What if Benn had beaten Healey in 1981?

In 1981 the deputy leader of the Labour Party was challenged by the famous left wing firebrand Tony Benn , despite having been elected unopposed the previous year. In OTL of course Healey won but the election was very close - Healey won by 50.4% to Benn's 49.6%. A slight change in the number of votes for Healey or a different proportion of votes allocated in Labour's electoral college could change the result.

So what would the effects of this be ? While I doubt it would lead to any earth shattering changes at first I think it could result in big changes to British politics . This would be another victory for the left at a time when there were already plenty of those. I suspect that the victory would also give Benn and the Bennites more influence over the party. That doesn't look good for Labour -might there be a wave of new defections to the SDP? Would Labour come into 1983 with a manifesto even further to the left, leading to an even greater defeat?
Any thoughts?
 
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Labour possibly does slightly worse in 1983, on account of Healey supporters being alienated and Benn possibly destabilising Foot's leadership. The big question though is whether Benn still stands in the constituency he loses in OTL or whether as deputy leader he stands in a safer constituency. If the latter, Benn is in Parliament post-1983, rather than waiting for a by-election. He then might try to stand against Kinnock in the leadership election, but will lose. Kinnock, however, would have to assert his new leadership with Benn lurking.
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
Labour crashed far harder in 1983. Without Healy, the right of Labour has far less representation, and more people have reason to jump ship. The Manifesto itself will likely still be the same, though, or at the very least follow the same general path it did IoTL.
 
Except that tribal loyalty kicks in: a large chunk of Labour will stick with their party regardless. Ultimately, the SDP is still doomed because of the electoral system, and if you voted Labour in OTL 1983, you'll vote for them in this timeline.
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
Except that tribal loyalty kicks in: a large chunk of Labour will stick with their party regardless. Ultimately, the SDP is still doomed because of the electoral system, and if you voted Labour in OTL 1983, you'll vote for them in this timeline.
You'll have triblism, yes, but as Labour drift off further towards 'the longest suicide note' and 'grotesque chaos', then the SDP/Liberals have a bigger opening and more chance along metropolitan and country marginals. Tribal loyalty only goes so far, and given the numerous near misses and narrow majorities collected during by-elections and the election itself, a Labour that's more heavily influenced by Benn and the Bennites with the right wing locked out in the cold isn't going to have the luck it had during Foot's leadership.

There will be a substantial Labour presence, yes. The SDP/Liberals are unlikely to make a breakthrough into Opposition, obviously, and even if this scenario results in them surpassing Labour in vote count (which wouldn't be hard given the mess Labour would be in this scenario), actually beating them in the seat count is unlikely thanks to that vote being more spread out. However, the Alliance will still make headway, and be in a much better position in 1987.
 
Maybe Benn's victory would trigger a fresh round of defections to the SDP, but I'd imagine the likes of Hattersley, Smith and Healey himself would stick with Labour out of tribalism. The added turmoil might allow the Alliance to jump ahead of them in the popular vote, though of course that won't make a massive difference seat wise.

The most important question is whether Benn's status as deputy leader would land him in a safer seat in 1983. If it does, he probably wouldnt beat Kinnock for the leadership, but he would be enough of a nuisance to escalate the turmoil within the party in the following years if he remained deputy, and I'd imagine the Alliance would beat Labour in the popular vote once again in 1987, and though they would still remain the third largest party in terms of seats, they would be significantly larger than OTL, with around 50-100 seats. Benn would probably be ousted as Deputy as the party began to get sick of him, and Labour would begin to make there way back in 1992, before winning in 1997.

Oddly, I think the biggest change versus OTL would be that the Alliance/Lib Dems would be more successful. They wouldnt displace Labour as the lead opposition, but they would put themselves in a good position to do the same to the Tories if they collapsed in the 90s and early 2000s as they did in OTL.
 
So the general consensus is that Benn winning would be a big blow for Labour and a big boost for the Alliance resulting in a bigger loss in 1983 ,more turmoil during Kinnock's leadership and a worse result in 1987 with the Alliance gaining more votes and seats. But what would happen after 1987? With a second landslide defeat I can't imagine that Kinnock would choose to remain as leader or that the party would let him. Would he be replaced by Benn ,weakening Labour even further? Or would someone like Smith or Hattersley take charge? In the latter case might the party take a harder line on the hard left going after not only the like of Hatton and Nellist but also Corbyn and Livingston and maybe even Skinner and Benn himself?
And what effects , if any would a weaker Labour have on Thatcher's twilight years and her downfall? Europe would still be a big dividing line but I can see the Poll Tax being less of an issue when the coming election doesn't look to be terribly close.
 
So the general consensus is that Benn winning would be a big blow for Labour and a big boost for the Alliance resulting in a bigger loss in 1983 ,more turmoil during Kinnock's leadership and a worse result in 1987 with the Alliance gaining more votes and seats. But what would happen after 1987? With a second landslide defeat I can't imagine that Kinnock would choose to remain as leader or that the party would let him. Would he be replaced by Benn ,weakening Labour even further? Or would someone like Smith or Hattersley take charge? In the latter case might the party take a harder line on the hard left going after not only the like of Hatton and Nellist but also Corbyn and Livingston and maybe even Skinner and Benn himself?
And what effects , if any would a weaker Labour have on Thatcher's twilight years and her downfall? Europe would still be a big dividing line but I can see the Poll Tax being less of an issue when the coming election doesn't look to be terribly close.
If Kinnock went after 1987, I doubt Benn would succeed him. He was decisively defeated in OTL when he ran against Kinnock for the leadership, if he had been making even more of a nuisance of himself for the previous electoral cycle as deputy then the electoral college would be in no mood to make him leader. What I would say is more likely is that he is defeated by someone to the right of him in a concurrent deputy leadership election after Kinnock goes.

It would fall to Smith or Hattersley to make the reforms that Kinnock did if he fails in this TL, but I can't see them going much further and getting rid of the Bennites. They would be on a downward trajectory by that point, but would still account for a few dozen MPs and far more members than Militant, plus there aren't much grounds to expel them. It would be a move that would lose Labour too much when they posed little threat to the leadership.

As for Thatcher, I could see less realistic competition at the next election keeping the Tories from ousting her, and she would continue into 1992, which would hurt the Tories enough for Labour to get to a position to take back power next time around, regardless of whether Thatcher left before then or not.
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
Yeah Kinnock is likely to take over, but he's going to pushed back harder by the Bennites when he tries to begin restructuring. Grotesque Chaos may happen, but Kinnocks going to find it harder to pull the party into Social Democracy, and 1987 will be a mess. At best, Labour can edge out Alliance and dent the Governments Majority somewhat. At worst, the electorate will see Labour as a spent force that was tearing itself apart (not an unfair assessment, truth be told), and the Alliance will be able to make net gains, perhaps even edging Labour out on seat count. As long as Kinnock can keep the Party from slipping into the 100's and have a few gains, he's fine and could probobly hold it as vindication. If not, and he does in fact loose, Benn can come in and say the Party isn't behind him or Social Democracy, leading to a confused message, hence the failure in the election, and thus actually beat him.

Thatcher's downfall will be interesting. Assuming the events still happen- Lawson and Howe resign over Europe, Howe stabs her from he backbenches, someone opens a Leadership contest and Thatcher's Private Secretary bungles it- then there is potentially more of an opening for the Alliance/SocLibDem's to actually make a significant breakthrough, especially if Benn is going to be leading the party in 1992. If Thatcher however can hang on, then it may weigh in Labour's favour.

Poll Tax will still be a big issue. Remember, it was only introduced in 1989, when an election was still 3 years away, and was a factor in toppling Thatcher. If Thatcher survives and pursues it, surrounding herself with yes-men who are in love with her or simply want to ride the gravy train, then the weight goes to Labour, assuming Benn can reforge it under his ideology, as Benn can frame himself as the savior of the people, not unlike Harry Perkins in A Very British Coup (Obviously a fictional example, I know, but it's a good analogy. Thatcherism is taken to the hilt and Britain reflexively votes in a very left wing Goverment). However, if Thatcher still looses and is forced out in favour of Heseltine or one of Thatcher's seven names, then the Alliance/SocLibDem's have a better chance, with Labour loosing the breeze in its sails as the situation becomes more like 1983 rather than 1974.

Bear though this is just an initial outline, and not going into to much detail.
 
Dianne Hayter (who was General Secretary of the Fabian Society at the time) wrote a piece on this in the PM Portillo and other things that never happened collection. I can't remember the detail but her view was that there would not be mass defections to the SDP, but that the PLP would organise to elect its own deputy leader in response. She didn't go into the aftermath but I think it would be a lot messier than she imagines with two warring deputy leaders if that ever took place.

One probable result of Benn winning is that Labour's 1983 election campaign would be even more of a mess than in OTL - the party would be damned by its association with him and there would be two competing policy offers. OTL Labour benefited at the very least from Foot and Healey's constructive relationship but throw Benn into the mix and it would be chaotic.

Using Election Predictions basic swingometer to make a stab in the dark I took 3% away from Labour and gave this to the Alliance (assuming they gain Conservative votes, and Conservative gain some from Labour) - the result was CON: 407 (+10), LAB: 190 (-19), ALL: 32 (+9). Not a huge difference but the Alliance would have been ahead of Labour in the popular vote by a significant margin (28.4% to 24.6%).
 
Yes ,that book was a big inspiration here. I might do WI's based on some of the other scenarios at some other date.
Thank you for the electoral calculations! They seem to have turned out more or less in line with the general consensus of the thread - more success for the Tories and the Alliance and a big blow to Labour.
 
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