UK challenge (Post-1945): Get Labour and the Conservatives into one government

Thande

Donor
The challenge, as the title says, is to give the UK, at any point after 1945 when the Conservatives and Labour were definitively established as the two major parties, a government in which both parties participate. And it has to be ALL of each party, or at least only with less than 25% of members dissenting or something like, I don't mean a situation like Ramsay MacDonald where only the immediate leadership of one party crosses the floor.

This government doesn't have to last very long, but it has to be formed. Presumably this would be in reaction to the rise of another large party in Parliament that both Tories and Labour want to keep out of power badly enough to swallow their differences and work together, but who could it be?
 
- Labour wins in the 1970 general election with a small majority, Harold Wilson continues as Prime Minister.
- By 1972, the government is in crisis. Trade union militancy has exploded and the international hike in oil prices has crippled British industry. Foreign Secretary, Roy Jenkins, lauches a coup against a deeply unpopular Wilson and becomes the new Prime Minister. A small core of Labour's hard Left led by Eric Heffer, however, refuses to support a Jenkins government, denying him a majority.
- Jenkins calls an election to recieve a mandate for his leadership, but the election results in a hung parliament, with Labour as the largest party. Labour cannot form a majority with the Liberals, and Jenkins is worried about left-wing opposition to his leadership.
- With the economy pushed into further crisis as the world stock market crashes, Jenkins decides to form a temporary "Government of All the Talents", involving members of the Labour, Conservative and Liberal parties. William Whitelaw, the Conservative leader after Iain Macleod's death in 1971, agrees to join Jenkins in government, as the Conservative Left become increasingly worried about the growing radicalisation of the Labour party.

The Government of All the Talents (October 1972-):

Prime Minister: Roy Jenkins
Deputy Prime Minister and Home Secretary: William Whitelaw
Chancellor of the Exchequer: Denis Healey
Foreign Secretary: Jim Callaghan
Defence Secretary: Edward Heath
Education and Science Secretary: Jeremy Thorpe
Employment Secretary: Barbara Castle
Industry Secretary: Anthony Crosland
Environment Secretary: Jim Prior
Trade Secretary: Reginald Maudling
Transport Secretary: Bill Rodgers
Prices and Consumer Protection Secretary: Lord Carrington
Minister for Overseas Development: Tony Benn
Scotland Secretary: William Ross
Wales Secretary: John Morris
Northern Ireland Secretary: Sir Alec Douglas-Home
Chief Secretary to the Treasury: Robert Carr

- Briefly, the majority of both parties support the government. Yet as time goes on, opposition to the arrangement grows. In January 1973, Barbara Castle and Tony Benn resign from the government, frustrated over its lack of radicalism in responding to the economic crisis. They are replaced in Cabinet by Shirley Williams and Merlyn Rees. In the Conservative Party, more and more MPs are gravitating towards Enoch Powell, who has led a fierce opposition to the coalition.
- In June 1973, the Government of All the Talents fails a vote of confidence in the House of Commons and a general election is called. Whitelaw narrowly survives a leadership election against Powell, but Jenkins is not so lucky, facing a leadership challenge from Tony Benn which leads to the victory of Jim Callaghan who enters the race as a "compromise candidate".
- In the general election of July 1973, William Whitelaw's Conservative Party wins with a majority of 32. Britain's economic problems continue...
 
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Thande

Donor
Does a national emergency count?

It would be pretty much required, but I don't mean a National Government where both parties are in it for national unity, I mean they have to get together just to sustain a majority.
 
It would be pretty much required, but I don't mean a National Government where both parties are in it for national unity, I mean they have to get together just to sustain a majority.

Puts me in mind of an activist in the background of an issue of Future Shocks set in an alternate 1987, shouting "On Thursday vote for the Lab-Con Alliance, the only way to stop the SDP". :D
 
I was going to post this very idea last week. Good to see it's generating some discussion.

Bonus points for Powell and Benn in the same department...
 
- Jenkins calls an election to recieve a mandate for his leadership, but the election results in a hung parliament, with Labour as the largest party. Labour cannot form a majority with the Liberals, and Jenkins is worried about left-wing opposition to his leadership.
Mathematically, this means that the minor parties must hold more seats than the Liberals. Is that reasonable?
 
Something happens to Brown, Blair leads Labour. Kennedy deals with alcohold probs enough to stay in the leadership. Greece not in the Euro of the crisis is popones


2010 election

32% Lib Dem 155 seats

30% Conservative 210 seats

28% Labour 230 seats

Kennedy wants radical green programme to defeat the redession, Blair does deals with tories
 

AndyC

Donor
11 October 1974

"Good afternoon, here is the news. The second General Election of the year has ended in a nearly identical fashion to the first. Mr Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister, increased his number of seats by four, but this still leaves him thirteen seats short of a majority. Although taking seven seats from the Conservatives, Labour lost three to the Liberal Party, who further increased their seat total by picking up two more from the Conservatives.

The Liberal Leader, Mr Jeremy Thorpe, issued a call for Proportional Representation, pointing uot that their six-and-a-half million votes only won them nineteen seats in Parliament.

Mr Heath, Leader of the Conservatives reissued his call for a Government of National Unity to deal with economic conditions and the parlous state of industrial relations"

------------

14th October, 1974

"We have learned today that Mr Thorpe has rejected an as-yet unspecified offer from the Labour Party in respect of the Hung Parliament. His short statement noted that in the absence of a "fair electoral system", the Liberal Party would not support either of the major parties. The pound plummeted as the markets opened this morning, adding to the Prime Minister's woes. A spokesman from the City noted that whoever takes power, the industrial relations situation and the inflation levels would both need urgent addressing and that the international markets had very little confidence that a minority Government would be able to take effective action. Union leaders are expected to react to the forecast of yet higher inflation by issuing further demands for inflation-busting pay deals."

---------

Excerpt from "Realignment: the political crises of the Seventies"

"Despite his reluctance to countenance working with the Conservatives, Harold Wilson was at last convinced that continuing as a minority Government would not be practicable for more than a short period. The Palace had indicated that yet another "cut and run" election in a short period would not be favoured, with the lengthy and diplomatically phrased communication pithily summed up by Tony Benn in his diaries as "The people have told us the composition of Parliament and reiterated it in case we were hard of hearing: it is up to the politicians to make the electorate's expressed will work".

Despondently, nearly nine days after the election, Wilson summoned the Leader of the Opposition to Chequers to thrash out the details of the most unexpected Coalition of the post-war period. Heath's willingness to go along with it was correctly taken as read: he had been calling for a "Government of National Unity" since shortly after the February Election, and it had even been in his manifesto for October. Wilson was well aware of the difficulty he would have in reconciling his Party to working alongside the hated Tories and had blackly mused out loud to his inner circle of Falkender, Haines and Price that he wouldn't be surprised if he was later likened to a latter-day MacDonald.

The Cabinet that came out of the long discussions included:

Prime Minister: Harold Wilson
Foreign Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister: Edward Heath
Chancellor of the Exchequer: James Callaghan
Home Secretary: Willie Whitelaw
Defence Secretary: Denis Healey
Education Secretary: Margaret Thatcher
Employment Secretary: Barbara Castle
Industry Secretary: Geoffrey Howe
Environment Secretary: Roy Jenkins
Trade Secretary: Reginald Maudling
Transport Secretary: Tony Benn
Prices and Consumer Protection Secretary: James Prior
Minister for Overseas Development: Antony Crosland
Chief Secretary to the Treasury: Keith Joseph
....

... The Government was not expected to last for long, with certain members of the Cabinet already making plain their dissatisfaction with affairs ..."
 

Thande

Donor
They wouldn't have called it a hung parliament then (the term only entered the lexicon recently, and if you watch the coverage of the first 1974 election, they never use the term) but otherwise that sounds rather realistic...
 
Basically What If Gordon Banks played without the dystopic ending. Actually it would be interesting to see what this government did - In Place of Strife might be dusted off, leading to interesting events

There was a national government at the end of the Gordon Banks TL anyway, set up to pick up the peaces after Powell left. I imagine that's not quite what you're looking for.

Thinking about it, I do remember reading a TL on here where the 1964 election resulted in a hung parliament. Wilson and Grimmand formed a government and in the meantime, Ian Mcloud became leader of the Conservatives. As part of the deal, Wilson promissed to table a vote on PR-and when it didn't go the liberals way, Grimmand and his party all resigned. Another election resulted in an almost unchanged outlook and Wilson and Mcloud formed a National government.
 
Did it in the Red Dawn universe created here a while back. A National Government is created in '83 after the collapse of NATO. Did it in the TLWverse as well once war broke out.
 
A recent what if ,is if the 2008 crash is worse and if Labour and Tories were closer in the polls,as they were when Brown first became leader and during his honeymoon.If the Tories weren't so confident of victory and crash is worse,Labour may feel the need to call a national goverment t help deal with the situation and also avoid any flak for unpopular decisions.You'd may need to remove Brown and its highly unlikely but it could if the situation was deemed that critical.
 
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