. He followed in Michael Heseltine’s footsteps in breaking the rule that the leader of the Conservative Party has never been seen coming, having been talked about as a serious prospective leader for the better part of the last decade, and as the most likely next leader for the previous two years. At forty-four years and one month, he was the youngest ever leader of the Conservative Party, easily beating the previous holder, John Major, by over three years, and he had finally come into the Thatcherite inheritance which people had been predicting would be his merely in time ever since the deposition of Mrs Thatcher. Now, people waited - in some cases with trepidation, in others with open eagerness not seen for many a year - on what Michael Denzil Xavier Portillo would do with that inheritance. It is interesting to speculate on whether Conservative MPs knew at the time they elected him that they would be setting more than mere historical precedents in the years ahead.

Most of Portillo’s first acts were hardly remarkable, with him establishing his private office along predictably comfortable lines and ordering a reorganisation of Central Office. But the terrain of these reorganisations would form the basis on which Portillo would lead the party in later years, with a core of trusted, loyal - indeed, intensely, almost fanatically dedicated - subordinates holding all the key positions. Most notably, Portillo broke up the party’s old election-handling machinery, re-formed it, and beefed it up. Gone was the antiquated position of the party’s principal publicity officer and in it’s stead was the new position of Director of Media, Presentation and Communications - a position, even in it’s title, which eerily mirrored the post which Labour had created under it’s ‘modernisations’ of the eighties, and which had once been headed by Peter Mandelson, a key confidant and spin doctor of Neil Kinnock. The man who would be Portillo’s chief spin doctor was a similarly Mandelson-like figure who would develop a similarly formidable reputation. Robbie Gibb [101] had worked in Central Office for many a year, knew how it worked, and was a formidable networker. He had been deputy chairman, in his student days, of the notorious Federation of Conservative Students, which even Norman Tebbit was eventually forced to disband on account of it becoming embarrassingly and riotously right-wing. His activism for the party had continued unimpeded, however, and his career had taken in the media, including a BBC Producers’ job. And Gibb knew how to throw a party - his biannual entertaining of the great and the good at his Pimlico flat had become famous in Conservative circles. But more than all that, Gibb was fanatical about Portillo. He had been for years. He was even supposed to have a life-sized cardboard cut-out of the man in his flat. Gibb was a man, in short, who was not going to waver in his support of his boss - and nor would he.

Presiding over the party’s reform of it’s internal structures as Director of Organisation [102] would be a man of a similar mould to Gibb - another former FCS alumnus, Mark MacGregor. [103] Indeed, the two were close friends; Gibb would be the best man at MacGregor’s wedding to Ffion Jenkins in 1998. [104] Also like Gibb, MacGregor was a confirmed admirer of the party’s new leader, and had been an eminence in the right-wing Conservative Way Forward group. Having two people at the top of the party who were so comfortable with each other and with their boss, and who had a track record of working closely was an inspired move in so far as it saw off any potential disputes between the party’s leadership, organisational and it’s promotional side, but it also raised questions of propriety for some. Just how far was Portillo willing to go in controlling the party? How far, indeed, was he determined to go in leading the party? Post-Heseltine, the right, perhaps, was willing to keep such questions to itself. To them, Portillo having a strong control over the party was no bad thing - much of their admiration for Portillo was based around their love of someone offering the smack of firm government, and the party’s pro-European wing would doubtless feel the sting. In that, the right was correct. And yet, their easy silence over many of the reforms and reorganisations of Portillo’s early leadership would also set up great difficulties for the right in the future. Conservative leaders have always been effective masters within their own house, but many of these early moves under Portillo only furthered the significant power of the leadership over the party.

Many of these reforms were, however, undeniably positive and overdue. In August the party launched a series of changes under the title A New Beginning. [105] Foreign donations were banned - thereby ending one of the problems which had dogged the party during the Major years in particular - the Young Conservatives were reformed as Conservative Future, Central Office reorganised, and the party’s leadership election rules altered. In future, the leadership of the National Union [106] - the party’s main organ representing the party membership or ‘voluntary’ wing - would take a ‘straw poll’ of associations’ views on declared candidates and relay the results to MPs. [107] ‘Ringing-round’ constituency chairs and the party faithful had often been done informally, but the New Beginning reforms made such practises more standardised. The requirement for 10% of the parliamentary party to write to the Chair of the ’22 in order to trigger a contest was retained. Such a minimal tweaking of the leadership rules allowed Portillo to push through his own shaking-up of Central Office, but, again, would cause difficulties further along the line…

… Banning foreign donations was one thing - clearing the party’s tarnished reputation in respect of ‘sleaze’ was entirely another question, one which electoral circumstance had made it that much harder to tackle effectively. Three MPs who already had serious questions hanging over their personal conduct at the time of the election had managed, mostly through the luck of having relatively safe seats, to be returned by their constituents - Piers Merchant, Sir Andrew Bowden, and Jonathon Aitken. [108] Their personal predicaments were diverse. The News of the World had ran an exposé of Merchant’s relationship with an eighteen year-old nightclub hostess, while Bowden and Aitken had been implicated in more serious malfeasance; Bowden had been linked to cash-for-questions by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner and in June was suspended from the service of the House, while in the same month Aitken’s long campaign against the Guardian came to an end with the collapse of his libel trial against the paper. It would be reasonable to assume that none of this publicity particularly helped the party, although Merchant stepped down relatively swiftly. Bowden was somewhat more difficult to tackle - he was a mainstream party loyalist and establishment figure and was minded to batter down and hold out on his problems. Portillo was having little of that, and after unsuccessfully convincing Bowden to resign behind the scenes, threatened to withdraw the whip. Bowden meekly complied and resigned his seat at the end of July. Perhaps with some regret from Central Office, Aitken narrowly avoided bankruptcy after the collapse of the Guardian libel trial, [109] and therefore disqualification from the House. Despite best efforts, Aitken, unlike Bowden, would not budge. In the end, Portillo was forced to withdraw the whip - a mostly ineffective measure which was nevertheless better than nothing. Yet it sent a powerful message - although likely at this stage more noticed by Portillo’s parliamentary colleagues than the public at large - that the days of Major-style procrastination on the twin issues of personal incompetence and sleaze were well and truly over. But Aitken had been, for many years, a notable member of the right of the party. They had been wounded by his all too public fall from grace. And perhaps the right also took note of the casual way by which he was eventually despatched.

But for now, the main disturbances came from the left. As with sleaze, Portillo was determined to put an end to the malign influence of another Tory spectre - Europe. As with sleaze, Portillo was little interested in half-measures. The issue clearly had to be done, over with, finished, before the Conservatives could put up as any kind of serious alternative to Labour. And that meant taking on the party’s prominent pro-European wing publicly over the biggest European issue of the day, the one which had definitively wrecked the Conservative’s election campaign - the Euro.

One of his first major acts on becoming leader had been to set up a party commission, headed by the former head of British Airways - the sceptics wanted business to be seen to be on their side - Lord King, to examine the issue of the Euro. The commission included hardly anyone from the party who was not already deeply sceptical of European integration. Leading Pro-Europeans were already outraged, and they said so in the press. They had not been consulted. They were given assurances that when the commission reported, the Shadow Cabinet would be free to debate it’s conclusions. And yet, once again, it went over their heads. When the commission reported in August, it’s recommendation was that the party should permanently rule out membership of Euro. That was bad enough. But the whole report was almost immediately leaked to the media. It was the final straw. David Curry and Stephen Dorrell, the shadow cabinet’s two leading pro-Europeans, both resigned and denounced the whole way in which they had been consulted; (Or not, as they believed) they were shortly afterwards followed by Ian Taylor, a junior spokesman on Local Government. Curry said that the whole procedure had been “dreamt-up and ran exclusively by a literal handful of people in Central Office”. Michael Heseltine raged in the Evening Standard about the “backwards-facing shift” in policy under his successor, supposedly masterminded by “the people that live in the dark.”. “I must warn Michael” Heseltine would write regarding his successor, “He is riding a horse which he will not be able to control”. [110] Ted Heath would later write much the same thing. Several of the party’s MEPs - who would later abandon the party to form a breakaway Pro-European Conservative Party - started making restive noises. Former Welsh Office Minister [111] Peter Temple-Morris had the whip withdrawn after declaring that he would campaign against the party in a Euro referendum, and then joined the Liberal Democrats. [112] Talk of the party splitting was rife in the media. The party’s pro-European establishment was in uproar. [113] Only George Young and Michael Ancram remained as the Shadow Cabinet’s sole survivors. But the Flight of the Pros had the effect of tipping the balance of power, and entirely loosening restraint. The following day, it was announced that the party membership would be balloted on the recommendations, in time for conference in October. The expectation was that the result would be overwhelmingly favourable, as indeed it proved to be. But the Pros were furious at the reversal of the European policy and the way in which they had been sidelined, and op-ed pieces would continue to flow in the New Year, with Heseltine at the head of the disquiet. And although Portillo was the darling of the highly energised conference for his slaying of the integrationist dragon, the ‘big beasts’ seethed with discontent, and the party’s poll rating, still low after the general election, began to stutter. While conference fiddled, the party’s prospects in the country looked to be in danger of burning, and, shockingly, the party lost Andrew Bowden’s old Kemptown seat in late October on a knife-edge. [114] Although the former safe seat had been beaten down by the general election and previous boundary changes, the result was interpreted as a rejection of the party leadership up to this point - a point seized on by the Pro-Euro rebels. For Portillo, it had been a baptism by fire…

Extract of an interview transcript with the Rt. Hon. Jon Cruddas, MP, October the 12th, 2010:

Cruddas: So, well -

Interviewer: Well, yeah, if you could go over how you came to be selected, the background etc -

Cruddas: Sure. Well, I was working at Walworth Road in the run up to the election and as you can imagine, it was very tough. Tough but rewarding - it was an absolutely fantastic time to be working there. Now, we all knew Larry was retiring at the end of the year [115] and Dick Rosser [116] was talking to me off the cuff about whether I wanted to stay on, or start to look for a seat, or what I wanted to do. I honestly wasn’t that sure about what I wanted to do career-wise from that point. I think I wanted to stay on at party HQ, but you have to start thinking about a seat pretty early on, if that’s what you’re interested in, start nursing it and all that if you’re serious about getting elected, and I understood that Dick might want a new broom, that kind of thing, might want to change a few things. And I was only just stating to think about all this stuff when out of the blue the Kemptown by-election came up. And, uh, Des Turner, who was our candidate at the election, had been offered a new job at DLGHR [117], I think, and he was settling down into that in London, and he was happy with that and wasn’t interested in re-contesting the seat at this point, I think he thought it would have just been a hassle - that would have been the usual expectation of course, if anyone had contested the seat a month or two before, they obviously get first refusal with a constituency party. So they were taking offers. And people talked to me about it and I began to wonder a little bit. I rang the chair of the constituency party, talked it over with people, that sort of thing. Just seeing the lay of the land. To be honest I wasn’t that convinced though really.

Interviewer: Not a very eager MP then?

Cruddas: I’m not sure if it’s that, but I was torn between staying on at HQ and putting myself forward. I didn’t have any prior relationship with the Kemptown CLP - I hadn’t even ran for a seat before, not even for the selection - and it would really have been a bit weird, I thought. I didn’t know if this was the time for it, but people said to me “this is good stuff, you’d be great”, that kind of thing. So I talked to Larry about it a bit and he basically said “go down there and run with it” because even if I wasn’t selected - and I knew I wasn’t going to be selected, it was mad really - then it would give me good experience of associations and how things worked, and Larry said it would get me out of London. (laughs)

Interviewer: You found it tough then? You didn’t have any experience of, uh, party selection, and it must have been quite a shock to the system to just have yourself thrown into it all like that -

Cruddas: Not tough exactly, but it was demanding. I had to go down for the selection meetings, and swot up on Brighton, the natural stuff. You feel a bit guilty, really, because you’re entering an area where people have been campaigning and working hard for the local area and the party for years and you’re coming forward and asking them to endorse you at the drop of a hat. You have to be completely honest about yourself, and that’s how I was with our association. And I suppose it must have worked. Something rubbed off.

Interviewer: Were they confident? I mean, it was a marginal they’d lost at the election. They can’t have been that happy about it. Do you think they thought you stood a genuine chance, or were they only giving it to you for as a sort of campaign taster? [118]

Cruddas: Well - I campaigned to win. I can’t speak for the party, but I thought we had a genuine chance. We were positive, everyone was completely geared-up - it was a seat we‘d narrowly lost at the election and Andrew Bowden hadn’t gone out in a blaze of glory. Our team all gave it 100%, because they genuinely felt it was in our sights. It was serious - we were in it to win it. That’s why we won it. The media wrote us off, the Tories were complacent and in a spin. But we came though. We pulled it off, because our team didn’t sit on their hands. They weren’t naysayers. They worked for me, and I’m still thankful for that. I didn’t put myself in Parliament. Labour people in Brighton did that. Perhaps a part of me, y’know, didn’t expect it, but, you, uh, - you stick at it. Once I’d been selected for Labour, that was the hard part over, psychologically. I think the whole thing was just, uh -

Interviewer: A sort of leap of faith - would that be a -

Cruddas: Yeah, a leap of faith. That’s what politics boils down to I suppose. (laughs)

Taken from Cook by Alex Oliver, (HarperCollins, 2004)

While Cook’s profile in the party and now the government kept on rising, [119] his marriage was about to reach rock-bottom - sooner or later he would have to choose between his wife, or his diary secretary. Cook’s affair with Gaynor Regan had stood the test of time, and by 1997 had been continuing for many years. Cook seemed to be growing increasingly attached to her emotionally, and the feeling was two-way. Sooner or later the problems had to come to a head - the only question was how private or not that culmination would be.

In late July the call came through. David Hill telephoned Cook on Sunday the 20th to tell him that the press was about to spill all the following morning - the Express had picked up the story and was about to do an exposé. He had better conclusively deal with the situation at his end, one way or the other. By chance, Cook was staying at his home in Edinburgh at the time, and he telephoned to the Prime Minister to see if he could ‘pop round’ to discuss the matter with Smith at his Morningside home. Smith agreed. Smith, and some of Cook’s senior colleagues, likely already had a good inkling of the state of his marriage, and Smith was likely prepared for the fallout. After talking the matter over with Smith for some time, Cook was told from his leader a more or less identical line to that which Hill had given him - go to Margaret, tell her the truth, finally sort it out, and issue a statement as soon as you have done so. But whatever you do, don’t let it drag on needlessly. Cook trusted Smith implicitly, although clearly there was more than a slight political dimension to this, and Smith likely had the previous years’ disastrous ‘outing’ of Ron Davies at the back of his mind.

Cook returned home, doubtless not enjoying the forthcoming denouement he was about to bring to Margaret. Cook’s wife, although she was already suspicious of Cook’s infidelity, was predictably intensely angry and hurt at the whole business, and more angry at the fact that only the forthcoming press revelation had prompted Cook to be totally honest with her. Nevertheless, at this moment, Cook was, for the first time in years, entirely candid with his wife. After arguing and talking for many hours, the pair agreed to a mutual separation, and Cook issued a televised statement to the effect that evening, noting that he had hurt his wife deeply and apologising profusely to her. [120] It would not repair the damage inflicted through years of martial deceit, but it was a start. Although Margaret would register her natural displeasure in the press, her criticisms of her estranged husband were relatively restrained considering the nature of their separation. [121] Cook had emerged from a potentially damaging episode with his reputation if not wholly intact, at least with the political damage minimised…



Appendix





(The Shadow Cabinet, as composed under the Leader of the Opposition, The Rt. Hon. Michael Portillo, MP, June, 1997)



Leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition and Leader of the Conservative Party - The Rt. Hon. Michael Portillo, MP
Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer - The Rt. Hon. Peter Lilley, MP [122]
Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs - The Rt. Hon. Michael Howard, QC, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for the Home Department - The Rt. Hon. Dr. Brian Mawhinney, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Science - The Rt. Hon. Virginia Bottomley, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Defence - The Rt. Hon. Sir George Young, Bt., MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Transport - The Rt. Hon. David Curry, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Health - The Rt. Hon. Stephen Dorrell, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and President of the Board of Trade - The Rt. Hon. Francis Maude, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food - The Rt. Hon. Edward Leigh, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Local Government, Housing, and the Regions - The Rt. Hon. William Hague, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Social Security - David Willets, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Employment - Andrew Mitchell, MP [123]
Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media, and Sport - The Rt. Hon. Iain Sproat, MP [124]
Shadow Secretary of State for Environmental Protection - The Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Atkins, MP [125]
Shadow Secretary of State for International Development and Co-operation - The Hon. Bernard Jenkin, MP [126]
Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland - Paul Cullen, QC, MP [127]
Shadow Secretary of State for Wales - Roger Evans, MP [128]
Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland - The Rt. Hon. Michael Ancram, QC, MP
Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury - Alan Duncan, MP
Conservative Chief Whip - The Rt. Hon. Sir Mark Lennox-Boyd, MP [129]
Shadow Leader of the House of Commons and Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster - The Rt. Hon. Ann Widdecombe, MP
Chairman of the Conservative Party - The Rt. Hon. Gillian Shepherd, MP
Shadow Leader of the House of Lords and Conservative Leader in the House of Lords - The Rt. Hon. The Viscount Cranborne, DL, PC



(As composed in October, 1997)



Leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition and Leader of the Conservative Party - The Rt. Hon. Michael Portillo, MP
Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer - The Rt. Hon. Peter Lilley, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs - The Rt. Hon. Michael Howard, QC, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for the Home Department - The Rt. Hon. Dr. Brian Mawhinney, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Science - The Rt. Hon. Virginia Bottomley, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Defence - The Rt. Hon. Francis Maude, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Transport - David Willets, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Health - Alan Duncan, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and President of the Board of Trade - The Hon. Bernard Jenkin, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food - The Rt. Hon. Edward Leigh, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Local Government, Housing, and the Regions - The Rt. Hon. William Hague, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Social Security - The Rt. Hon. Ann Widdecombe, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Employment - Andrew Mitchell, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media, and Sport - The Rt. Hon. Iain Sproat, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Environmental Protection - The Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Atkins, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for International Development and Co-operation - Peter Ainsworth, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland - Paul Cullen, QC, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Wales - Roger Evans, MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland - The Rt. Hon. Michael Ancram, QC, MP
Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury - Nick Gibb, MP [130]
Conservative Chief Whip - The Rt. Hon. Sir Mark Lennox-Boyd, MP
Shadow Leader of the House of Commons - The Rt. Hon. Sir George Young, Bt., MP
Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for Women and Equality - Cheryl Gillan, MP [131]
Chairman of the Conservative Party - The Rt. Hon. Gillian Shepherd, MP
Shadow Leader of the House of Lords and Conservative Leader in the House of Lords - The Rt. Hon. The Viscount Cranborne, DL, PC




Notes and Clarifications




[94] As previously indicated, Hague never made Cabinet here. His stature in the party at this point is slightly less than bugger-all in the grand scheme of things, so being Howard’s campaign manager is as good as he gets for the time being.

[95] I’m sorry, I know it’s convergence, but surely, this is just too good to leave out…

[96] I should probably explain my general reasoning here. I think without it there’s a risk of people wondering if I’m taking liberties with plausibility. Principally, some might wonder: why do the Conservatives go from electing Heseltine decisively to electing Portillo two years later?

The above reasons given are generally correct, although there is a little more to it than that - for instance, there’s the fact that the composition of the Parliamentary party has changed substantially in the intervening period; a lot of moderate-to-left Tories either retired or were defeated at the election, as per OTL, so the strength of that body in the party is necessarily diminished, and that of the right inversely increased. Equally, many elected Heseltine in ‘95 purely on the basis that he looked like an election winner (or more realistically, an election loss mitigator) and there wasn’t really a terribly realistic alternative. His age and health and the strong likelihood of election defeat also meant that people rightly believed he couldn’t last long as leader anyway.

Portillo himself has grown in stature over the last two years as well, of course; he has the economy behind him now just as much, if not more so than Clarke; and he’s been preparing himself and refining his campaign in anticipation.

All of this, in addition to Clarke’s inherent problems which I discussed previously in the 1995 section, works against Clarke, and towards Portillo.

The problems which afflicted Michael Howard in OTL and in the previous 1995 contest continue here in addition to certain other problems, namely, his mixed record at the Home Office (which I don’t see changing too substantially) and his age (He’ll be sixty by the time of the next election, while Portillo will still be under fifty, and a good counterpoint to Smith, who is fifteen yeas his senior); although there is ample ground for worrying about both Portillo and Howard’s public personas, Howard doesn’t have Portillo’s charisma (or whatever you want to call it) to fall back on.

That being said, Howard does a fair bit better here than in OTL, where he embarrassingly came in last place in the first round; there’s no Peter Lilley or William Hague in this contest, so MPs of the moderate right who are none too keen on Portillo or Clarke can only be soaked up by him. And after Portillo’s ‘corrupt bargain’ with Heseltine, there have been a fair few of those. Most would still be prepared to believe that it was purely a tactical exercise, though. But it has got people wondering, all the same.

[97] Lamont’s star, much like Redwood’s in OTL, has very much been a flash-in-the-pan affair; there’s no reason for right-wingers to prefer him over Portillo and Howard in this contest. But there’s even less reason for people to support Redwood.

[98] At the time of Smith's death, how Labour would implement devolution was ambiguous; here the process has concluded in much the same way as per OTL.

[99] It's a toss-up as to how this would go ITTL: I'm going by the supposition here that a slightly less popular, 'old' Labour, will just about balance out Smith's salesmanship on his home turf.

[100] The wider question allows the referendum to just sneak past; I'm supposing here that the more radical option engenders more support for an Assembly amongst the middle ground vote.

[101] Yes, before anyone asks, this is the same Robbie Gibb of This Week fame. In OTL, he was vetoed by Hague as a possible Portillo spin doctor because Hague believed he had been briefing against him.

[102] In essence, operational head of the party.

[103] In OTL, MacGregor had a rather unusual career in the party; in one of his more bizarre actions as leader, IDS appointed him as chief executive upon becoming leader, before the two parted company shortly afterwards. MacGregor was subsequently intimately involved in the events of 2003, and the fallout from that period has left him on the sidelines of the party ever since.

[104] Alas, poor Hague...

[105] Much of this is similar to stuff Hague did in early 1998 in OTL with the fresh start reforms, although Hague was more tardy in ordering it than Portillo is ITTL.

[106] The National Union survives ITTL. Hurrah…

[107] Without the glut of Labour voting in OTL between the POD and the election - the 1994 leadership vote, the vote on Clause Four, and then the early Blairite fad for internal referenda - I doubt there’d be as much pressure to reform the leadership election process here. That, combined with Portillo’s own difference of approach, means that there is no Hague-style system of direct balloting of the membership implemented here.

What passes is a bit similar to one of the alternative systems proposed immediately after the 2005 general election in OTL - constituency branches have their non-binding ‘say’ on leadership candidates, but little else; it’s mostly cosmetic.

[108] In OTL, both Bowden and Aitken lost their seats, albeit narrowly. To the further embarrassment of their party, they are returned ITTL.

[109] I’m guessing Aitken staying in Parliament, and the butterflies from the POD, are just enough to keep him solvent.

[110] Heseltine, alas, just isn‘t the sort of ex-PM to retire gracefully and quietly. He’s frequently commented on policy mattes in OTL when he‘s been sufficiently riled; ITTL the effect is much worse for obvious reasons.

[111] As he became ITTL under Heseltine.

[112] In OTL, he joined Labour.

[113] Although much of this happened in OTL under Hague, the time span involved was much longer, ranging well into 1998; the more compact nature of events ITTL mean that the political temperature shoots up.

[114] The Kemptown by-election comes at a very bad time for the Tories; Portillo’s reforms mean the party is inwardly-focused and bickering, and the government is still in it’s honeymoon period. If it had been in a safe-seat there would have been little doubt of the Tories retaining it, but unfortunately it’s a marginal instead. Labour consequently just edges it, probably not more than by a hundred votes or so.

[115] Larry Whitty was Labour’s General Secretary from 1985-1994 in OTL. Blair got rid of Whitty, against his wishes, as part of a spring cleaning exercise when he became leader. Here, he has continued in the role until after the election, which he chooses as a convenient point to retire.

[116] In OTL, Richard Rosser was General Secretary of the relatively small TSSA union, and a potential candidate to take over as Labour General Secretary when Whitty went into retirement; Blair considered him too close to the unions and lacking in modernising credentials. Here, Smith rates him for the role, and he gets the job after Whitty retires.

Cruddas is being a little bit coy here; in fact there is more than a bit of a question mark over how long he’ll continue working for the party at Walworth Road; there’s no plum job at Number Ten as per OTL lined-up for him here.

[117] The Department of Local Government, Housing and the Regions is known by this delightful acronym.

[118] Well, the answer here is pretty bloody obviously, yes, they were, but the interviewer is relatively friendly, so Cruddas is able to spin it out.

[119] In OTL Cook’s tenure at the foreign office was beset by a number of minor diplomatic gaffes, in addition to the hollowing out of the ‘ethical foreign policy’ - those are obviously butterflied away ITTL, and his time at the DTI is reasonably smooth.

[120] In OTL, Cook was bounced into issuing a statement on his affair - reportedly by Alistair Campbell via mobile - when the media picked up on it. Cook chose his mistress, told his wife he wanted a divorce at the drop of a hat, and then went on holiday. He issued a statement confirming the break-up the next day.

ITTL, Cook has the luck of more favourable circumstances, better advice, and more time to work it out. In consequence, the end of his marriage is more dignified than OTL, and doesn’t do him so much damage.

[121] In OTL, Margaret Cook was naturally hugely angry with Cook as a result of the way their marriage ended, and let her anger flow fully in the press. ITTL she is still bitter, but nowhere near the same extent as OTL; Cook being in a more junior Cabinet position perhaps also lessens press interest somewhat.

[122] The George Osborne to Portillo’s Cameron. I’m saying nothing.

[123] Returned at Gedling, unlike OTL.

[124] Returned at Harwich, unlike OTL.

[125] Returned at South Ribble, unlike OTL.

[126] Jenkin was a eurosceptic rebel over Maastricht. (although not of the more prominent, whipless, phobic variety; he generally strongly criticised but abstained on votes.) Thatcherite, but with a socially liberal side. He voted in favour of lowering the age of gay consent and against restoring capital punishment, for instance. Some of you may know his father, Patrick Jenkin, from ‘Gordon Banks’ fame.

In OTL, Jenkin was a strong early Portillo supporter and family friend, but had a falling-out with him around the time of his return to the Commons, and he never really became a paid-up ‘Portillista’, eventually becoming so disillusioned he went on to run IDS’ leadership campaign. Nobody seems to know precisely why this happened, although I am assuming whatever it was, it is butterflied away here.

[127] Returned at Eastwood, unlike OTL.

[128] Returned at Monmouth, unlike OTL. I assume that Rod Richard will run in Clwyd again as per OTL, but he’s too discredited by recent unpleasantness, so Evans really becomes Shadow Welsh S of S by default.

[129] Returned at Morecambe and Lunesdale, unlike OTL.

[130] Brother of Robbie, and likewise a keen Portillo supporter; after being elected only the same year, this is shockingly early for an entry into the shadow cabinet, but Portillo is very much of the ‘new brooms’ mindset, and appreciates loyalty.

[131] ITTL Cheryl Gillan has done rather well, ministerially-speaking under Heseltine, and considering almost every other woman of comparable stature baring Shepherd (who will probably want out at some stage in the future) and Widdecombe (who Portillo is none too sure about) is voted out at the general election, she makes an entry into the Shadow Cabinet.
 
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Nice update- good to see Sir Robert in the Shadow Cabinet!

A bit random, but I've been having a think about how 2001 is likely to go ITTL. I suspect that here the Conservatives and Lib Dems will be keenly focused on trying to destroy one another in the South, so Labour will retain a workable majority quite easily. I can see the Tories gaining maybe twenty southern seats from the Lib Dems, but not really making any great leaps forward elsewhere, so the Government is likely to emerge substantially intact, probably with a majority of about 55. How does this match up to what you had planned? :p

Also, I forget, what is Smith's position on the Euro at this point? I wonder if it will be taken to a referendum (and presumably defeated) or simply vetoed altogether by the Chancellor?

Looking forward to the next part.
 
Nice update- good to see Sir Robert in the Shadow Cabinet!

Yeah, and I didn't make him a Sir, either. Bugger. Google says he was knighted in 1997, so a correction is in order methinks. ;)

He's a former environment and countryside minister at the old DoE, so he's a bit of a natural choice for the Envionmental Protection brief ITTL.

How does this match up to what you had planned? :p

I think you're likely to be right, substantially - as I said before, the Lib Dems are effectively maxed out in terms of potential gains from the Tories, and it wouldn't take much of a revival for them to slide backwards.

The Lib Dem gains are certainly an easier nut for the Tories to crack than some of Labour's gains, but the Lib Dems sometimes have a nasty habit of entrenching themselves.

Also, I forget, what is Smith's position on the Euro at this point? I wonder if it will be taken to a referendum (and presumably defeated) or simply vetoed altogether by the Chancellor?

That will all be dealt with in the next few chapters, as well as the governments' general European policy.

Looking forward to the next part.

Ta!
 
So Portillo has become leader of the opposition in his previous incarnation without outing himself? This could get very interesting...
 
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...

Well, Labour elects it's shadow cabinet - when the Tories are in opposition their leader just appoints whoerver they want. I am not actually sure if Labour still has shadow cabinet elections in OTL - I'd put money on them having been abolished at some point over the last thirteen years.

Apparently still very much part of procedures.

...

Yeah, I ASBd away the second heart attack. So his overall health is still the same.



Sorry for any confusion - it takes place on May 1st 1997, exactly as per OTL.
OK
 
Just been catching up on Mk2, as lovely as the original VJ - Portillo is an intriguing choice, I'm all for him eventually becoming PM if it means we can avoid his trundling shambles of a media career. ;)

Blair is still at the FO but with Smith in the drivers seat what will Labour foriegn policy be? As gung ho?
 
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