The Anglo-Saxon Social Model

Idealistically, in my opinion, Nuclear Disarmament might be possible if circumstances are right. That said, there's nothing to stop the nuclear powers to amend the agreement or one of the powers to pull out later.
 
French Revolution of 1993
The Holy Innocents: The Triumph and Failure of the French Fifth Republic
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Jean Marie Le Pen addressing the nation, December 1995


During Raymond Barre's premiership, France had entered into an economic boom which had persisted, with some minor ups and downs, over the course of the 1970s and 1980s. As we have seen elsewhere, although Socialist presidents (Francois Mitterrand in 1975-80 and again in 1985-90) and premiers (Jacques Delors in 1980-88) were periodically elected, they had failed to fundamentally alter the ‘neoliberal’ settlement beyond tinkering on the sidelines. For a time, economic growth was impressive and, in the context of the stagnation of the Commonwealth in the 1970s, many suggested that France’s model should be emulated. (Indeed, this was basically the economic argument for voting for Thatcher in 1976.) The same could be said for the other countries in the French Union, which did experience substantial economic growth, even if critics noted that it remained vastly unevenly distributed, most Africans continued to live in poverty and government was almost entirely under the control of a corrupt, Francophilic elite.

The Republicans returned to unified control of both the Elyse Palace and the Hotel Matignon in December 1990 when Edouard Balladur won the presidency and Pascal Salin won a second term as Premier in the November 1992 elections. Almost immediately, however, trouble began. Starting in July 1993, the economy entered a serious downward trajectory. Although the proximate cause of the crisis was what was known as the European savings and loans crisis (an interconnected series of failures in loan associations which affected Spain, Catalonia, Italy, Austria, Bavaria, Hanover and the Benelux too), the crisis hit particularly hard in France, where excessive fiscal laxity (in particular Salin’s first budget in 1989) helped to unleash an inflationary spiral.

This in turn caused a severe credit contraction which had dire consequences for the French public. To compensate for the skimpy social security provided by the French state, the living standards and consumption habits of the French people had been maintained through the loosening of credit regulations, making credit available to a greater number of the poor and middle class. Meanwhile, wealthier Frenchmen got wealthier through the expansion of derivatives and futures markets that had made Paris such a financial hub. As the academic Colin Crouch has noted, the system bore many superficial resemblances to the Keynesian model that had obtained in the UK in the 1930s. The key difference was that individuals, rather than the government, took on debt to stimulate the economy. In addition to a highly-leveraged housing market, the most obvious physical manifestation of this ‘privatised Keynesianism’ was the proliferation of credit card schemes, both from banks and store-specific ones. In this context, it is easy to see how the ‘credit crunch’ of 1993 rapidly became a secular problem for the French economy.

Governments in the other member states of the French Union tended to be more interventionist and directorial than the one in Paris but consumption in metropolitan France very much underpinned the economic health of the whole block (a persistent problem in its functioning that political elites had proved incapable or unwilling to alter since the 1950s). This meant that the slowdown in the French economy lead almost immediately to recession abroad too. Inflation in France hit 15% and unemployment hovered around 10%, accompanied by widespread company bankruptcies (corporate earnings fell by 25%). In response, waves of civil unrest broke out over the autumn.

The most notable source of unrest was a movement led by students and left wing activists of various stripes. Although they had been able to occasionally elect Socialist politicians, they were held back by a combination of gerrymandered legislative districts and their poor geographical spread. To them, the recession was conclusive proof of the failures of Barre's ‘neoliberal’ system and, despairing of a democratic way of removing the Republicans, saw this as their chance, perhaps their only chance, to remove them through other means. A general strike on 13 September saw workers take control of Paris and other large cities, effectively shutting down the French economy. An attempt at mediation between the government and the protestors over the next two weeks floundered for a number of reasons, not least the decentralised leadership of the protestors - the crushing of the centralised French trades union movement in the 1970s now looked shortsighted as it left the government with no-one to negotiate with. The attempt at negotiation was therefore abandoned after a fortnight. The following day, 28 September, Balladur and Salin agreed to postpone the scheduled meeting of the council of ministers and both made their own, separate, ways out of Paris. Balladur fled to Rome, Salin to Brussels.

It appears that both Salin and Balladur initially sought to encourage NATO aid to help them return to power. However, when their flight became known, on 30 September, the Socialist leader Oskar Lafontaine declared that there was ‘no more state’ in France and, consequently, the Fourth Republic had ended and he would form the first government of the Fifth. A new constitution was promulgated on 1 December and Lafontaine was elected to the presidency the following month. The complete collapse and replacement of the entire governing system of a permanent member of the Security Council had occurred in six months. The world was stunned. But it was not to last.

The French left had seized the opportunity of a lifetime and drafted a constitution with a powerful presidency and elections via a general ticket that allowed an informal alliance of the Socialist Party, the PCF and smaller, miscellaneous parties including the leftmost wings of the Radicals to seize control of the levers of government in the first elections in July 1994. In truth, this was hardly harsher than the roadblocks the Republicans had put in place under the Fourth Republic in the form of gerrymandering and the electoral college. However, the thing that most scares people is loss and this certainly was a loss for the French far right. Although the far right had never been quite as in control of the Republicans as many have suggested at the time and since, they nevertheless found themselves with figures around the top table, even as Republican governments since the 1960s had mostly focused on neoliberal economics rather than social and cultural conservatism. But there was no doubt that this seat at the table was now conclusively taken away from them and, unlike their leftwing opponents, they were not willing to wait decades before resorting to extra-parliamentary action. The final spark was a presidential order signed in April 1995, which ordered the abolition of the French Union and called for immediate free elections in the former French Empire.

On 31 May the National Front (“FN”), a newly created mix of political party and paramilitary led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, began a general uprising. A former minister in various Republican governments and long-time member of the legislature, Le Pen was an unashamed member of the cultural far right and had long been ambivalent both about neoliberal economics and the democratic process itself. He was able to mobilise his forces by a full-throated defence of what he saw as French civilization, accusing the Fifth Republic of selling it out to Jews, foreigners and communists. In this, he found unlikely allies in France’s former colonies, who saw the maintenance of the French Union as necessary to secure their positions in their own countries. With the West African President Faure Gnassingbe playing a leading corralling role, troops from the former French African colonies began landing in Marseille in August in support of a general bout of FN terrorist violence across metropolitan France.

Three months later, what members of the Fifth Republic’s government could escape managed to get to the Channel Islands, where they received asylum from the UK. The FN was victorious and in January 1996 promulgated the constitution of the Sixth Republic with Le Pen as president (in effect dictator), which immediately ordered the reinstatement of the French Union as if nothing had happened. Any hope of active support for the Fifth Republic from abroad rapidly dissipated. Le Pen immediately guaranteed the continuation of France’s debt repayments to the Commonwealth and the SWF, as well as her continued abiding by the terms of the Buenos Aires summit (he also played a constructive role in the promulgation of the New York declaration in 1997). The French left would have to await their moment once more.
 
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Mega oof. I read the picture label and knew this was going to be awful. I didn't suspect Le Pen getting support from colonial elites, but it isn't too jarring. It does make sense that if France was successful in buying off the Francophile elites, the non settler colonies would like the arrangement. I expect they also benefit from increased power in the face of a shakier French republic following the aborted revolution and subsequent far right coup.

Though I can't see that lasting forever, Le Pen has no legitimacy and probably no real plan to solve the credit crisis. Which is looking a lot like the OTL 2008 US one, minus the American dominant economic position letting it just do whatever it wants with its debt.

Are you hinting at the French left coming back in some way?
 
Oh yes... La France very much remains insoumise.

Secretary general Melenchon of the French Council Republic? :biggrin:

I imagine this would ultimately give a good boost to the radical elements of the left while weakening the moderate ones. After all, the coup clearly shows the need for the left to be able to take up arms to defend itself.

Maybe the PCF try to reinvent itself? Or maybe the left in exile try to come up with a broad front ahead of time? Though I imagine there would also be grassroot cells left in the country with their own opinion on how things should be run.

Maybe they would also embrace more radical elements in French colonies, since the colonial elites sided with the far right?
 
As I predicted, France is going to hell. I predict a lot of left-wing French exiles following the Fifth Republic's government across the Channel; Canada might be an especially receptive destination. And something tells me that the French Union and the Commonwealth are not going to get along -- and honestly, it's not necessarily a new feeling for either Britain or France. (A Britain that's still a superpower in 1995 needs either France or Germany as its rival, just like in the old days, and Germany's in no position to lift a finger, so... something tells me you had this outcome planned out all along.) Will France wind up the font of TTL's right-wing populism, in whatever form it takes, like Putin's Russia in OTL?

The idea of the elites in the rest of the French Union also has OTL precedent in apartheid South Africa, where the black elites and ruling classes in the bantustans were often, for obvious reasons, a lot more ambivalent about apartheid than the masses rallying behind Mandela. (Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the leader of KwaZulu from 1975 until the end of apartheid, has done a lot to try and whitewash his reputation since.) Doesn't really surprise me to see the native leaders in French Union Africa rallying behind a far-right French nationalist, given that the decolonization supported by the left-wing Fifth Republic would've meant their removal from power.

Also, once the French realize what "FU" means in English, I'd imagine them being very insistent upon "UF" being the preferred acronym for the Union française... which would likely embolden British/Commonwealth (and perhaps American) tabloids even more.
 
I imagine ttl jokes that would say that the only response any journalist or anyone who ask something on Africa and Apartheid would receive is ,,FU''
 
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I imagine ttl jokes that would say that the only response any journalist or anyone who ask something on Africa and Apartheid would receive is ,,FU''

Or another joke of why the french union is unpopular , is because their actual name tells you to go away

How many more of these have you got?

Also, once the French realize what "FU" means in English, I'd imagine them being very insistent upon "UF" being the preferred acronym for the Union française... which would likely embolden British/Commonwealth (and perhaps American) tabloids even more.

TTL the French definitely are insistent on having it spelt that way around. I've kept it as FU so far because that was the acronym I used first in a fit of absence of mind and I thought it was funny as well as consistent to keep it.
 
The General Election of 1996
The Forward March of Liberalism Halted?
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As we have seen, there was a very real sense in which the Lib-Con coalition (commonly referred to as the Steel-Mount because of its prurient sound) was a success in pure legislative terms. In foreign policy, the Buenos Aires Agreement was a truly landmark moment in the closing of the twentieth century and, on the domestic front, the majority of the coalition’s tenure was one of economic growth and reasonable incremental reform. While the recession of 1994-95 was certainly disruptive, and Steel’s antics with the Bank of England left an unpleasant taste in the mouth, the fact was that it was not a terribly deep recession and the country had climbed out of it by the time of the election.

Nevertheless, the Liberal rank and file were divided over what to think of the coalition. On the one hand, the government’s moderate legislative agenda had done much to prove that the Liberals could operate as a ‘normal’ party of government (the recession notwithstanding). But on the other hand, that lack of ambition was precisely what other members, mostly those with Gladstonian sympathies, found frustrating. “A missed opportunity” was apparently a phrase that many Liberal MPs heard at their membership meetings in the run up to the election. Furthermore, Steel’s antics with the Bank of England had left him looking rude and ineffectual, two epithets that internal pollsters were reporting was causing serious problems for the party amongst bourgeois swing voters. For their own part, the Conservatives were reasonably pleased with their performance in office once more, having been insulated from criticism for the recession because of them being placed in non-finance ministries. Despite this, both parties were braced for some losses because of the general rule of electoral politics that the party in power rarely gained seats in a second election.

Following his defeat in 1991, Bill Rodgers had announced his resignation and precipitated a leadership contest. David Owen, who had made the Defence Ministry his own private fiefdom for ten years under Rodgers, immediately stood as the standard bearer of the Labour right, with John Hume standing as the equivalent figure from the party’s left (although many grumbled that he didn’t fully fit this role). Perhaps predictably, however, the contest would be won by a third figure. Margaret Beckett had started out her political life on the hard left but had migrated to the party’s centre over the course of the 1980s, ending Rodgers’ premiership as Chief Whip. Much like Rodgers before her, Beckett was a trans-factional figure with a strong hand on the party’s internal machinery. She and Hume advanced to the second round and she won the final run-off with 58% of the vote.

On ascending to the leadership, Beckett had sacked David Owen from his position at the Shadow Defence brief. Despite this ruthless removal of an otherwise well-known figure, she otherwise surrounded herself with experience - men and women like Shirley Williams, John Hume, Tony Benn, John Smith and Bob Maclennan - to portray an image of Labour as the adults in the room. To supplement this experience, relatively new figures like Tony Blair and Charles Kennedy were also promoted to the Shadow Cabinet.

This mixture of nous and innovation, combined with Labour’s well-oiled election machine, got ahead of the general election narrative early on and never let it go. Cumulative Labour gains on the night of 66 seats gave the party a comfortable majority once more, with over two-thirds of those gains coming directly from the Liberals. The Liberals had been trusted with government once more and had, in the views of many, not justified that trust and the natural party of government was back once more.
 
Following his defeat in 1991, Bill Rodgers had announced his resignation and precipitated a leadership contest. David Owen, who had made the Defence Ministry his own private fiefdom for ten years under Rodgers, immediately stood as the standard bearer of the Labour right, with John Hume standing as the equivalent figure from the party’s left (although many grumbled that he didn’t fully fit this role). Perhaps predictably, however, the contest would be won by a third figure. Margaret Beckett had started out her political life on the hard left but had migrated to the party’s centre over the course of the 1980s, ending Rodgers’ premiership as Chief Whip. Much like Rodgers before her, Beckett was a trans-factional figure with a strong hand on the party’s internal machinery. She and Hume advanced to the second round and she won the final run-off with 58% of the vote.

I think this is really going to be a trend, right? Hasn't basically every Labour leadership election gone that way TTL?

That's probably quite healthy for the party to maintain a large pool of candidate in between the two wings it can pick from to lead it without too large of a divide.
 
Hmmm! Hume and Smith are both very able and Maclennan showed every promise of being so, but Benn when the facts conflicted with the political programme tried to change the facts and Shirley Williams while an excellent hustings politician wasn't very good in Ministerial office. While as for Charles Kennedy... Tony Blair quite bright but never properly seasoned in Ministerial office before being catapulted into the top job. This could be a rather scandal riven administration I fear. Don't forget about Conor Cruise O'Brien, Paddy Devlin or Seamus Mallon from the Irish left.
 
but Benn when the facts conflicted with the political programme tried to change the facts

This is probably quite a good time to talk about how TTL's Benn differs from OTL's. As in OTL, TTL's Benn entered government in the early 1960s as a reforming, modernising technocrat. Unlike OTL, in TTL he doesn't have the problems with the civil service which moved him towards the hard left positions that he became famous for in OTL. By the 1990s TTL he's known as a rather statist, technocratic figure probably somewhere closer to the right of the party (although I wouldn't say that he was an ally of someone like David Owen). Of course, the streak of stubbornness in him is still there and has been a drawback in his career. He was mooted as a potential leadership candidate in 1981 but ultimately declined to stand. The other thing to say is that at this point he's very much an elder statesman of the party and is going to be eased out of ministerial office and out to pasture in the next couple of years.

and Shirley Williams while an excellent hustings politician wasn't very good in Ministerial office.

I think she was probably better than you seem to think but I take your point. TTL she's a big party favourite and is regarded as a good face to have around, as well as being, like Benn, an elder statesman figure by this time.

While as for Charles Kennedy...

Tough stuff for old Charlie K... I definitely think that there are things to say about his leadership of the Lib Dems OTL that don't look so good with hindsight (probably not a topic for this forum). But I think he definitely had talent.

Tony Blair quite bright but never properly seasoned in Ministerial office before being catapulted into the top job.

Bit of light seasoning for TB in TTL.

Don't forget about Conor Cruise O'Brien, Paddy Devlin or Seamus Mallon from the Irish left.

Cruise O'Brien is in the Conservatives TTL, where his heterodox radicalism actually fits quite well with that party's kookier wing. Devlin was Irish First Minister 1980-90. Mallon was also in the Dublin Assembly at around the same time before joining the Westminster Parliament in 1991 and he's currently a junior minister in the Home Office.
 
We also have to take into consideration that as I recall in TL a lot of UK industries are cooperatives of course whether this means trade unions run the industries as a whole or the industry like say car manufacturing is fractured into separate coops run by say workshop democracy where everyone gets a vote on how stuff goes makes a difference. But it means a lot of what Benn suggested such as workplace democracy, greater technical college funding, etc has already been fulfilled to an extent so a lot his positions we consider radical OTL are prob the norm in TL
 
I'm curious if something like Project Cybersyn has been attempted. With soviets being richer and likely having greater computer manufacturing capability I can see something like that being introduced especially in the european countries under its influence
 
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