PC/WI: Hung UK Parliament in 1979

The other day I was looking at the 1979 UK General Election on Wikipedia and noticed that the Conservative Party had a majority of twenty one seat majority.

How plausible is that instead of an outright majority win, there’s a hung parliament where the Conservatives win 312 Seats? What happens next? I’m guessing Thatcher may negotiate a coalition with David Steel and the Liberal Party. How would a Con-Lib pact affect Thatcher’s administration? And what do the following elections look like?
 
The other day I was looking at the 1979 UK General Election on Wikipedia and noticed that the Conservative Party had a majority of twenty one seat majority.

How plausible is that instead of an outright majority win, there’s a hung parliament where the Conservatives win 312 Seats? What happens next? I’m guessing Thatcher may negotiate a coalition with David Steel and the Liberal Party. How would a Con-Lib pact affect Thatcher’s administration? And what do the following elections look like?
Pretty impossible. Given the dynamic after the Lib-lab pact and the residuals from the Thorpe affair, If by some Miracle the Tories and Labour tied almost exactly the Liberals would probably still have only about 12 MP's, Some form of deal between the Conservatives and OUP on Confidence and Supply would probably also be needed to make up sufficient numbers. Leaving this aside the Liberal Party and Steel in particular loathed Thatcher and were not keen on Tories in general unlike say Nick Clegg and his tiny band of Orange book Liberals, and certainly would not get in bed with the OUP, assuming they could link up themselves with the architect of the 1967 abortion act..
 
The other day I was looking at the 1979 UK General Election on Wikipedia and noticed that the Conservative Party had a majority of twenty one seat majority.

They actually had a 43-seat majority under our own commonly used definitions; overall majorities are calculated by the number of governing party seats minus the total number of opposition party seats, so 339 minus 296 = 43. Although, of course, in practice it would have taken only a loss of 22 seats to deprive Thatcher's Tories of an overall majority.

Anyhow, the BBC's on-the-day poll prediction had the Tories in a range of 311-335 seats, so the lower end of that would have meant a hung parliament. I suspect Thatcher carries on for perhaps a year with confidence-and-supply of various Ulster unionist MPs (who between them had about ten seats), and refrains from doing anything too controversial. In 1980 she returns to the country and probably wins a clear majority due to a desire for a clearly mandated government, as well as the infighting that was probably always bound to take place in the Labour Party.
 
I'm not sure if the Tories failing to secure a majority is plausible if the 1979 election took place in the same circumstances as OTL, the Tories had a big lead from the start, and Labour did fairly well to keep their majority down to 43.

However, having the election at a different time could produce a different outcome. The most commonly cited PoD for this kind of scenario is Callaghan calling an election in 1978- a hung parliament was very possible in light of the polling at the time. Alternatively, you could have the VoNC that brought Callaghan down by one vote fail (there are a million different ways to do this) and Labour are able to use the few extra months they would have bought themselves to pull back a few points, and a strong campaign enables them to grind out a hung parliament.

If you have a situation where Liberal backing would be enough to give either of the main parties a majority, then Steel would probably opt for Labour. He got on reasonably well with Callaghan, and in the eighties he always leaned more toward Labour as a potential coalition partner. If there was a 2010 style result where a Conservative-Liberal arrangement was capable of securing a majority but a Labour-Liberal arrangement was not, then Steel would probably reluctantly throw his backing behind Thatcher, in exchange for some concessions on economic policy that water down her more radical proposals. Either way, I cant see Steel contemplating a full blown coalition- his party's existence was far too fragile for that.

I'm not sure I can see either arrangement lasting-even if the Liberals remained supportive, it would probably only be a few seats from falling apart from by elections and defections. The SDP or another new centrist party would probably still come into existence, but in different circumstances. It would be less likely to ally itself with the Liberals, and since in either scenario Callaghan would still be Labour leader, or the survival of more moderate MPs would mean Healey beats Foot to be his successor, there would be less Labour defectors willing to break off-though Jenkins and his followers would still probably go.

If the Liberals back the Tories, then I can see Labour being returned in a year or two under a more moderate leadership with a comfortable majority- although the manifesto would be influenced by the hard left, it would be mostly ignored when in office. I think that this scenario is the best one if you want a Labour 1980s, as there would probably be a stronger chance of re-election than if Callaghan had salvaged a narrow majority from a 1978 Election.
 
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hammo1j

Donor
Though I agree with the last poster's assessment, I think it was a seismic shift.

Capital and Labour are engaged in a no holds barred conflict. If either achieves ultimate victory the consequence is misery.

In 1979 Labour had won resulting in nothing working.

Now, to a degree, Capital has won resulting in stressed workers with stagnant living standards...
 
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