If Britain loses the Falklands War, what happens to Thatcher?

So, I was doing a bit of reading on the 1983 election, and there seems to be a consensus that Thatcher only called the election early to deliver her the best chance of a crushing victory, in the wake of her soaring popularity after the Falklands War.

So the question seems obvious. What happens to Thatcher, and by extension Britain, in the wake of a Falklands defeat. Does the Alliance sweep the inevitable election in 1984? Does Michael foot suddenly develop good campaign skills and win one for Labor?

I'm a political novice at best, so I can't answer these questions, but I'm interested to hear other people's thoughts.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
If recent experience is any guide, "hung bastard parliament" is always an option when nobody has any particularly good positives going.
 
Karavoka Man:

With military stuff, I'm about where you are with politics, and probably even less informed. Still, my understanding is that Argentina was so outmatched in the Falklands War, it would have been almost impossible for the Brits to lose.

So, if Thatcher does somehow manage to eff that one up, she is rendered laughingstock, and the Conservative Party's claims to being the hardnosed guardians of national security are severely damaged for the foreseeable. Whether that's enough to make Labour's percieved pacifism into less of an electoral liability, I don't know.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
With military stuff, I'm about where you are with politics, and probably even less informed. Still, my understanding is that Argentina was so outmatched in the Falklands War, it would have been almost impossible for the Brits to lose.
Yeah, though "difficult" would work better. The Brits could screw up many times, the Argentines couldn't weather more than one or two, but a loss at the Falklands is not beyond the bounds of possibility - or, rather, a loss that year is, and then you could see the Brits giving up.

(If something went bong in one of the mission critical ships like the carriers, for example.)
 
Thatcher resigns in disgrace (she's the new Eden), and you end up with Whitelaw until 1984.

Foot is in a more interesting situation. He himself strongly supported the war - the question is whether the Falklands is seen as being lost by an incompetent government (in which case he is fine), or whether the war gets considered a horrible mistake in general (in which case he's in trouble).

I think you're looking at a Hung Parliament - the SDP are siphoning off too many votes for Labour to win outright in '84.
 
Thatcher in all probability would go, but Foot would probably be okay. The Alliance are in a stronger position over OTL, but of course they have a big mountain to climb. A majority is implausible, but they might lead a government, depending on how successful Whitelaw would be at reviving Tory popularity in the next few years. Labour could well end up as the largest party, even if they came third in votes cast for them, because FPTP. I can't see them improving enough to win a majority though.

With Whitelaw in charge of the Tories, they and the Alliance would be on much better terms, so I'd imagine a coalition between the two is the most likely outcome, whether the Alliance or the Tories are leading it is dependent on the result. It would probably be presented as the government of national unity that many centrists had been pushing for in the seventies.
 
This is a good link to an explanation of what went wrong for Argentina.

And would Whitelaw-Steel-Jenkins be a sustainable power group? There's only one Deputy Prime Minister, I think. And three men with viable claims to it.
 

David Flin

Gone Fishin'
Still, my understanding is that Argentina was so outmatched in the Falklands War, it would have been almost impossible for the Brits to lose.

I only got to see one side of the hill, so I can't give a complete picture.

Nailing the carriers would have been unfortunate.
Getting in among the STUFT ships during the landing phase would have been unfortunate - kit on ships that get sunk aren't much use to the bootnecks on terra almost firma.
Argentine patrols and delaying actions between the key points would have slowed movement forward, and given the logistical situation for the boots, that would have been unfortunate.
Argentine junior officers having a clue would have been inconvenient.

35 years on, I hear a lot about how the end outcome was a foregone conclusion. All I can say is that it didn't feel like it at the time.
 
I only got to see one side of the hill, so I can't give a complete picture.
Actually I'm curious as a man on the ground how much of Argentina running the war on a string and a prayer were you aware of. Or even for someone alive at the time how much was common knowlege. For example Argentina went into the war with something like 5 exocet missiles. We're people aware of this at the time?

To answer the op I would imagine that Thatcher would have resigned in a victory where there was heavier losses so that Whiteman might have saved the part come election time probably in 1984.
 

David Flin

Gone Fishin'
Actually I'm curious as a man on the ground how much of Argentina running the war on a string and a prayer were you aware of. Or even for someone alive at the time how much was common knowlege. For example Argentina went into the war with something like 5 exocet missiles. We're people aware of this at the time?

I've no idea what was known higher up the chain of command. I knew what was in front of me, and immediately behind me. I knew that they had put a lot of landmines down, without bothering to mark the fields, which was a bit inconvenient. I know that they could call on artillery in fairly short order, while our artillery support tended to be either available or not, depending upon where the grey war canoe was.

I knew that the troops we faced were well equipped (a damned sight better than we were, for example), but that they weren't especially well-trained, and that their junior officers were about the worst I've ever come across in any army, anywhere, anytime. I know that lots of planes passed overhead, and it was never a Harrier that passed overhead.

In general, when you're involved, you get a very clear and detailed idea of your own bit of turf, and you know very little about anywhere else. When you're involved, you have to trust that everyone is doing their job elsewhere, you try to ignore the uselessness of the SAS, and you do your part of the job, which means focusing entirely on your little patch. So I can wax lyrical about the supply shortages at the sharp end of the boots (holding Mount Kent with basically bayonets and about half a dozen grenades and no bullets wasn't my idea of an ideal position), and the mounting exposure issue (whoever gave those boots to British servicemen had better not come within throttling range), but as for what was happening on the wet stuff, not a clue.
 
Actually I'm curious as a man on the ground how much of Argentina running the war on a string and a prayer were you aware of. Or even for someone alive at the time how much was common knowlege. For example Argentina went into the war with something like 5 exocet missiles. We're people aware of this at the time?

To answer the op I would imagine that Thatcher would have resigned in a victory where there was heavier losses so that Whiteman might have saved the part come election time probably in 1984.
Yes, MI6 was totally aware of how many Exocets Argentina had (because the French told them) and worked quite hard to put the kibosh on Argentine efforts to acquire more.
 
And would Whitelaw-Steel-Jenkins be a sustainable power group? There's only one Deputy Prime Minister, I think. And three men with viable claims to it.
I think they'd work well as a group, Steel was more than ready to defer to Jenkins and make him PM in the event the Alliance won, and Whitelaw wasn't one for egos or plotting, as his backing of Thatcher would show. The only one who might cause trouble is Jenkins, in a scenario where Whitelaw is PM, but I don't see him doing enough to wreck the thing altogether. It isn't written anywhere that the UK can only have one Deputy PM, some continental countries have several. Alternatively, one could be Deputy, and another First Secretary of State, or one could become Chancellor of the Exchequer, and another would get the Deputy position as well as the Home or Foreign office to compensate.

The bigger difficulty would be selling the coalition to their respective parties. Whitelaw would have the right of his party strongly opposed to the liberal interventionist ideas of the alliance, Jenkins would have the Owenites, and Steel would likely come under pressure from those who feel he isn't being treated as an equal partner in the coalition, which would be likely to become a perception given that the other two parties have extensive governing experience and they have none at all, and Steel would have a strong claim of his own to the premiership (even if he won't take it up) in a situation where the Alliance wins the most seats, when it is quite likely the Liberals would benefit more from the Conservative collapse than the SDP.

Add in the fact that STV would be on the cards in this scenario, and the three of them would have to tread very carefully when it comes to dealing with there parties, particularly Whitelaw, who disagreements would be the most ideological in nature.
 
I knew that the troops we faced were well equipped (a damned sight better than we were, for example), but that they weren't especially well-trained, and that their junior officers were about the worst I've ever come across in any army, anywhere, anytime. I know that lots of planes passed overhead, and it was never a Harrier that passed overhead.
To be fair, getting them to be competent at their job sort of requires a different Argentina, one without a Junta in power and which would therefore never have felt the need to invade in the first place.
 

David Flin

Gone Fishin'
To be fair, getting them to be competent at their job sort of requires a different Argentina, one without a Junta in power and which would therefore never have felt the need to invade in the first place.

True enough, although there's a fair gap between competent, and the mind-boggling level of unfitness for command shown here. Just being incompetent I could understand.
 

Loghain

Banned
To be fair, getting them to be competent at their job sort of requires a different Argentina, one without a Junta in power and which would therefore never have felt the need to invade in the first place.

Junta doesnt preclude capable officers.
I dare anyone to call Wehrmacht incompetent for example
 
To be fair, getting them to be competent at their job sort of requires a different Argentina, one without a Junta in power and which would therefore never have felt the need to invade in the first place.
Eh, it more requires the Junta to be less paranoid about the Chileans, because all their best troops remained in Argentina, in order to preserve for the war that the Junta was convinced was coming. A fairly classic case of putting the cart before the horse.
I think they'd work well as a group, Steel was more than ready to defer to Jenkins and make him PM in the event the Alliance won, and Whitelaw wasn't one for egos or plotting, as his backing of Thatcher would show. The only one who might cause trouble is Jenkins, in a scenario where Whitelaw is PM, but I don't see him doing enough to wreck the thing altogether. It isn't written anywhere that the UK can only have one Deputy PM, some continental countries have several. Alternatively, one could be Deputy, and another First Secretary of State, or one could become Chancellor of the Exchequer, and another would get the Deputy position as well as the Home or Foreign office to compensate.

The bigger difficulty would be selling the coalition to their respective parties. Whitelaw would have the right of his party strongly opposed to the liberal interventionist ideas of the alliance, Jenkins would have the Owenites, and Steel would likely come under pressure from those who feel he isn't being treated as an equal partner in the coalition, which would be likely to become a perception given that the other two parties have extensive governing experience and they have none at all, and Steel would have a strong claim of his own to the premiership (even if he won't take it up) in a situation where the Alliance wins the most seats, when it is quite likely the Liberals would benefit more from the Conservative collapse than the SDP.

Add in the fact that STV would be on the cards in this scenario, and the three of them would have to tread very carefully when it comes to dealing with there parties, particularly Whitelaw, who disagreements would be the most ideological in nature.

Who would be the power players in a Liberal-SDP-Conservative government, do you reckon? I might give a timeline like this a go.
 
I've no idea what was known higher up the chain of command. I knew what was in front of me, and immediately behind me. I knew that they had put a lot of landmines down, without bothering to mark the fields, which was a bit inconvenient. I know that they could call on artillery in fairly short order, while our artillery support tended to be either available or not, depending upon where the grey war canoe was.

I knew that the troops we faced were well equipped (a damned sight better than we were, for example), but that they weren't especially well-trained, and that their junior officers were about the worst I've ever come across in any army, anywhere, anytime. I know that lots of planes passed overhead, and it was never a Harrier that passed overhead.

In general, when you're involved, you get a very clear and detailed idea of your own bit of turf, and you know very little about anywhere else. When you're involved, you have to trust that everyone is doing their job elsewhere, you try to ignore the uselessness of the SAS, and you do your part of the job, which means focusing entirely on your little patch. So I can wax lyrical about the supply shortages at the sharp end of the boots (holding Mount Kent with basically bayonets and about half a dozen grenades and no bullets wasn't my idea of an ideal position), and the mounting exposure issue (whoever gave those boots to British servicemen had better not come within throttling range), but as for what was happening on the wet stuff, not a clue.

Thanks that's an interesting perspective to have.
Yes, MI6 was totally aware of how many Exocets Argentina had (because the French told them) and worked quite hard to put the kibosh on Argentine efforts to acquire more.
I knew the Military intelligence knew that. I was just looking for the view of the man on the ground.

Looking back it's easy to say Argentina was doomed but all the sources at the time and people who lived through it dont seem to treat it as if it should have been an easy war. So I was wondering what the men in the field knew about these kind of things.
 
True enough, although there's a fair gap between competent, and the mind-boggling level of unfitness for command shown here. Just being incompetent I could understand.
Thinking about it, the core mission of the Argentine Army (at least of the officer corps) was ensuring that they (i.e. the officer corps) stayed in power and nobody dared oppose them. Any form of military effectiveness or ability to fight a competent enemy wasn't even in their top 10. That means you end up with murderous shits in junior officer positions, who are quite happy to beat up and starve their own men to make sure nobody gets ideas that they might somehow be the equal of them. This is not conducive to effective leadership.

Junta doesnt preclude capable officers.
I dare anyone to call Wehrmacht incompetent for example
I wouldn't exactly call them a Junta though, and in any case their core competence wasn't throwing drugged and bound dissidents out of helicopters.
 

David Flin

Gone Fishin'
Thinking about it, the core mission of the Argentine Army (at least of the officer corps) was ensuring that they (i.e. the officer corps) stayed in power and nobody dared oppose them. Any form of military effectiveness or ability to fight a competent enemy wasn't even in their top 10. That means you end up with murderous shits in junior officer positions, who are quite happy to beat up and starve their own men to make sure nobody gets ideas that they might somehow be the equal of them. This is not conducive to effective leadership.

That sort of thing happens elsewhere, and doesn't lead to the uselessness on display. You've got things like total tactical ineptitude, being absent (literally absent) from their post, and so on.
 
Who would be the power players in a Liberal-SDP-Conservative government, do you reckon? I might give a timeline like this a go.
As it happens, I too thought about doing this, though maybe more for a series of wikiboxes. In my particular scenario, the Alliance had something like 260 to the Tories 130, and they formed a government with Jenkins becoming PM. As compensation to the Liberals for being the largest party, they got both the Treasury and the Home Office, with Steel taking the latter, in part because of his lack of economic experience, and in part to enhance his party's standing by giving them two important people at the top of government. Richard Wainwright, their economic spokesperson became Chancellor, followed later on by Alan Beith. The Tories, who were in the weakest negotiating position, got the the Foreign Office, which was given to Heseltine, while Whitelaw became First Secretary of State and Leader of the House. The other members of the gang of four got some middle sized portfolios.

I'm not sure how plausible that all would be, but I definitely think Owen would become quite important, as an opponent of close ties to the Liberals, he'd probably pressurise Jenkins to ensure the pact ends with the implementation of STV, and probably want to pull the party to the right a bit, given his sympathies with Thatcher in OTL. He'd probably be seen as a likely successor as well, given Jenkins was getting on a bit, so I'd think the Owenites would become a significant faction within the SDP.

With the Tories, it depends on who holds on there seats. On the right, Tebbit or somebody would probably become an important figure, though I had the Monday Club types not taking seats in the cabinet, because I just couldn't see them as sitting alongside Jenkins and Steel. Maybe the monetarists like Lawson, Brittan, and Howe would. The Liberals would have the largest intake relative to their previous number of MPs, so they would be more unpredictable, particularly given that their existing members had made their reputation as being independently minded, and they would make up the bulk of their ministers, at least to start with. Cyril Smith and Michael Meadowcroft were critical of the alliance in OTL, maybe they would be prominent in any ant-steel factions, though whether that is from the cabinet or the backbenches I don't know.

The other two members of the Gang of Four are always going to be important, because of their status. You'd also have whoever Whitelaw gave the important jobs too in his administration becoming more prominent over OTL. Prior and Gilmour are good examples. Alan Beith and David Penhaligon were both touted as potential Liberal leaders at the time. So in short, you'd have an awful lot of power bases.
 
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