Enforced Calm

Okay. This may not be popular but I've been thinking....

What if there had been more caretaker administrations in the UK. The constitutional structure of the UK has led to very brief caretaker periods of government eg Brown in 2010 and Churchill after the 1945 election.

In all honesty there aren't that many POD's which can be used for this but one I can think of is this...

The Suez Crisis 1956

At the very height of the crisis Eden suffers a total mental collapse. The queen is forced into using her residual powers to select a new PM. For reasons unknown she is advised to select Rab Butler.

Butler's first act as PM is to call a ceasefire...

Any thoughts so far?
 
Afraid nobody in the Conservative Party would recommend RAB Butler. He was seen as 'unsound' by the grandees for apparently suggesting, along with Halifax, that the UK should sign an armistice with Germany in 1940.
 
Afraid nobody in the Conservative Party would recommend RAB Butler. He was seen as 'unsound' by the grandees for apparently suggesting, along with Halifax, that the UK should sign an armistice with Germany in 1940.

Hmm. Good point. However in the frantic atmosphere of 1956 Rab could be the unexpected peacemaker
 
Maybe not a caretaker PM in the accepted sense of the term but more of a "healing PM"

He may have pulled troops out of Suez and then called an election.
 
Hmm. Good point. However in the frantic atmosphere of 1956 Rab could be the unexpected peacemaker

To be honest the Tories would have probably suggested Hugh Gaitskell before Butler. From what I've read and been told by someone who had the chance to ask about why Butler never became leader post-war the events if 1940 poisoned his chances for ever.

The only situation I could imagine the Tories choosing Gaitskell would be if they knew they were facing election defeat in the near future and wanted someone to 'take the bullet' as it were.

If Eden does suffer a total collapse then I think that Macmillan would have succeeded him. He was Chancellor at the time and that's occasionally been a springboard to the Premiership. Churchill backed Macmillan, which I think would have been very influential in HM's choice, moreover there was a sizeable anti-Butler faction on the Tory backbenches, but no similar anti-Macmillan faction.
 
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