What if Ramsay MacDonald was a deficit spender?

raharris1973

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what if the 1st Labour Party PM had a Keynesian attitude toward debt instead of being committed to a balanced budget.
 
The Royal Navy may get some extra ships as a way to boost the economy. Greater road building schenss. The usual sort of large infrastructure projects that seem to mostly work in those sort of economic situations.
 
what if the 1st Labour Party PM had a Keynesian attitude toward debt instead of being committed to a balanced budget.


IMO you simply can't get a parliamentary majority for Keynesian measures in 1929. I'll quote an old soc.history.what-if post of mine at http://soc.history.what-if.narkive.com/EHYchS0v/ramsay-macdonald-dies-in-1927 (sorry for links that no longer work):

***

... I think that *any* Labour PM who takes an anti-austerity
position in 1931 will lose office. To quote a previous post of mine
(which had a different POD--Clynes defeating MacDonald for Labour Party
Leader in 1922):

"The question is what happens if Labour returns to power under Clynes'
leadership in 1929. In OTL he was a strong opponent of MacDonald's
proposed austerity measures and of MacDonald's decision to split with
Labour and form a National Government. OTOH, given that as in 1924 Labour
did not have a majority and could not govern without Liberal support, I'm
not sure what difference that would make. The Labour government will
probably fall, anyway, and some sort of Conservative-dominated government
(whether or not called 'national government') will take office, but I'm
not sure Labour would suffer quite as catastrophic a defeat as it did in
the 1931 election of OTL where its own Prime Minister had left it. David
Marquand has written:

"'For good or ill, MacDonald's role was once again pivotal. Had he stuck
to his original inclinations, and rejected the King's pleadings that it
was his duty to form a National Government, a Conservative-Liberal
coalition would almost certainly have taken office instead. The Labour
Party would have been deeply divided, but it would not have been
irrevocably split. We cannot know what would have happened thereafter.
Probably, there would still have been an early general election; probably,
Labour would have lost. But it is hard to believe that it would have
suffered the catastrophe that in fact overwhelmed it, that the
Conservatives would have dominated the politics of the 1930s as completely
as they did or that the scorn in which MacDonald’s old followers held him
would have been as pitiless.'
http://www.kingston.ac.uk/cusp/Publications/CuspReview/Marquand.htm

"Very likely a Clynes Prime Ministership would have the same effects as
the alternative MacDonald that Marquand writes about here."

In that same thread, Richard Gadsden suggested that maybe Lloyd George
could get enough Liberals to go along to sustain a Clynes-led anti-
austerity Labour government with Keynesian policies
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/5a8276d9e047edf2 I
replied at
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/aae0ac7fe9b2c799
that

"Well, one problem is that Lloyd George was seriously ill during the
crisis, requiring a prostate operation. I don't think having Clynes as PM
will change this....

"In any event, skimming over David Marquand's *Ramsay MacDonald,* I get
the impression that Keynes' views were unlikely to get a parliamentary
majority no matter who was PM. Even the majority of the Cabinet which
opposed MacDonald's proposal agreed on the necessity of restoring foreign
confidence in sterling. Also, Marquand writes (p. 619) about the events
of August 20: 'Even more ominous was the outcome of a similar meeeting
between Graham and Samuel. In the past, the Liberals had ususally come to
the government's rescue at moments of crisis. Now Samuel made it clear
that they too demanded 'drastic action' on unemployment insurance,
including a cut in benefit.' So with the Simonites already Conservatives
in almost everything but name, and with Samuel insisting on drastic cuts,
I just don't think Lloyd George could get enough Liberals to go along with
him to save the Labour government. He might end up, as in OTL, as head of
an anti-National Liberal rump consisting mostly of members of his own
family:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Liberal_Party_(UK)
 
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