WI Joe Clark wins a majority in 1979?

Only a last minute Liberal surge denied Clark the 6 seats required to win a majority. So let's say the seat count is 145-114-23. PET will resign and be replaced by either Donald MacDonald or John Turner. Though the referendum outcome probably won't differ from OTL, the margin will. Can Ryan run a decent campaign in the absence of a federal presence? Presumably the Tories can win again in 1983 or 1984. This means no PM Mulroney, or at least not in 1984. How does Clark's premiership, progress, what does he do, how long does it last.
 
aw, man.

for a moment, I thought you meant Joe Clark, New Jersey education reformer...

clark.jpg
 
Anyone with a three piece suit, pocket watch and a baseball bat is going to get my vote.
 
Only a last minute Liberal surge denied Clark the 6 seats required to win a majority. So let's say the seat count is 145-114-23. PET will resign and be replaced by either Donald MacDonald or John Turner. Though the referendum outcome probably won't differ from OTL, the margin will. Can Ryan run a decent campaign in the absence of a federal presence? Presumably the Tories can win again in 1983 or 1984. This means no PM Mulroney, or at least not in 1984. How does Clark's premiership, progress, what does he do, how long does it last.

Let's see here...

The good:

Trudeau goes away five years early.
Clark's budget passes, so no surprise election in 1980.
No NEP (good for the Liberals because they remain competitive in the west, good for Canada as the oil industry has a shot at weathering the recession of the early '80s).
No cockeyed constitutional reform/repatriation in 1982. It'll be done right later, either by Clark or by his successor.
The F-18s still get purchased. The order may or may not be for significantly more than the OTL 128.
The Liberals have four-five years to redefine themselves away from 'tax and spend' socialism and to dump Trudeau's other baggage.

The bad:

The Tories get to own the early '80s recession.
The PQ (and Quebec separatism) is now a Tory problem too. Clark gets to spend the rest of his mandate cleaning it up.
 
Assuming the popular vote doesn't change a ton, there might be some greater movement for electoral reform. IIRC, Clark lost the popular vote by a lot, not like Al Gore's .5%, but by around a full 5% or so. Especially if Clark wins a second election despite losing the popular vote by a wide margin. I think New Zealand ended up with MMP after a couple elections with the "wrong" winner.
 
I suppose Thatcher is less isolated in the Commonwealth early on, for one thing.

I don't know about that. Clark was a very much a Red Tory and I don't know how warm he would be to Thatcher. If Trudeau had not pushed the Liberals so far to the left I could have seen Clark as a Liberal.
 
Assuming the popular vote doesn't change a ton, there might be some greater movement for electoral reform. IIRC, Clark lost the popular vote by a lot, not like Al Gore's .5%, but by around a full 5% or so. Especially if Clark wins a second election despite losing the popular vote by a wide margin. I think New Zealand ended up with MMP after a couple elections with the "wrong" winner.

PC 4,111,606 -- 136 seats
Lib 4,595,319 -- 114 seats

This is primarily due to Quebec (61% Lib/13% PC) as Clark did win the popular vote in a majority of the provinces but only won two seats in Quebec. Some Quebec ridings had massive Liberal majorities. It's true that Alberta had essentially the reverse numbers but Quebec had a much bigger population. It would need to be much more egregious I think before there would be any push for electoral changes.
 
Thande: You mean SA sanctions? I don't know how much of an interest Clark would take in that- he did at External Affairs but that was at Mulroney's prodding. It would mean that Gandhi and Hawke do most of the bargaining with Thatcher, with Clark playing a secondary role.

Re Red Toryism: Thatcher says of the 1979 Tokyo G7 that the greatest exponents of free-market economics were Schmidt, Langsdorff and herself. Mulroney was also a wet in her eyes, if less of one than Clark would be ITTL.
 
I wonder in this scenario if PET would be completely out of the picture. He's definitely going to play some kind of role in the Quebec Referendum, probably greater than OTL due to no obligations as PM. This might get him into provincial politics...perhaps Trudeau runs in 1981 instead of Claude Ryan as the head of the Quebec Liberal Party and wins over the PQ?

Just a thought...

Another thought might be this, with Clark leading a stronger Red Tory faction, perhaps the Liberal party drifts further to the right (no NEP will help in this regard). TTL could see Canadian politics shift substantially if the Tories remain dominated by Reds like Clark, all the while the Liberals drift further right...

However I don't see Clark as being able to weather the recession of the Early 1980's very well. This in addition to tensions over the constitution probably leads to him struggling come the next election in 1984. That being said I don't see the other parties doing that well either. Perhaps Clark is reduced to a minority government?
 
I wonder in this scenario if PET would be completely out of the picture. He's definitely going to play some kind of role in the Quebec Referendum, probably greater than OTL due to no obligations as PM. This might get him into provincial politics...perhaps Trudeau runs in 1981 instead of Claude Ryan as the head of the Quebec Liberal Party and wins over the PQ?

Just a thought...

Another thought might be this, with Clark leading a stronger Red Tory faction, perhaps the Liberal party drifts further to the right (no NEP will help in this regard). TTL could see Canadian politics shift substantially if the Tories remain dominated by Reds like Clark, all the while the Liberals drift further right...

However I don't see Clark as being able to weather the recession of the Early 1980's very well. This in addition to tensions over the constitution probably leads to him struggling come the next election in 1984. That being said I don't see the other parties doing that well either. Perhaps Clark is reduced to a minority government?

PET would never enter provincial politics because he despised the mentality of the bipartisan political class here (and Quebec politics generally as small-minded and insular), and pathologically loathed nationalism (except when it involved energy or trade policy) that both parties subscribed to in varying degrees. He dabbled in it in the 1950s through Cite Libre, though it cost him a potential job at U de M for doing that. Trudeau coming anywhere near the PLQ, let alone the premier's office, is downright ASB unless you change his views or personality in such a way that he's no longer recognizable IOTL.

Further to the right? They had been on the centre-left for 50 years, from Mackenzie King's election as leader to Pearson's retirement. Turner simply reverted to 20th century liberalism instead of socialism. Most likely everyone muddles down the same murky centrist path that Stanfield did in the 1970s- keeping in mind centrism defined as Nixonian, not Blairite. Blues eventually rear their heads: the Horner brothers in the '60s, though their economic ideas were internally given as much credence as Rob Ford was of winning the mayoralty last year by the Star. In no small part because their personalities were parodies of Ford's.

Constitution: some sort of formula is worked out, but given the dog's breakfast of interest-group claptrap that was Charlottetown IOTL (Mulroney largely left Clark to his own devices and implicitly regrets in his memoirs, so Clark gets most of the blame there) I don't have much faith in him to produce a decent product.
 
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