UK 1974: Heath remains in power
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  UK 1974: Heath remains in power
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Author Topic: UK 1974: Heath remains in power  (Read 672 times)
MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!
Kalwejt
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« on: May 13, 2016, 03:06:20 PM »

What if Edward Heath managed to remain in power as the Tory Prime Minister after February 1974. There are three potential ways:

1. Heath wins a narrow majority.
2. Heath wins a narrow plurality of seats and led the minority government the way Wilson returned to power in February 1974.
3. Heath gains less seats than Labour as in RL, but managed for form a pact, or even a coalition with Liberals and possibly other smaller parties.

"Heath wins a workable majority" wouldn't be likely and this is not an option here.

What happens next?
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Kingpoleon
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« Reply #1 on: May 13, 2016, 04:09:27 PM »

IMO, the most likely scenario is him holding onto his 297 seats in April, adding, say, six, and then the Liberal Democrats getting about twenty seats to prop him up. That gives him 323 seats, alongside UUP and DUP probably giving him about seven more confidence votes.
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Phony Moderate
Obamaisdabest
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« Reply #2 on: May 13, 2016, 04:19:29 PM »

then the Liberal Democrats getting about twenty seats to prop him up.

Good luck with that, as no such party existed then. Tongue
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IceAgeComing
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« Reply #3 on: May 13, 2016, 04:49:15 PM »

If the Tories did better in February then they would have held a fair few seats that went to the Liberals in the real February election - the Isle of Wight immediately comes to mind (when I was incredibly bored I watched the February 1974 election night and that one was a surprise at the time; it wasn't on anyone's list of expected Liberal gains), perhaps also places like Bodmin that the Liberals gained by a few hundred votes.  That doesn't help the Tories in terms of getting to the 318 majority figure if it was a situation similar to the real life February election since they'd need the Liberals anyway, although it gives them more secure votes.

If it was a February style situation then there might have been an election earlier than in IRL: Heath called the election to get a mandate on his economic policies and on industrial relations policy; there definitely wouldn't have been as rapid a solution to the miner's strike as there was IRL and I imagine the three day week carrying on for much longer wouldn't be very popular.  They'd probably have faced a harder parliament: they might get the Liberals on side for confidence motions if they were the largest party in parliament; but other than them the only other people they might get were the Unionists (remember that they stood in the 74 elections as a united block and had a common parliamentary group until the late 70s, although this sort of thing might have divided them), and they were never going to give unquestioned support because they were still very annoyed about power sharing and that was a Heath policy - admittedly strongly supported by the other UK parties - and that's not something that I could see the Tories conceding.  The SNP might have been convinced to support a confidence motion for some sort of devolution, but I can't see how a parliament relying on the Tories, the Liberals and either the United Ulster Unionists or the SNP (Plaid were a lot more left-wing than the SNP at the time, I can't see them being part of this) lasting much longer than Wilson did before calling an early election.  I'm pretty sure that Labour would probably win any election unless Heath managed to solve things that he wasn't able to a year earlier with a majority, and probably then we carry on much as we did in reality.

If somehow the Tories won a majority (maybe if the Pay Board report didn't come out, or if inflation wasn't quite as high as 20%, or if Enoch Powell didn't endorse the Labour party, its not at all likely though) then they were never going to win the next election: I don't think that they would have been able to deal with stagflation, or the continual union issues leading to the Winter of Discontent any better than Callaghan did.  Perhaps the IMF doesn't get called in, but that would probably mean bigger spending cuts earlier than Healey started cutting things.  It probably means that Thatcher never becomes PM; although I'm no expert as to who would have won for Labour in 78/79, or who the next Tory leader would be...
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Kingpoleon
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« Reply #4 on: May 15, 2016, 02:35:52 PM »

then the Liberal Democrats getting about twenty seats to prop him up.

Good luck with that, as no such party existed then. Tongue

*Liberals

Yeah, IceAge, the unionist parties plus the Liberals is the only way to get a majority leadership. The February elections would have had 311 votes in a Tory/Liberal government or 315 in a Labour/Liberal government. I suppose the only way to win the October elections is for the Conservatives to not contest Liberal vulnerable seats really and vice versa. They could probably get to 325, seven votes over what they might need.
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