Chris Nation
Banned
Since central banks have cut interest rates to near zero in an effort to prop up private debt markets to boost demand (and allow governments to finance massive budget deficits), and have left them there for over a decade, there is very little return available to those who purchase traditional safe haven bonds (US T-bills, for example).
Whereas not very long ago an 80 year old might earn 4-6% on his T bill, today he is counting himself lucky to earn 2%.
Combine this with the reality that the same 80 year old is likely to live longer than he would have done previously, and therefore needs his savings to last longer, he is much more likely to accept greater risk in order to raise his returns. Therefore, he is much more likely to own fewer bonds and more stocks in his portfolio than he would have been 10 years ago.
Deleted member 157939
Further speculating on the prospect of an 81 contest. Looking at plausible Wet candidates besides Pym or Gilmour. Perhaps the likes of Peter Walker or Mark Carsile could enter the contest, potentially splitting the Wet vote.
On the other hand should Thatcher step down, I could perhaps see the likes of Patrick Jenkin, Whitelaw or Biffen emerging as unity candidates
On the other hand should Thatcher step down, I could perhaps see the likes of Patrick Jenkin, Whitelaw or Biffen emerging as unity candidates
Just because you and @David Flin want to gang up on me and tell me I'm wrong, doesn't make you right.
I put out a scenario showing how, were a group of Conservative MPs to split from the party in late 1981, it "could" have opened the door to an Alliance landslide.
That's a perfectly credible option and was considered such at the time (you may be too young to remember the 1980s but I was there).
I was out pounding the streets for the Liberals in early 1982 in preparation for the GLC and local elections and I can tell you in early March 1982, the Conservative vote was moving en masse to the SDP. Roy Jenkins admitted it was a "slack tide" when he won Hillhead early in the year but without the Falklands War (which saved Labour as much as it saved Thatcher), the Alliance would have received a huge boost at the 1982 local elections.
Without the Falklands, Paul Tyler might have won Beaconsfield and Bruce Douglas-Mann might have held Mitcham & Morden.
With a clearly divided Conservative vote, an Independent (or "Reform" Conservative) would have won Beaconsfield and the local results for the official Conservatives would have been much worse in 1982.
The original scenario postulated a split on the basis of economic policy - there was, by 1981, a growing sense of anger within Conservative ranks toward "TBW" as she was known.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
Per this discussion here, unemployment of 2 million — or perhaps even 3 million — is viewed as entirely acceptable!
It shouldn’t be. It’s a tremendous loss of human potential, as well as GDP. But somehow unemployment seems to end up being viewed as the merely emotive issue, while inflation ends up being viewed as the serious, adult issue.
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GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
unemployment here in the States in late ‘82
And in Spring of ‘82, this older guy at work didn’t say, Hey, by the way, we’re sliding into the worse downturn in decades. And when I was laid off from that retail job, my friend’s Dad who was also our scoutmaster didn’t say, Hey, it’s always been a numbers game, now more than ever.
No one said nothing.
In fact, when I was fortunate enough to go to college, my microeconomics teacher the Fall of ‘82 didn’t say, By the way, we’re sliding into the worse unemployment since the Great Depression. Nor did my macroeconomics teacher the Spring of ‘83. And I suppose we could say, well, it’s their job to teach the basics. But I think what was really going on was that U.S. higher education rewarded publication and committee work, with teaching a distant third (and most likely is still this way!)
Weirdly . . .
. . . people tend to ignore baseline numbers.
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* and this unemployment is about half again even higher if we add in people working part-time who are seeking full-time
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Deleted member 157939
Not to be that person, but would it be possible to focus more on the premise of the thread then the economics aspectPer this discussion here, unemployment of 2 million — or perhaps even 3 million — is viewed as entirely acceptable!
It shouldn’t be. It’s a tremendous loss of human potential, as well as GDP. But somehow unemployment seems to end up being viewed as the merely emotive issue, while inflation ends up being viewed as the serious, adult issue.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
But from ‘81 to ‘84 or so, aren’t politics and economics just massively intertwined?
And hope upon upon hope, that maybe there’s some pathway to that sweet spot at which good politics and good policy overlap . . .
And as a Yank, I’m hoping some of this might apply to my own country!
You said 'how would this have manifested' and then outlined an Alliance wank. Which you're totally within your rights to do, but it's also within our rights, given this is a discussion thread on a discussion board, to point out that it's a wank.
And yes, I'm very aware of the political situation at the time. The fact we went through the high tension over the government's attempt at a deflationary approach in OTL (And Thatcher outright sacking the wets from Cabinet) and there was a single Conservative defector is the proven baseline for how plausible the notion of a Conservative split is. Like with Labour, there is a tendency to massively overstate the potential for defectors - the notion that ambitious people like Patten would defect is way out, as is copy-pasting 2019 onto 1982.
The MP defectors who defected from Labour to the SDP were basically two types, Jenkinsite/Gaitskellite people who were personally in the orbit of the gang of four, mostly either Jenkins or Owen, and old right machine politics hacks who had or were going to be deselected by their associations. That's roughly what you'd be looking at on the Conservative side, as well - and indeed, got with Brocklebank-Fowler. (I assume you're aware of the old Liberal ditty 'Foul, Fowler, Brocklebank-Fowler', and the minimally-high regard he was held)
By far the most likely alternative to OTL is not a split, and certainly not a large one, but sufficient pressure being brought to bear on the government that it moderates its policy to appease the backbenches. The last time there was a serious split within the Tories remains the Corn Laws.
I don't doubt that without the Falklands the Alliance would have done better, by the way, but a reality check: even before the Falklands it had passed its peak, and the polling had settled down into a three-way tie in the early/mid thirties. The Alliance need to be hitting close to 40% for FPTP not to penalise it severely, which it wouldn't even with by-election wins, given the 'wasted vote' factor would kick in closer to the election, as would Conservative/swing voter fear over Labour's hard-left manifesto. The Liberals have always suffered when voters fear a Labour win, and the early eighties is the joint-furthest left Labour has ever been.
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Coulsdon Eagle
Monthly Donor
I'd offer up Tariff Reform at the start of the 20th Century as a realistic contender.
I agree that this is an attempt at an Alliance wank, but I think you can get an Alliance wank. There is another thread somewhere here about Reagan's first turn becoming a trainwreck, and it turns out its doable with a cascading series of minor changes that butterflies into something greater. You can do that with the 1979-83 Conservative government too. You can do this to get a Foot government too, but it works to produce an Alliance win.
I went to electoral calculus to test the plausibility of this, and discovered that shifting 15% of the vote from the Tories to the Alliance in fact does, using that site's algorithm, produce an Alliance majority. The 15% shift represents just over a third of the IOTL Tory vote, and results in about a 40% increase in the Alliance vote. The Alliance gets 41% of the vote and 330 seats. The Tories come in second in the popular vote, at 28.5%, but get only 84 seats. Labour comes out with a net gain of a single seat over what they got IOTL. The Scottish and Welsh nationalists also pick up a few seats here and there.
A result like this would actually be the start of an interesting timeline, especially since most of the senior Tories would remain in parliament in this scenario. However, the big problem is getting a result like this. I think its the ceiling of an Alliance wank. You have to work hard to get a 15% shift in an election return, but its doable, and there was some fluidity in late 1970s and early 1980s British electoral politics to work with.
I went to electoral calculus to test the plausibility of this, and discovered that shifting 15% of the vote from the Tories to the Alliance in fact does, using that site's algorithm, produce an Alliance majority. The 15% shift represents just over a third of the IOTL Tory vote, and results in about a 40% increase in the Alliance vote. The Alliance gets 41% of the vote and 330 seats. The Tories come in second in the popular vote, at 28.5%, but get only 84 seats. Labour comes out with a net gain of a single seat over what they got IOTL. The Scottish and Welsh nationalists also pick up a few seats here and there.
A result like this would actually be the start of an interesting timeline, especially since most of the senior Tories would remain in parliament in this scenario. However, the big problem is getting a result like this. I think its the ceiling of an Alliance wank. You have to work hard to get a 15% shift in an election return, but its doable, and there was some fluidity in late 1970s and early 1980s British electoral politics to work with.
To expand on the above analysis, there are seven polls with the Alliance at 40% or above, across autumn ‘81 to January ‘82, usefully around when the proposed Conservative revolt occurs. After playing around it feels like 42% is Alliance victory and 43% landslide. But let’s use the real world polling numbers we have.
UK Polling Report
Conservative / Labour / Alliance
Swingometer: 112 / 216 / 296
Swingometer: 75 / 246 / 303
Swingometer: 40 / 210 / 374
Swingometer: 28 / 167 / 431
Swingometer: 36 / 199 / 390
Swingometer: 0 / 77 / 552
Swingometer: 106 / 239 / 279
Plus the best poll from the third firm covering election.
Swingometer: 145 / 278 / 201
If the government falls the Alliance could win for sure.
UK Polling Report
Conservative / Labour / Alliance
Gallup/Telegraph | 1981-10-26 | 29.5 | 28 | 40 |
MORI | 1981-10-27 | 27 | 31 | 40 |
Gallup/Telegraph | 1981-11-16 | 26.5 | 29 | 42 |
MORI | 1981-12-01 | 27 | 27 | 44 |
MORI | 1981-12-14 | 27 | 29 | 43 |
Gallup/Telegraph | 1981-12-14 | 23 | 23.5 | 50.5 |
MORI | 1982-01-25 | 29 | 30 | 40 |
Plus the best poll from the third firm covering election.
NOP | 1981-12-01 | 28.6 | 32.1 | 37.1 |
If the government falls the Alliance could win for sure.
Deleted member 157939
While I do agree that the potential defections to the SDP are often overstated and there is a tendency to wank the Alliance (a majority Alliance government is very, however I disagree with your characterization of tdefectors.
The SDP defectors were quite a diverse group of politicians in the sense that prior to their split they hardly constituted an ideological tendency within the Labour Right. Some defectors shared more in common with their former Labour colleagues then fellow SDP members. While they where all definitively on the social democratic wing, their political positions varied, it is therefore too reductive to split them into two groups. There was no real “orbit” around the Gang of Four, they were certainly influential figures, yet only Jenkins could be described as having a distinct sphere of influence. While the issue of deselection was most definitely a motivating factor in splitting from Labour (indeed it’s no coincidence most of the defectors had CLPs that casted votes for Benn in the deputy leadership election), very few of the defectors had been deselected or where at threat of facing deselection efforts at the time. There are a myriad of factors to be observed and debated, however a universal position shared was that their position in the Labour party was helpless and it was time to move on.
Many Tory Wets shared such sentiments, the SDP however failed to properly capitalize on such. On your point about ambitious MPs such as Patten, while I do agree he is by no means very likely to split, yet I see no reason why his ambitions would rule out a defection to the SDP. While a risky move, the Alliance, reaping the benefits of its brief golden age, genuinely did seem a contender for Government at the time. While the initial burst of public supports and euphoria had begun to die down if the Autumn Statement vote were to become a clusterfuck, we would most likely see defections of a Tory MPs such as Dorell, Dykes, Hick, Knox etc. Even if a split does not occur, the political environment of the Tories would see further intensified infighting, possibly becoming as pervasively toxic as Labour post defeat in 79. Such could possibly prolong the Alliance’s momentum along with send the Tories down the polls again, with the circumstances developing that a young MP such as Patten may see his ambitions lying in the Alliance more then the Conservatives.
Better option.But from ‘81 to ‘84 or so, aren’t politics and economics just massively intertwined?
And hope upon upon hope, that maybe there’s some pathway to that sweet spot at which good politics and good policy overlap . . .
And as a Yank, I’m hoping some of this might apply to my own country!
Don't derail.
This.. honestly kind of feels like you're reciting an essay or exam answer rather than actually addressing the point I was making, which was about the quality of the defectors.
And yes, it's very clear on that metric, they largely split into two groups, people who were longstanding Gaitskellite/Jenkinsite lieutenants who often had a personal affiliation with the gang of four (John Cartwright in respect to Owen, Tom McNally in respect of Jenkins, etc - I'm always wary when I think there might be an inability to infer meaning, so I should say by this I mean these as examples, not the complete picture) and on the other hand, you had, yes as I said, old right hacks who did not at all fit in with the image we now have of the SDP. They were often working-class, socially-conservative types who had got into trouble with their CLPs and/or who were being boundaried out of their jobs - people like Michael O'Halloran in Islington.
The point I was making was that whenever this issue comes up, people cherry-pick the bright young things and ignore that they only constituted the most visible share of SDP defectors we remember. The most likely defectors from the Tories are not the Chris Pattens but the dribs and drabs at the margins.
On the second point, incidentally, the SDP split had a backstory going back at least as far as the EEC vote in the early seventies and Dick Taverne's issues with his local party, so assuming that kind of thing can be replicated over a minor budget issue in the Tories within the scope of a few weeks is a reductive understanding and a very blunt attempt at replication.
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Deleted member 157939
I may be reading into this a little too much but I do not appreciate the tone of this response.
I may have misunderstood your first point, I do agree that many of the defectors where indeed long-standing Gaitskellites, many of whom did have some affiliation to the Gang of Four. However I would argue that the divides between these Gaitskellites, and the Old Right likes of O’Halloran being such a minority, that splitting them into two groups doesn’t really work.
I further agree with your point that the SDP is more likely to attract the “dribs and drabs” yet at the same time, I do believe the SDP could attract the likes of Patten. For every O’Halloran there was a Kennedy
Furthermore the divisions within the Conservatives date back to the early 70s, with the breakdown of the post war consensus. The infighting amongst the Tories went deep, the “minor budget issue” could have very serious ramifications in Thatcher’s struggle against the Wets
Well, wow, it's almost like I don't like having to repeat a point because it was ignored the first time. It's almost like that could come across as rude, or as arguing in bad faith.
The O'Halloran's weren't such a minority, they were a good chunk of the MPs who actually defected. If you or anyone reading this want to do a quick test of this, then have a whirl on Wikipedia, and see how many of the SDP MPs get anything longer than two or three paragraphs - lobby fodder.
It's really way off to compare the situation in Labour to that of the Tories. Yes, there was a divide between the right and One Nation, but it was not anything like as severe as the division was in Labour between Bennite left and the right. For instance, almost the entire party in the Conservatives agreed on the need for trade union reform, up to and including the likes of Ian Gilmour. (Who was actually a rhetorical hawk on the issue) About the one person who didn't really care for it was Powell, as he didn't think wage increases were inflationary. Howe's budgets were not the main policy issue of real tension, they were effectively the only major issue.
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Deleted member 157939
I really don’t understand why you have such an antagonistic tone. It was not my intention to ignore your point, I simply misunderstood it.
I don’t really understand what Wikipedia paragraphs have to do with the ideological beliefs of these MPs. To the best of my knowledge and research, an overwhelming majority of the SDP defectors where not the Old Right kind you describe.
While the divisions within Labour were most definitely more intensive that of the Conservatives, the controversy over the deflationary budget was extensive. I don’t disagree that the greater degree of party unity meant a split from the Tories would be less likely. Yet considering the sheer importance of economic policy, coupled with the immense pressure of the recession, divisions were widened rapidly. The usually relatively insignificant Autumn Statement was transformed into the prospect of a major backbench rebellion as a result