Henry Plumb (Centre-Liberal coalition)
1978-1981
The Outsider
Charles Henry Plumb was born in 1925 on a small family farm in rural Warwickshire, and at the time it would seem he was no more likely to become Prime Minister than he was to become Emperor of Japan. However, history works in peculiar ways, and seldom has it worked in ways more peculiar than those that would lead Henry Plumb to Number 10. On his father's death in 1952, Plumb took over the family farm, and gradually became involved in farmers' advocacy organisations, culminating with his election as Deputy President of the National Farmers' Union in 1966. Normally this was not a position that aroused much media attention, but by a stroke of chance, a massive foot-and-mouth outbreak occurred immediately after Plumb's election, and the 41-year-old Midlands farmer came to national attention as the man who solved the crisis by recommending a ban on the import of meat from countries where the disease was endemic.
Rather than run for President in 1970, Plumb stood for Parliament for the Centre Party, and when the leader Lord Amory retired in 1971, he was elected as the new leader. The precarious situation after the 1975 general election saw him narrowly retain his position as Opposition Leader, and while he had little of National leader Keith Joseph's flamboyance or ideological fervour, he struck an image as a competent potential Prime Minister and as a man of the people. The 1978 general election campaign played heavily on this aspect of his character, and a now-infamous statement by Anthony Wedgwood-Benn to the effect that “a man whose main political achievement is curing sick cows is hardly fit to lead the nation” was roundly mocked as elitist. In that election, Labour ended up losing power decisively.
However, none of the three right-wing parties had a clear mandate to succeed him. True, Keith Joseph's electioneering had brought the Nationals to their strongest position in years, but that still only meant parity with the Centre, and the Liberals weren't far behind either of them. It was, however, abundantly clear that Keith Joseph was not going to be Prime Minister. The other two parties had campaigned on distinctly centrist platforms, and their voters likely wouldn't countenance such a radical man. Nor was it likely for the Liberals, the smallest of the three, to take the premiership. This left Plumb, who was open to compromise with both the other parties and had proved himself an amiable enough man during the campaign. He formed a coalition cabinet with the Liberals, backed by the Nationals, and set about the business of government.
One point where the three parties could agree was that of lowering tax rates and simplifying the tax system – in 1979 a bill was passed to abolish National Insurance, merging it with the respective taxes it supplemented and raising them almost, but not quite, to parity with the old standard. To prevent the kind of insane marginal tax rates seen under Labour – where it was theoretically possible for a self-employed person with sufficient income to pay above 100 percent of their income – a cap was set at 75 percent of income. In most other fields, however, the Plumb government was exactly as moderate as it had pledged to be. Its main economic priority was saving British industry from ruin – to this end, it pumped large amounts of money into subsidising the nationalised industries. This evidently worked, as the balance of trade figures went closer and closer to the green with each passing year – however, inflation remained rather on the high side. The industrial disputes that had plagued the Benn ministry returned, with the increasingly-militant unions conducting a number of wildcat strikes across the summer of 1980. Plumb appealed for peace, but to little avail.
Other than that, things were chugging along fairly well, and as it turned out, a non-Labour government wouldn't mean a return to the days of the Depression. However, the disunity of the governing parties was constantly looming in the background, and came to the fore in the spring of 1980, when the Prairie Island nuclear power plant in Red Wing, Minnesota suffered a meltdown that caused massive damage to its local environment. Anti-nuclear protests, which had been a fixture of British political life since the first reactors were taken online, became more vociferous than ever, and the Centre Party was known to sympathise with them. The Nationals, however, were perhaps the most strongly pro-nuclear party in Britain. When Plumb proposed to settle the matter in a referendum, Joseph withdrew his support from the government, and Plumb was forced to resign as Prime Minister. His successor was perhaps even less likely than him...
