The Anglo-Saxon Social Model
- Thread starter Rattigan
- Start date
Although the scale of the protests was not, in truth, all that dramatic (compared to similar recent movements in France and Africa), the sight of a cross-generational and cross-class protest movement springing up across all of the UK’s ten nations spooked the government into a rapid retreat.
I know this isn't the main point of the fascinating post but my eye was drawn by the mention of the UK's ten nations. I've probably missed something on the previous pages but what are they? England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland...Northern Ireland? Cornwall? That's six but are the devolved/federal regions of England also known as 'nations'?
I know this isn't the main point of the fascinating post but my eye was drawn by the mention of the UK's ten nations. I've probably missed something on the previous pages but what are they? England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland...Northern Ireland? Cornwall? That's six but are the devolved/federal regions of England also known as 'nations'?
Yes, the 'nations' refer to the devolved assemblies (so Ireland, Scotland, Wales, South-West England, South-East England, Greater London, East Anglia, the Midlands, North-West England and North-East England). It would be wrong to say that all of the devolved assemblies in England have developed a strong sense of nationhood but that's how they're referred to for the sake of simplicity.
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So what about British and Commonwealth in Africa and the developing world? Has there been any trend of outsourcing of technical industries to South Asia or Eastern Asia?
The main manufacturing powers in the Commonwealth are Pakistan, Ceylon, Sarawak and East Asia (Pakistan, in particular, is the workshop of the Commonwealth). It wouldn't be true to take my comment about the other member states having little manufacturing capability too literally because of course they all do with the share of industry in most member states' economies hovering at somewhere between 5-25% of GDP and all the economies being mixed, developed market(ish) economies by 2019. (By contrast, in Pakistan the relevant figure is about 40-50% depending on how well the rest of the country is doing).
Outsourcing as we would understand it OTL isn't really as much of a thing in TTL's Commonwealth for a bunch of reasons but the most notable of which are (i) the general subordination of capital finance to the political system and (ii) the Companies Act 1950 (the basis of all subsequent Commonwealth companies law) enshrining directors' responsibilities as including wider factors rather than just shareholder value, both of which serve to discourage an aggressive race to the bottom. (A more direct kind of outsourcing as in OTL occurred to an extent in the FU, with French companies outsourcing to the African members.) But, as you can see, Sarawak does have a notably lower standard of living than some other member states so having to pay lower wages will no doubt have paid a part in manufacturing industries moving factories there.
One of the 'problems' of the way the devolved assemblies were handed out in England is that a lot of them don't really cover 'natural' or historic' territories. I was toying with the idea of retconning South-West England to Wessex, the Midlands to 'Mercia' and North-East England to 'Northumbria' but couldn't really come up with a territories that would sensibly cover some of the other divisions.
When I’ve wondered similar things I include North Western in Northumbria, let Yorkshire stand on its own (or Greater Yorkshire so Humberside doesn’t feel left out), then East Anglia just becomes Anglia and... I don’t know for SE. Saxonia? Greater Sussex? Meridia?
I thought about Greater Sussex as the name for the SE but that didn’t seem right if the devolved assembly is in Portsmouth. I suppose I could move it to Hove...
Good shout on the NE and NW. I suppose it could work to incorporate Lincolnshire into a thicc Yorkshire...
I will definitely tinker around with this at some point.
Why do they have to have historic names at all?
Incredibly boring names that only a technocrat could have come up with FTW!
Incredibly boring names that only a technocrat could have come up with FTW!
Third Cooper Ministry (2023-2024)
The Party's Over: Operation Car Wash
The results threw up another majority for Labour, albeit a reduced one of 25. But the party had worked with that kind of majority before and party strategists were confident that a kind of institutional memory would help to see them through. Yvette Cooper could personally take some credit for leading the party to a third successive election victory, putting her in the exalted company of Clement Attlee and Barbara Castle. Certainly, for a government midway through its ninth year in power and with a largely stagnant economy it was a notable achievement, even if much of the party’s present success could be laid at the feet of a divided opposition.
But, like the swan looking graceful above the surface while its feet paddle furiously underneath, the real results were far more ambiguous for both Labour and the British political system as a whole. In the first place, a Parliament where opposition took the form of five political parties each with over 30 seats indicated, especially in the mixed-FPTP environment of the UK, a widespread and diffuse opposition to Labour. Indeed, it was notable that 8 of Labour’s lost seats were list seats, even as they party successfully got its vote out enough to keep hold of constituency ones. It was clear that a radical reconfiguring of British politics was going on: the Libertarians and Conservatives were locked in a deathmatch to see who could survive as the party of social libertarianism, small government and intellectual radicalism but it was clear that whoever did survive would have more of a constituency than had previously been thought possible; the Liberals were also becoming a more European-style centre-right party, with many of the party’s liberal-left MPs and supporters moving to the swelling ranks of the Progressives; the Progressives, for their part, were developing a distinct culture close to that of Labour but without Labour’s streak of workerist trades unionism that was attractive to many Labour members and supporters who were growing uneasy about the increasing brutality of the party’s machine politics and electoral strategy; finally, the combined Celtic parties seemed to have successfully used their pooled data and funds to make a decisive breakthrough, with all of Cornwall now its territory and notable breakthroughs in northern Wales, western Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, meaning that constitutional questions looked to be set to play an important role in British politics for the first time in over a century.
Meanwhile, the investigation into Jalil was bearing some fruit. In June 2023, he entered into a plea bargain with the Metropolitan Police and the CPS, widening the scope of the probe to investigate corruption in a number of British and Commonwealth construction and energy firms. Codenamed Operation Car Wash, the police targeted nine major firms as well as, most importantly, the politicians involved in them. Doubtless the investigation was helped by the telegenic and charismatic chief investigator Keith Palmer and his supporters in the media, the most notable of whom was the Anglo-American Heather Brooke. In February 2024,Car Wash ‘bagged’ its first notable figure, arresting the Labour MP Richard Burgon for accepting a bribe from a Leeds-based energy firm during his tenure as an Undersecretary in the Ministry of Supply between 2018 and 2019.
Never considered an especially promising talent within the party, Burgon’s tenure in ministerial office had been undistinguished before being sent back to the backbenches after only thirteen months. It was in this context that the Labour leadership seems to have felt comfortable in dropping him unceremoniously. The day after his arrest, Cooper told a press conference that Burgon had been “a bad apple” and that she welcomed “the work of the police in cleaning him out of the party.” However, as relatively unimpressive a politician as Burgon had been, he was a loyal one who had submissively taken the Labour whip and he was dismayed by his treatment. In response to what he saw as the party’s betrayal, he began to cooperate with the police’s enquiries.
Beginning in April, the police began to make further arrests of industry figures and politicians on charges of corruption. The most notable were two prominent Labour select committee chairs, Caroline Flint and Chris Leslie, and the Scottish Secretary Nicola Sturgeon, all of whom were arrested in dawn raids witnessed by journalists who had been notified beforehand. The targeting of Labour figures attracted attention and criticism by Labour-friendly figures in civil society, pointing out that Liberal figures had been arrested on far larger charges pursuant to the Leveson Inquiry without attracting a similar level of public interest and hinting darkly at an anti-Labour conspiracy behind Car Wash. Certainly, it was true that Edward Davey (Commonwealth Secretary under Ahern, Supply Minister under Clegg and a prominent figure in both Varadkar’s and Allen’s Shadow Cabinets) was arrested in relation to a series of kickbacks received from construction companies in return for privately lobbying for that company to receive preferential planning decisions, probably a more serious crime than the relatively minor bribes and directorships received by Leslie, Flint and Sturgeon.
But, in reality, most of the focus on Labour was just pragmatism on the part of the police: given the fiasco of the Leveson Inquiry and Bertie Ahern’s resignation, a certain amount of corruption within the Liberals was priced in by the public; and, if the police really was a hotbed of anti-Labour conspiracism, then it was odd that they had waited until the 2020s to act on this. The fact was that Labour had got very tightly embedded within the British business and financial community and that this had resulted in some cases of open corruption. The real question was what the party’s reaction to these events should be.
On 4 March 2024, before the main rush of arrests, Car Wash had raided the home of the former SWF chairman Anthony Blair, who had previously served as a Labour minister in Beckett’s first term. Blair was subsequently detained for questioning before being released under caution. Questions were raised at the time about Blair’s potential involvement in illegal bribes and collaboration between the SWF, the Bank of England and the political and economic objectives of Labour and Labour-connected figures. Nevertheless, Blair’s role in Car Wash was of comparatively little interest until he was discovered dead at his home on 2 September 2024. Discovered alongside his body was a suicide note, asserting that his corruption crimes were committed for the party’s benefit and at its direction.
These were, by this stage, standard enough defences for those caught up in Car Wash to deploy. But what was more dramatic was what was found underneath the note. Before his suicide Blair had collated together files and recordings of calls and emails regarding what, it became apparent, was an attempt by senior Labour figures to find ways to exculpate Blair from the investigation’s sights, including a truly bizarre plan to get him a professorship at the University of Chile where he would, in theory, be immune from prosecution. Most damagingly, one of the recordings revealled that Cooper’s chief of staff, George Eaton, was on at least one of the calls. On the 13 September, the coroner returned a verdict of suicide and ordered the publication of the note and recordings. Eaton resigned before lunchtime and surrendered himself for questioning by police.
In response, Cooper cracked the whip and the majority of the Labour parliamentary party closed ranks around her in the face of relentless assaults from the five opposition parties and the press. However, on 2 December details of Eaton’s interviews with police began leaking out, which suggested that Cooper had given an at least implicit okay to the attempts to protect Blair. Her position now untenable, Cooper resigned with immediate effect three days later. Somewhat surprisingly, not least to him, the otherwise-unremarkable Lord President, Douglas Alexander, was catapulted to the leadership of both his party and his country.
The results threw up another majority for Labour, albeit a reduced one of 25. But the party had worked with that kind of majority before and party strategists were confident that a kind of institutional memory would help to see them through. Yvette Cooper could personally take some credit for leading the party to a third successive election victory, putting her in the exalted company of Clement Attlee and Barbara Castle. Certainly, for a government midway through its ninth year in power and with a largely stagnant economy it was a notable achievement, even if much of the party’s present success could be laid at the feet of a divided opposition.
But, like the swan looking graceful above the surface while its feet paddle furiously underneath, the real results were far more ambiguous for both Labour and the British political system as a whole. In the first place, a Parliament where opposition took the form of five political parties each with over 30 seats indicated, especially in the mixed-FPTP environment of the UK, a widespread and diffuse opposition to Labour. Indeed, it was notable that 8 of Labour’s lost seats were list seats, even as they party successfully got its vote out enough to keep hold of constituency ones. It was clear that a radical reconfiguring of British politics was going on: the Libertarians and Conservatives were locked in a deathmatch to see who could survive as the party of social libertarianism, small government and intellectual radicalism but it was clear that whoever did survive would have more of a constituency than had previously been thought possible; the Liberals were also becoming a more European-style centre-right party, with many of the party’s liberal-left MPs and supporters moving to the swelling ranks of the Progressives; the Progressives, for their part, were developing a distinct culture close to that of Labour but without Labour’s streak of workerist trades unionism that was attractive to many Labour members and supporters who were growing uneasy about the increasing brutality of the party’s machine politics and electoral strategy; finally, the combined Celtic parties seemed to have successfully used their pooled data and funds to make a decisive breakthrough, with all of Cornwall now its territory and notable breakthroughs in northern Wales, western Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, meaning that constitutional questions looked to be set to play an important role in British politics for the first time in over a century.
Meanwhile, the investigation into Jalil was bearing some fruit. In June 2023, he entered into a plea bargain with the Metropolitan Police and the CPS, widening the scope of the probe to investigate corruption in a number of British and Commonwealth construction and energy firms. Codenamed Operation Car Wash, the police targeted nine major firms as well as, most importantly, the politicians involved in them. Doubtless the investigation was helped by the telegenic and charismatic chief investigator Keith Palmer and his supporters in the media, the most notable of whom was the Anglo-American Heather Brooke. In February 2024,Car Wash ‘bagged’ its first notable figure, arresting the Labour MP Richard Burgon for accepting a bribe from a Leeds-based energy firm during his tenure as an Undersecretary in the Ministry of Supply between 2018 and 2019.
Never considered an especially promising talent within the party, Burgon’s tenure in ministerial office had been undistinguished before being sent back to the backbenches after only thirteen months. It was in this context that the Labour leadership seems to have felt comfortable in dropping him unceremoniously. The day after his arrest, Cooper told a press conference that Burgon had been “a bad apple” and that she welcomed “the work of the police in cleaning him out of the party.” However, as relatively unimpressive a politician as Burgon had been, he was a loyal one who had submissively taken the Labour whip and he was dismayed by his treatment. In response to what he saw as the party’s betrayal, he began to cooperate with the police’s enquiries.
Beginning in April, the police began to make further arrests of industry figures and politicians on charges of corruption. The most notable were two prominent Labour select committee chairs, Caroline Flint and Chris Leslie, and the Scottish Secretary Nicola Sturgeon, all of whom were arrested in dawn raids witnessed by journalists who had been notified beforehand. The targeting of Labour figures attracted attention and criticism by Labour-friendly figures in civil society, pointing out that Liberal figures had been arrested on far larger charges pursuant to the Leveson Inquiry without attracting a similar level of public interest and hinting darkly at an anti-Labour conspiracy behind Car Wash. Certainly, it was true that Edward Davey (Commonwealth Secretary under Ahern, Supply Minister under Clegg and a prominent figure in both Varadkar’s and Allen’s Shadow Cabinets) was arrested in relation to a series of kickbacks received from construction companies in return for privately lobbying for that company to receive preferential planning decisions, probably a more serious crime than the relatively minor bribes and directorships received by Leslie, Flint and Sturgeon.
But, in reality, most of the focus on Labour was just pragmatism on the part of the police: given the fiasco of the Leveson Inquiry and Bertie Ahern’s resignation, a certain amount of corruption within the Liberals was priced in by the public; and, if the police really was a hotbed of anti-Labour conspiracism, then it was odd that they had waited until the 2020s to act on this. The fact was that Labour had got very tightly embedded within the British business and financial community and that this had resulted in some cases of open corruption. The real question was what the party’s reaction to these events should be.
On 4 March 2024, before the main rush of arrests, Car Wash had raided the home of the former SWF chairman Anthony Blair, who had previously served as a Labour minister in Beckett’s first term. Blair was subsequently detained for questioning before being released under caution. Questions were raised at the time about Blair’s potential involvement in illegal bribes and collaboration between the SWF, the Bank of England and the political and economic objectives of Labour and Labour-connected figures. Nevertheless, Blair’s role in Car Wash was of comparatively little interest until he was discovered dead at his home on 2 September 2024. Discovered alongside his body was a suicide note, asserting that his corruption crimes were committed for the party’s benefit and at its direction.
These were, by this stage, standard enough defences for those caught up in Car Wash to deploy. But what was more dramatic was what was found underneath the note. Before his suicide Blair had collated together files and recordings of calls and emails regarding what, it became apparent, was an attempt by senior Labour figures to find ways to exculpate Blair from the investigation’s sights, including a truly bizarre plan to get him a professorship at the University of Chile where he would, in theory, be immune from prosecution. Most damagingly, one of the recordings revealled that Cooper’s chief of staff, George Eaton, was on at least one of the calls. On the 13 September, the coroner returned a verdict of suicide and ordered the publication of the note and recordings. Eaton resigned before lunchtime and surrendered himself for questioning by police.
In response, Cooper cracked the whip and the majority of the Labour parliamentary party closed ranks around her in the face of relentless assaults from the five opposition parties and the press. However, on 2 December details of Eaton’s interviews with police began leaking out, which suggested that Cooper had given an at least implicit okay to the attempts to protect Blair. Her position now untenable, Cooper resigned with immediate effect three days later. Somewhat surprisingly, not least to him, the otherwise-unremarkable Lord President, Douglas Alexander, was catapulted to the leadership of both his party and his country.
And Blair gets to ruin Labour ITTL, too.
(Only ITTL, he's paying with his own life...)
(Only ITTL, he's paying with his own life...)
Interesting chapter there.
Odd that I read of Blair's suicide and was rather saddened by it as ITTL he was hardly a big name. It seemed like it could have been anyone else here.
I see massive fallout for Labour here, but given the fractured opposition then I cannot see them as being out of government any time soon.
Odd that I read of Blair's suicide and was rather saddened by it as ITTL he was hardly a big name. It seemed like it could have been anyone else here.
I see massive fallout for Labour here, but given the fractured opposition then I cannot see them as being out of government any time soon.
And the plot thickens! Really enjoying this TL.
Let’s see if I can guess where this is going and put it here so my hubris can be on public record when I’m inevitably wrong.
This is far more serious than Ahern - it seems like the Labour Party is being revealed as almost endemically corrupt given its reach into the establishment. We have plenty of examples of parties like that being able to survive quite happily (oft mentioned LDP of Japan) but your response to my earlier questions about the Co-Op party makes me think this is a fatal moment.
Labour is set up as a broad tent held together by a technocratic managerialism. That’s taken two massive blows (the other being the economic system turning a page), and ideological tensions about how to respond are now going to be too much to constrain with the massive weakening of the leadership and the Rogers-Beckett-Cooper school of thought to cope.
So big question is is there a preceding election and when that is? Labour are right at the start of a term and have a majority but it only needs a handful to splinter off to swing a vote of no confidence. So this bit I’m less certain about but let’s say year or so of grumbling and discontent in Labour with Alexander not doing a great job in a near impossible situation. Enough defections are made (either a new party, to the Progressives by people seeing writing on the wall, or both) that Labour loses a VoNC and gets hammered in the election, leading to a broad and slightly too wide coalition or ultra complicated Irish style deal led by Heidi Alexander and mass ruptions in the Labour movement into let’s say... three parties?
Hilarity ensues.
Let’s see if I can guess where this is going and put it here so my hubris can be on public record when I’m inevitably wrong.
This is far more serious than Ahern - it seems like the Labour Party is being revealed as almost endemically corrupt given its reach into the establishment. We have plenty of examples of parties like that being able to survive quite happily (oft mentioned LDP of Japan) but your response to my earlier questions about the Co-Op party makes me think this is a fatal moment.
Labour is set up as a broad tent held together by a technocratic managerialism. That’s taken two massive blows (the other being the economic system turning a page), and ideological tensions about how to respond are now going to be too much to constrain with the massive weakening of the leadership and the Rogers-Beckett-Cooper school of thought to cope.
So big question is is there a preceding election and when that is? Labour are right at the start of a term and have a majority but it only needs a handful to splinter off to swing a vote of no confidence. So this bit I’m less certain about but let’s say year or so of grumbling and discontent in Labour with Alexander not doing a great job in a near impossible situation. Enough defections are made (either a new party, to the Progressives by people seeing writing on the wall, or both) that Labour loses a VoNC and gets hammered in the election, leading to a broad and slightly too wide coalition or ultra complicated Irish style deal led by Heidi Alexander and mass ruptions in the Labour movement into let’s say... three parties?
Hilarity ensues.