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alternatehistory.com
Introduction
Imagine a world where Oswald Mosley imposed a Fascist dictatorship in the UK. Imagine a world where Britain voted to leave the EU in the 1992 referendum. Imagine a world where Donald Trump or Pat Buchanan became President in 2000. We’ve got it pretty good here in the real world.
Because we have it pretty good, we can afford to indulge the flights of fancy of people who sacrifice their political careers for principled obscurity. We can afford, for instance, to vote for Plaid Cymru because we believe in an Independent Wales, or for One Nation because we believe in Britain as part of a project towards a European nation-state. And because we don’t live in a dystopia, we can afford to waste our votes in this ludicrous First Past the Post system and contribute to sending a wider variety of voices to Westminster. I tend to do this: I vote for the Democrats back home in New Zealand, and although they haven’t won a seat since 2005, they’ve come closer than any other third party recently.
Voters like me - comfortable, middle class, shat on by Tories and shovelled up by Labour - are what the principled leaders of these third parties survive on. We can be persuaded to be adventurous with our votes, because our lives and livelihoods won’t be cast to the four winds if the wrong party gets in. But it must be galling for those leaders to be so alone, so dependent on those with whom they do not see eye to eye.
They see our reality as a dystopia. They imagine a world where Lord Clegg is Prime Minister, where Scotland is Independent, or where Oswald Mosley imposed a Fascist dictatorship.
In the Summer of 2016, I went to meet some of them.