So, outside of Britain/Ireland, what countries still have property requirements for elections ITTL?
The Empire Parnell Built
- Thread starter Rattigan
- Start date
What sort of threshold of property qualification? Does that mean that someone couldn't vote just because they still live with their parents?
Most countries in the British Empire have formal requirements, with the exception of Canada, South Africa and the various Australasian countries . Most countries in Asia and mainland Europe have some requirements too. The universal franchise is kind of seen as a thing those kooky American republics do.
I don’t have my notes on me now so I can’t remember the exact amount but basically you have to either own or rent property valued at or above a certain amount. So, yeah, if you’re still living with your parents you wouldn’t be entitled to vote. (In practice your parents could charge you a notional rent to stay in their property.)
So, basically, if you want to vote, guess you have to move out of your home and find a new home.
Are there still university seats in the UK?
How, then, does anyone prove that they can vote? Do they need to present title deeds or a written tenancy agreement to the electoral registry?
Yes to university seats. There are seats for Oxford (2), Cambridge (2), London (2), Combined English universities (2), Edinburgh and St Andrew’s (2), Glasgow and Aberdeen (2), Combined Scottish (2) and Combined Welsh (2). You are entitled to vote for those constituencies as long as you graduate from those universities, in addition to any other votes you have. That means that, for example, an American citizen who graduated from Oxford could vote in the Oxford constituency, as could a British graduate who doesn’t fulfill the property ownership qualifications otherwise.
To prove you can vote you have to provide proof of tenancy or ownership of property in a particular constituency to the local authority when you move on.
Does this mean that the Lords Spiritual have been abolished? Or are spiritual representative peers elected by the General Synod or Church Assembly or the like?
No, the Lords Spiritual remain. They consist of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and 24 others chosen by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The slight wrinkle TTL is that any bishop of the Anglican Communion is entitled to be selected to serve, although in practice only English or Welsh (and very occasionally Irish) ones have been chosen. As in OTL, by now the Lords Spiritual do not take a party whip but do vote like normal members of the chamber.
Because we're on the topic, the Law Lords don't exist as in OTL. All members of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (the OTL institution but TTL with expanded powers as the court of final appeal for the whole Empire) are given a British peerage but they are not entitled to stand for election to the Lords while serving on the court, although they can vote in Lords elections.
Last edited:
What are the main voter bases of the All-India League, the Liberals, and Swaraj in terms of what sectors of Indian society are more likely to vote for them and what regions they're most popular in?
Anything happening in Spain? But for the 1930 coup, nothing seems to happen down there.
In general terms:
- All-India League - a broad church catch-all soft-nationalist party. Its policy platforms generally support Indian unity, the promotion of Hindustani and maintaining India's strong military tradition. The party is generally more populist and economically interventionist than the Liberals, but in a fairly non-ideological way. It supports a continued close relationship with the British Empire but is sometimes more ambiguous on this than the Liberals, and League prime ministers tend to try and throw their weight around in imperial matters a bit more. The party is also skeptical of civil liberties and has authoritarian tendencies. As a catch all party, it's kind of hard to say where its "voter base" is, as such, although its leaders have generally been drawn from the Punjabi Muslim population (but the party is staunchly non-sectarian).
- Liberal Party - originally your standard liberal conservative party, by the 1960s it is moving towards a more socially liberal position too. It regards itself as the party of fiscal rectitude and generally supports low taxes and small businesses, although because they, in practice, are only able to enter government with the help of Swaraj, these commitments are tempered somewhat. The party takes a strong pro-imperial stance but its leaders are often criticised by the League as being overly subservient to the British. Its support base comes from a mixture of traditional conservative voters - the zamindars, conservative smallholders etc - with the increasing addition of some urban intellectuals attracted by their increasing social liberalism.
- Swaraj - the closest you have to a traditional party of the centre-left, with all the usual commitments to workers rights and links with trades unions that you'd expect. At the same time, it is also very strongly socially conservative and deeply influenced by Hindu social teaching. The impression that the party is kind of a cover for Hindu sectarianism is, combined with the restricted franchise, a big reason why they remain a firmly third party.
Yes and no. If you're a Liberal member or supporter then you'd struggle to find a republican amongst them, although they did support the decision to appoint an Indian-born viceroy (partly for ideological reasons but also because it was a convenient way of getting rid of Khizar). Republicanism is more common in the League, although not generally among the top brass and even then most members and supporters aren't that exercised about it. (For reference, think about something like the prevalence of republicanism in the OTL UK Labour Party.) But as a nationalist party the League does pursue some important symbolic policies like having an Indian-born viceroy and mandating that Indians sit on the boards of Indian branches of imperial companies. It's much more common amongst Swaraj, for obvious reasons, but again it's never seen as something important enough for it to become a big question in coalition negotiations or anything like that.
I had originally planned to go into Spain in much more detail but decided to cut that back because this whole project was getting close to being too big and Spain isn't that much of a politically important country TTL anyway. The basic idea is that there is a succession of liberal moderate governments which are replaced by nationalist military regimes in coups in 1930, 1948, 1962, 1968, 1975 and 1992. The idea is that it's a bit of a parody of 19th century Spain mixed in with the worst case scenario for OTL Latin American countries.
Last edited:
I really like your Argentina as France analogue. Do voters there tend to detest their politicians just as much as the French? lol
What is stopping the Socail Democrats from expanding the francise in the hope that it would gain them voters?
That they're in coalition with the Conservatives, for one thing...
On a more general level, it's important to remember that TTL British culture hasn't had the pro-democratic shocks of the OTL World Wars. The view of the British ruling classes (of which the Social Democrats are of course a member too) is that the lower classes are kind of like farm animals: of course one should take care of them and be kind but one doesn't have to spend too much time taking their views into account. On the Social Democrats specifically, it's worth taking into account the three parties that make up the alliance: the Radicals are basically Fabian Socialists; Labour is the political wing of the unions; and the Co-operatives represent small-business owners and coops. In a more paternalistic political culture, the votes of the final 15-20% of the unenfranchised isn't considered particularly relevant to those three groups' political aims.