UK: Thatcher remains in office, calls for 1992 election

[Suburbia]

The British Conservatives won in 1979, 1983, and 1987.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher holds on in a 1990 leadership vote, and calls for a 1992 election.

Does the British Conservatives win a fourth consecutive term with Thatcher in '92?

[Suburbia]

Would Thatcher have gotten a fourth term, or would Tories like Heseltine and Major try to oust her anyway before '92?

[Mr. Smith]

Labour wins, Kinnock becomes PM.

[brucejoel99]

The Tories definitely lose in 1992. If you consider the response to the Poll Tax (including the infamous Mid Staffordshire by-election), if Thatcher had survived the leadership challenge, then without a shadow of a doubt, her & the Tories would've been booted out of office in 1992.

People really don't give enough credit to Major & Patten's campaign in 1992; without the kind of desperate energy you saw from Major, who was young & able to throw himself completely into the campaign, & when you consider that Thatcher likely would've been surrounded by yes-men who would've assured her she was gonna survive while preparing themselves for the loss, the best the Tories could've hoped for would've been for Kinnock to have failed to get over the line & been forced to enter into a Lib-Lab pact/coalition with Ashdown & the Lib Dems.

[Lechasseur]

The Tories definitely lose in 1992. If you consider the response to the Poll Tax (including the infamous Mid Staffordshire by-election), if Thatcher had survived the leadership challenge, then without a shadow of a doubt, her & the Tories would've been booted out of office in 1992.

People really don't give enough credit to Major & Patten's campaign in 1992; without the kind of desperate energy you saw from Major, who was young & able to throw himself completely into the campaign, & when you consider that Thatcher likely would've been surrounded by yes-men who would've assured her she was gonna survive while preparing themselves for the loss, the best the Tories could've hoped for would've been for Kinnock to have failed to get over the line & been forced to enter into a Lib-Lab pact/coalition with Ashdown & the Lib Dems.

Yep

I think Major was the only Tory who could have won in 1992 tbh

[Coldstream]

Thatcher herself had run out of road by 1990. She’s go down fighting, and it’d be more like 1964 than 1997 but Kinnock would win a majority. I’m actually of the opinion that Blair would have had a better shot in 2010 than Thatcher did in 1992, though he’d also most likely have lost.

It’d be interesting to see what the Sun etc would have done. For all their influence in the early 90s, they weren’t godlike, and they’d be unlikely to wish to squander their influence by backing a doomed Thatcher to the hilt.

Losing in 1992 was probably in Labour’s longterm electoral interests. Had Kinnock won a small majority in 1992 he’d have been hamstrung by a Bennite faction (including Benn himself who wouldn’t have been as crushingly demoralised as he was under Blair). In general the PLP would have skewed a lot more left and soft left after this 1992 election than it did after the 1997 one which would have made running the government with a slim majority much harder. This would probably have seen them go down in 1997 to someone like Portillo on an even more hardline Thatcherite platform.

[CumbrianLefty]

Were you actually around in the early 1990s?

Kinnock had *totally crushed* the Labour left - they actually started to revive under Blair, even if not straight away. His authority in the event of actually becoming PM would have been almost total.

Undoubtedly the main danger to his premiership IMO would have been suffering a similar setback re the ERM to the one Major did (and given that folk memories of the Wilson devaluation in 1967 were still strong then, the debilitating effect could have been even worse than it actually was come Black Wednesday) Having said that, the goodwill his government would most definitely have had from the EU could have helped him avoid disaster there. And if so, Labour's future could have been a pretty decent one even if it would never get that unforgettable 1997 "high".