DBAHC: Make the Labour party primary opposition to the Tories

Yesterday, Britons voted in an election which elected the Conservative party and took out PM Clegg, with the Labour party loses 30 seats

This made me wonder, how could the Labour Party be the primary opposition to the Conservatives?
 
Prevent the Liberals from monopolising the moderate left of politics - nowadays its more a social democratic party than a traditional centrist one.

Keep Labour from drifting too far to the left would help with this - probably with different leadership. It backfired heavily, especially with the other hard left parties competing for the same part of the electorate splitting the vote.
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
As AE says, you pretty much need the Liberals to not absorb social democracy during the turn of the last century.

Maybe if Ramsay Macdonald was a Socialist and not a Liberal, Labour could have done a bit better.
 
ASB; next you'll be saying that there'll be a way to get the Democrats in the States to win more than one term in office - the last to do that was Davis in 1924 & 1928!
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
ASB; next you'll be saying that there'll be a way to get the Democrats in the States to win more than one term in office - the last to do that was Davis in 1924 & 1928!
There was that moment during the 1970's when Labour near overtook both the Liberals and the Tories, remember.

If only that Corbyn chap didn't try to shoot Thorpe.
 
OOC: British PMs

Nick Clegg (Liberal), 2011-2016
George Osbourne (Conservative), 2016-present


OOC: US Presidents

29. Warren G. Harding (Republican), 1921-1925
30. John Davis (Democratic), 1925-1933

31. Herbert Hoover (Republican), 1933-1953
32. Tom Dewey (Republican), 1953-1961
33. John F. Kennedy (Democratic), 1961-1965
34. Nelson Rockefeller (Republican), 1965-1973
35. George Wallace (Democratic), 1973-1977
36. Birch Bayh (Republican), 1977-1981
37. George Wallace (Democratic), 1981-1982 (killed along with VP)
38. Donald Rumsfeld (Republican), 1982-1993
39. John Tower (Democratic), 1993-1997
40. Bill Clinton (Republican), 1997-2005
41. Al Gore (Republican), 2005-2013
42. Rick Perry (Democratic), 2013-present
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
Maybe preventing the Labour Party becoming Robert Silk's vanity project...
The 80's were weird.

Looking at the electoral history of Labour, two leaders stand out quite interestingly- Ellen Wilkinson (1946-1947) and her successor Jim Griffiths (1947-1957); had she lived to 1950, or if Griffiths was able to swing those seven seats in the infamous tri-parted Parliament, then the Lib-Lab Coalition could have had Labour as the senior partner and spring-boarded to success instead of slumping into their quiet decline.
 
The 80's were weird.

Looking at the electoral history of Labour, two leaders stand out quite interestingly- Ellen Wilkinson (1946-1947) and her successor Jim Griffiths (1947-1957); had she lived to 1950, or if Griffiths was able to swing those seven seats in the infamous tri-parted Parliament, then the Lib-Lab Coalition could have had Labour as the senior partner and spring-boarded to success instead of slumping into their quiet decline.

I think very much so. Maybe have someone who can make the party seem less like a slightly more left-wing version of the Liberals - and more as something which is different from them; maybe go to the right of the Tories on some issues; Clegg and Osbourne don't have much support in the north of England which should be ripe for Labour - if they actually could assert themselves under a non-Liberal-lite leader.
 
The Labour parties in Australia and New Zealand actually are the main alternative parties on the left, though for Australia this is usually explained by the working class nature of the people who settled there. However, Canada follows the UK with the Liberal Party being the main alternative on the left and a strong socialist third party.

In the UK, Labour came pretty close to over-taking the Liberals in 1923, 1950, and in 1974 any you may need this to happen once for the Liberals to be supporting minority Labour governments rather than the other way around.

What happens if the more radical Irish nationalists get their way and take Ireland out of the UK? That is 65 seats Labour has no chance of winning.
 
If you want to go waaaay back, it's Greenwood - he had the style and substance in the 30s and had done a heroic job as Deputy PM in the war, but his drinking exploded during the war (understandable). Labour almost won in 1945 despite everything, so either you need Greenwood to be sobered up pre-war (or at least it's something he can control until after the election) or he's convinced to step down sooner, not leaving Bevan to try and sort everything out at the last minute.
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
If you want to go waaaay back, it's Greenwood - he had the style and substance in the 30s and had done a heroic job as Deputy PM in the war, but his drinking exploded during the war (understandable). Labour almost won in 1945 despite everything, so either you need Greenwood to be sobered up pre-war (or at least it's something he can control until after the election) or he's convinced to step down sooner, not leaving Bevan to try and sort everything out at the last minute.
They had 80+ seats in which they were the main opposition and could have won with a nudge, but as 1950 shows us, even with that nudge they would have still been second place, and achieving all 80+ is Mythic Moths.

Maybe had the Liberals not bought the Tories in after the gassing of Colchester, then maybe Labour could have had a footing.
 
Don't forget, it was Labour that had the ideas for the modern welfare state - the Liberals used that to snap back into power in 1950, against Eden's Tories, and it could have swung 1945 (there was a lot of hunger for it).

Labour's other problem was not just losing 1950, it was falling out as junior partner in the 1953 election. If only they'd not been so shoddy then...
 
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