Tarzan, Ascend - Heseltine in 1990?

Pretty simple - what if the anti-Thatcher vote doesn't collapse and mollify itself into supporting her chosen successor and Heseltine clinches victory? What does it take to make this happen - ideally a victory in the first ballot, but that's probably not going to happen.

Then what? Does Michael hang on in 1992 like Major did? What shape is the Tory Party and country in by 1997? Does Blair have the same success?

Have a play around, I'm getting a feel for British political counterfactuals again after too much procrastination away from my own ones. Yes, that is a teaser.
 
Pretty simple - what if the anti-Thatcher vote doesn't collapse and mollify itself into supporting her chosen successor and Heseltine clinches victory? What does it take to make this happen - ideally a victory in the first ballot, but that's probably not going to happen.

Then what? Does Michael hang on in 1992 like Major did? What shape is the Tory Party and country in by 1997? Does Blair have the same success?

Have a play around, I'm getting a feel for British political counterfactuals again after too much procrastination away from my own ones. Yes, that is a teaser.

Heseltine really would have a hard job if he won, the Thatcherites would be out for blood from day one and unlike Major (who by and large did a good job at maintaining party unity) Tarzan may have proved too bombastic for his own good. He would still perhaps be able to eke out a victory at the next election but his position would be very precarious, most of the right would see him as stabbing Thatcher in the back and would be willing to do likewise to him, if Europe continues to crop up, I see him losing a confidence motion fairly early on.
 

cumbria

Banned
I think Heseltine would win in 1992 but may well face a leadership challenge from the right before 1997.
 
Heseltine would certainly win in 1992, and likely by a slightly bigger margin than Major. Not past 40-45 seats I would guess - if that - but bigger all the same. Winning the Gulf War would fit excellently into the image he liked to cultivate, and I don't see serious difficulties before 1992. The poll boost would be too big, and the right too discredited.

After 1992 he is going to face exactly the same pressures Major faced, but magnified. Things will hit the rocks then in a very big way. Major could just about keep the eurosceptic right on board, but Heseltine is not going to order things in the same way. The core of the right will still hate him for deposing Thatcher and Europe would be the trigger for the backlash.
 
Oh, and your analysis of why Major won is the pop one but it's not actually the correct one. The anti-right vote didn't collapse, it grew. Hurd and Hez combined recieved about 185 while Hez had only got about 150 in the first round. This on, I believe, a decreased turnout in the second round.

Major won because he was able to hold the right of the party, but also the centre/opportunist vote and some of the left from bolting to Heseltine. Major was endorsed by Thatcher, but the fact that the leadership election was happening at all should tell you all you need to know about how most MPs handled that kind of recommendation at the time. Even before he became PM Major was well regarded by all sections of the party, something which he cultivated, and he drew on that to good effect when his chance came. People on the right thought they were getting continuity and people on the left thought they were getting counter-revolution, and ultimately of course neither really ended up getting either.

If Major had been a Parkinson or a Portillo this process almost certainly wouldn't have happened, and Heseltine would have won. A crucial point but often overlooked.
 
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