No Brown Coronation

I was reading this that I wrote
www.wolfianpress.com/thewolfian/where-are-we-now.html
so I thought

1) what if Blair repudiated his underhand deal with Brown and instead insisted there was a proper election when he stood down?
Who would have been the challengers? Prescott presumably. I posit Hain too. I would hate to think a bastard like John Reid would have, but the press loves authoritarian bully boys.

2) so what if Peter Hain won, and instead of Brown we had 4 years of Hain's premiership?
What would that have looked like?
Would he have had the same "honeymoon" as Brown? How would he have dealt with the Foot and Mouth fuckup?
Would have reacted to Cameron's coming to the Tory leadership by calling the election that Brown chickened out of?
How would Hain have reacted to a Bigotgate scenario?
Would having a Welsh MP as Prime Minister have changed things up?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
I was tangentially involved in what was going on at that time.

Hain is a no. He wanted to be a grandee not the boss and had surrounded himself with some really quite unpleasant people.

The AH interest as far as I’m concerned is the people that GB had killed off on his way - and what they could have become. There’s a line of junior ministers that were kneecapped to make sure the boss won.
 
I was reading this that I wrote
www.wolfianpress.com/thewolfian/where-are-we-now.html
so I thought

1) what if Blair repudiated his underhand deal with Brown and instead insisted there was a proper election when he stood down?
Who would have been the challengers? Prescott presumably. I posit Hain too. I would hate to think a bastard like John Reid would have, but the press loves authoritarian bully boys.
Prescott retired not just from the Deputy Leadership, but also the frontbench when Blair stood down. He wouldn't have the appetite for it. The main challenger would probably be someone more aligned with Blair's faction. John Reid, Charles Clarke, and Jack Straw would be the most likely names, but Alan Johnson or even David Miliband are possibilities. The somewhat more left wing possibilities are probably Harman or Hilary Benn. Brown would probably start off as favourite, but the Blairite candidate, or possibly Harman, could come through and beat him if he had a poor campaign, which is certainly possible. Hain couldn't win the Deputy Leadership IOTL, so doubt he could win the leadership ITTL.
2) so what if Peter Hain won, and instead of Brown we had 4 years of Hain's premiership?
What would that have looked like?
Would he have had the same "honeymoon" as Brown? How would he have dealt with the Foot and Mouth fuckup?
Would have reacted to Cameron's coming to the Tory leadership by calling the election that Brown chickened out of?
How would Hain have reacted to a Bigotgate scenario?
Would having a Welsh MP as Prime Minister have changed things up?
I don't know a great deal about Hain which would apply to how he might run a government, other than that he is pretty generically soft left, and see's himself as leaning toward libertarian socialism. I suppose a leftward shift might be attempted on Iraq and the economy, but still within the framework of the 2005 manifesto. Maybe feeling more constrained by his governments current programme does lead him to call a snap election.

I don't see how having a Welsh PM would change things anymore than a Scottish one did IOTL. Maybe a Labour polling boost in Wales at the next election, but that's about it. In any case, I think Hain is actually South African, and didn't really have much of a connection with Wales until he won a seat there. So he is about as Welsh as Michael Foot or James Callaghan.
 
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