WI: Thatcher fights on?

Kinnichio growing a spine and pulling back the curtain to reveal the Wizard just isn't happening.
He's still going to beat a prime minister who can't even depend on her own cabinet. By this stage Thatcher had Become increasingly arrogant, out of touch and isolated and it would show in the election. She won't be getting on any soap boxes.
 
Say what you will about Thatcher, she knew how to campaign

Not really. She was out-campaigned by both Callaghan in 1979 and Kinnock in 1987, taking advantage of the fundamentals in her favour (the Winter of Discontent with the former, and the split on the Left with the latter). In echoes of 2017, she started the 1979 campaign 20+% in front, and only won by 6%. As for 1983, despite all that had happened - the Falklands, the SDP split, the godawful Labour campaign - Thatcher's vote went down from 1979. The woman was just incredibly lucky. The luck would have run out in 1992.
 
He's still going to beat a prime minister who can't even depend on her own cabinet. By this stage Thatcher had Become increasingly arrogant, out of touch and isolated and it would show in the election. She won't be getting on any soap boxes.

And she certainly can't do this sort of thing:

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Kinnock was a moderniser who did much to soften labours image, perhaps not as much as Blair but it was still a factor in labours resurgent popularity.

Polls aren't everything but you can't dismiss them without good reason. Thatcher had such appalling poll ratings that I simply cannot see how the Tories could get a majority. They lost 40 seats even with the huge poll boost from distancing themself from her. The poll tax ruined her and would have given easy ammunition to all her opponents. It would be like Blair trying to run in 2010.

All this is assuming she doesn't do anything else nuts. Who's to say she wouldn't try to push even more unpopular measures if she had an extra couple of years?
 
The problem is that polls showed quite clearly that the Tories got a huge increase when they dumped Thatcher and replaced her with Major. You also have to factor that in. It's reasonably clear that the Tories wouldn't do as well under Thatcher in 1992 as they did under Major. How much difference is open to debate. It could be huge (some polls suggests a 20% Tory boost on the immediate change; that will decline over time, but it's not going to disappear).

Exactly right.
 
I think by and large people in this thread are not necessarily underestimating Mrs. Thatcher, but over-estimating Neil Kinnock. The coming election of course under Thatcher was seen by many as a certain defeat. However this is also true of Major, Labour was widely expected to romp home in 1992. Say what you will about Thatcher, she knew how to campaign, and if she had stuck on after the first round and succeeded, I don't think the outcome would have been as cataclysmic as is commonly thought. Labour in the minds of many was still tarred with the extreme left wing brush, and it hadn't cleaned up his image as much as John Smith and Blair later would.

I think Mrs. Thatcher heading the Tories into 1992 (and I do think it would of been 1992) probably would have ended up being a razor thin majority or UUP propped up minority government.

You're focussed too much on Kinnock. Much as I dislike the man, he wasn't an inevitable failure. There are wider factors. Mrs Thatcher would not have ditched the Poll Tax which Major did. This, as well as her chronic unpopularity, is a crucial difference. Scotland would have turfed most of her ten remaining MPs. Major actually regained one, Aberdeen South, from Labour. Many, many voters in the rest of the UK would have remained angry about the poll tax instead of giving the Tories another look. The Poll Tax alone would have doomed the Tories to defeat in 1992.
 
No hate intended in my post. I actually admire her determination; just relaying my opinion on the situation.

I can understand your opinion of her and I see a strong PM who was willing to make changes that previous PM's didn't. I am looking at it from the US and Reagan did many similar changes at the biggest thing he did was keep Jimmy,"I was discussing nuclear polarization" with Amy" who was 12 Carter. If it was Carter vs Trump god help me. It would take a long debate to decide. Thatcher and Reagan IMHO enhanced the UK and US in world politics.
 
Thatcher would have lost, badly, in 1992 (and it would have been 1992 - a Hail Mary five year Parliament because everyone knows what's coming).

I don't honestly see why - Mrs T was intent on going to the country in 1991 after the Gulf, and she had overpowering internal reasons for doing that also - I just don't think she would have made it to 1992 without another leadership election in the autumn.

1991 was, incidentally, at the height of the early nineties recession. It would have been pretty crazily disastrous. People saying the Tories would have won are just being silly. I don't think it would have been a Labour landslide in the true sense - the polling should be rather distrusted on that score given what actually happened in 1992, and I suspect as often happens things would have naturally narrowed come election day - but the Tories absolutely aren't going to win, not by a long chalk. Thatcher just was too much of a liability by 1990. There is a reason the parliamentary party dumped her, after all - they thought they were heading for a thrashing.
 
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I can understand your opinion of her and I see a strong PM who was willing to make changes that previous PM's didn't. I am looking at it from the US and Reagan did many similar changes at the biggest thing he did was keep Jimmy,"I was discussing nuclear polarization" with Amy" who was 12 Carter. If it was Carter vs Trump god help me. It would take a long debate to decide. Thatcher and Reagan IMHO enhanced the UK and US in world politics.
On that we definitely agree.
 
"Jimmy,"I was discussing nuclear polarization" with Amy" who was 12 Carter."

I hadn't heard this. My God, what a wackjob Jimmy seems to have been...

 
The main argument against the possibility of the Conservatives under Thatcher winning the 1992 general election appears to be that the Conservatives were losing support under her, and only re-gained support after Major became Prime Minister. So, I decided to have a look at this website, which shows all opinion polls conducted between 1987 and 1992. I then took the opinion polls which were taken between January 1990 and November 19th 1990 (the day before the first round of the leadership election) and put them into an Excel document, allowing me to create a line graph:
upload_2017-6-29_15-39-27.png

Now, while Labour consistently holds the lead throughout these months, the polls do show that there was a recovery in Conservative support shortly before the leadership election, while Thatcher was still in charge of the Conservatives and her leadership was still believed to be secure (as far as I am aware, it was expected that Thatcher would defeat Heseltine in the first round, so it is unlikely that people would start switching to the Conservatives based on the possibility of Heseltine becoming leader). The last poll in the graph put the Conservatives on 40%, Labour on 45%, and the Lib Dems on 11%. Now, while Labour was still in the lead at this point, if we assume that Thatcher stayed on as leader, there is no reason why that this gradual Conservative recovery would have stopped - indeed, a boost from the Gulf War (whether a permanent boost or not) would have seen the Conservatives recover their lead and, by 1992, it is likely that polls would be roughly the same as OTL - meaning a Thatcher victory in 1992 is far more likely than what some have suggested.
 
The main argument against the possibility of the Conservatives under Thatcher winning the 1992 general election appears to be that the Conservatives were losing support under her, and only re-gained support after Major became Prime Minister. So, I decided to have a look at this website, which shows all opinion polls conducted between 1987 and 1992. I then took the opinion polls which were taken between January 1990 and November 19th 1990 (the day before the first round of the leadership election) and put them into an Excel document, allowing me to create a line graph:
View attachment 330999
Now, while Labour consistently holds the lead throughout these months, the polls do show that there was a recovery in Conservative support shortly before the leadership election, while Thatcher was still in charge of the Conservatives and her leadership was still believed to be secure (as far as I am aware, it was expected that Thatcher would defeat Heseltine in the first round, so it is unlikely that people would start switching to the Conservatives based on the possibility of Heseltine becoming leader). The last poll in the graph put the Conservatives on 40%, Labour on 45%, and the Lib Dems on 11%. Now, while Labour was still in the lead at this point, if we assume that Thatcher stayed on as leader, there is no reason why that this gradual Conservative recovery would have stopped - indeed, a boost from the Gulf War (whether a permanent boost or not) would have seen the Conservatives recover their lead and, by 1992, it is likely that polls would be roughly the same as OTL - meaning a Thatcher victory in 1992 is far more likely than what some have suggested.
Thing is though, the election wouldn't have been in 1992- Thatcher needs a victory and fast if she wants to avoid another coup attempt. The obvious answer is to time one to take advantage of the Gulf War- except that this just so happens to coincide with the height of a recession.
 
From what I can see there's nothing you might say even half resembles a polling recovery at least until the middle of November - which of course was the point Howe made his resignation speech, at which point her leadership was widely assumed to be thoroughly on the rocks if not doomed entirely. Probably the voters anticipating imminent regime change.

I also find it very hard to disentangle the Gulf factor from Major's natural honeymoon, given the two were occurring simultaneously. It's very much stretching it to assume that Thatcher would have a similar polling recovery.

Thatcher is just not going to replicate the scraping of a tiny majority (Which, despite the commanding popular vote difference and vote tally, is all it was, it's worth bearing in mind) Major managed in 1992 with so much more baggage working against her. And if you assume that a minority is absolute wildest best case scenario, then the government would be doomed in fairly short order anyway after such a result.

The 'best' case scenario for an expanded Thatcher premiership is somehow scraping that fragile minority in 1991, and then her going down in flames to a 1997-style rout on the back of a no confidence vote in 1992/1993.

What happened IOTL was more dignified than that would have been.
 
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I wonder how a prolonged Thatcher premiership would have affected the signage of the Maastricht Treaty. She was staunchly opposed to the EU in OTL. Her OTL successor John Major supported the Maastricht Treaty, and Kinnock as PM would have been supportive as well. At the very least an extended rule for Thatcher would delay the treaty establishing the EU by a year or two.
 
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