The inspiration for this thread was me reading an article by Boris Johnson published in 1996 in which he offhandedly states that, while the opinion polls had Tony Blair on course to win the next election, they suggested that it would be with a small majority. Boris then went on to state that this implied that Blair would probably have to take a cautious compromise agenda.
Of course, as every schoolchild doesn't know thanks to the vagaries of the British Education System, in reality Labour won in 1997 by one of the largest landslides in British political history and Blair had a majority of over 160 to work with, allowing him to effortlessly push through a relatively radical agenda with no need for compromise with opposition parties.
So, what if Boris' Tory-optimistic prediction had come true? We can look at any number of minor PODs in the years 1994-97 -
- Brown holds out for more compromise with the old left at the Granita deal in 1994, diluting Blair's attempts to steer the party to the centre and pick up disaffected Conservative voters
- Major calls the election earlier, though I cna't think of a reason why he would
- Fewer Conservative scandals blowing up
- Back to Basics is never announced or doesn't backfire quite so badly
And so on. Any combination of these. That's not so important.
So at the election, New Labour comes to power with a workable but smallish majority of 20-30. What happens now? While Labour still doesn't
have to compromise with opposition parties, it's now much more vulnerable to old left backbench rebellions than OTL. Also, the Conservatives will have lost fewer big names in shock decapitations - which could be either a good or a bad thing for the Leader of the Opposition, probably not still William Hague in TTL - and hence fewer Blairite Labour candidates have been elected in their places.
Another reasonable idea is that Blair might not leave Paddy Ashdown out in the cold in TTL and would carry through on his earlier hints to involve the Lib Dems in government.
So, thoughts?