WI Heath Wins 1974

What if Ted Heath won the 1974 UK election in February with a majority? How would the 1970s and all turn out? Would Labour collapse earlier or win in 1978/9? What would be the effects? What if?
 
If it was a decisive majority win for the Conservatives in '74, we'd probably see Wilson resign as Labour leader. The question of who would be the next party leader is probably a toss-up between Callaghan or Foot, if we were to follow through to the OTL 1976 Labour leadership election. I'm not sure how it would have gone in terms of the leadership - if Callaghan can prevent other members of the right-wing from standing he is probably the favourite, though Foot might be able to pull it off.

The big question would be how could Heath have pulled for the win, which would help to determine how this 1970s would continue. If nothing else, the One Nation Conservatism that Heath followed might be killed deader with all of the Troubles, the Winter of Discontent, etc. so we'd see a more aggressive take to monetarism possibly during his premiership. That would probably result in a bigger economic downturn so that by the next GE, it would either be a hung parliament with Labour as the largest party or a Labour majority outright.
 
The 1974 election was pretty close, and the turning points were Enoch Powell's speech endorsing Labour and documents that seemed to show the striking miners being underpaid(the documents I think later proved to be inaccurate). Remove one or both of those factors and the Tories could net about 330 seats.
 
If it was a decisive majority win for the Conservatives in '74, we'd probably see Wilson resign as Labour leader. The question of who would be the next party leader is probably a toss-up between Callaghan or Foot, if we were to follow through to the OTL 1976 Labour leadership election. I'm not sure how it would have gone in terms of the leadership - if Callaghan can prevent other members of the right-wing from standing he is probably the favourite, though Foot might be able to pull it off.

The big question would be how could Heath have pulled for the win, which would help to determine how this 1970s would continue. If nothing else, the One Nation Conservatism that Heath followed might be killed deader with all of the Troubles, the Winter of Discontent, etc. so we'd see a more aggressive take to monetarism possibly during his premiership. That would probably result in a bigger economic downturn so that by the next GE, it would either be a hung parliament with Labour as the largest party or a Labour majority outright.
Foot probably wouldnt have won a 1974 leadership contest. He did not have the experience he had in 1980, or even 1976, he only had a few relatively junior shadow cabinet jobs to his name. He was also helped then by a very poor campaign from Healey which aimed to offend as few people as possible, and he ended up alienating the right of the party who felt he would not stand up to the left, some of whom then voted for Foot to sabotage Labour in order to give the SDP a leg up when they defected.
Defection was probably further from everyone's minds in 1974, and the right of the party has more options in 1974, so things are unlikely to happen in the same way then. I would say Callaghan would probably win if he wanted it, though maybe he wouldnt have given that he was getting on and he would have to wait to several years till he could be PM unlike in OTL.
There would probably be infighting between the left and right which Callaghan would have to deal with, but if the Heath government fails and has a term similarly bad to the one Labour enjoyed in OTL, all Labour really needs to do is stay united and they will take back power next time around, probably comfortably given Callaghan's popularity. I'll leave whether a moderate Labour government could offer any solutions to the problems facing the country if it was given a decisive majority to do so up to others who have more of a knowledge of those issues.
 
High probability that you've just eliminated Margaret Thatcher as PM. Her infamous prediction about how long it would be before there was a woman PM probably comes true.
 
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