Contents
Introduction vii
Duncan Brack and Iain Dale
Introduction vii
Duncan Brack and Iain Dale
- 1 What if Lloyd George and Keynes had gone to Russia in 1916? 1
David Boyle
- 2 What if proportional representation had been introduced in 1918? 13
Robert Waller
- 3 What if Lloyd George had done a deal with the Tories in 1931? 27
Jaime Reynolds
- 4 What if Attlee had sent Dalton to the Foreign Office and Bevin
to the Exchequer in 1945? 47
Ted Morris
- 5 What if Richard Nixon had become President of the United States
in 1961? 65
Neil Stockley
- 6 What if Harold Macmillan had not resigned in 1963? 85
Mark Stuart
- 7 What if the UK had never joined the EEC? 99
Richard Briand
- 8 What if Rupert Murdoch had not bought The Times in 1981? 111 Simon Buckby and Sam Cannicott
- 9 What if Mrs Thatcher had settled with the miners in 1984? 131
Adrian Moss
- 10 What if Margaret Thatcher had won the 1990 Conservative
leadership contest? 145
Graham Kirby
- 11 What if the coup against Gorbachev in 1991 had succeeded? 163
Christian Walker
- 12 What if Gordon Brown had stood for the Labour leadership in 1994? 189
Peter Riddell
- 13 What if the United Kingdom had not gone to war in Iraq in 2003? 199
Tony McNulty
- 14 What if David Davis had been elected leader of the Conservative
Party in 2005? 219
Iain Dale
- 15 What if Tony Blair had remained as Prime Minister? 233
Jane Griffiths
- 16 What if Gordon Brown had called an election in 2007? 247
Philip Cowley
- 17 What if Hillary Clinton had secured the Democratic nomination
in 2008? 259
David Bean
- 18 What if Harris and Marris had won in 2010? 275
Matt Cole
- 19 What if Nick Clegg had opted for ‘confidence and supply’ rather
than full coalition in 2010? 295
David Mills
- 20 What if Pope Benedict had been assassinated on his visit to Britain
in 2010? 311
Andy Mayer
- 21 What if Ken Livingstone wins the 2012 London mayoral election? 335
Mark Munro
- 22 What if Boris Johnson becomes Prime Minister in 2016? 349
Sam Macrory
vi
18 comments:
What if Clare Ward had been elected as Leader of the Labour Party?
now you're just being silly
How very dare you.
There will be no political parties once I'm in charge.
What if there had been very little immigration into Britain?
The obvious one to add is: What if Jane Griffiths had not been deselected as the Labour candidate for Reading East?
I could not understand then, and still cannot understand now, why (a) there was not a fight back against the BBC/Channel 4/Guardian/Independent campaign to drive Blair out of office
(b) there was not a campaign to reveal what people said they knew about Brown's character
(c) there was not a stronger campaign against the deselection of the then Reading East MP (we in Reading West knew little about it)
Oh, don't be a nincompoop, last poster! The campaign to deselect JG originated in Reading West and was masterminded by the then Labour MP, Martin Salter!
SO where were you in the war? Australia? And nobody could miss the dump JG campaign. It was regularly in local media and almost as regularly in the national press. Are you a deaf,blind and dumb hermit? Or are you Martin Salter?
Hey -- if you thought it was so awful to attempt to deselect JG, why did you not protest to the media/Region/the NEC/The Chief Whip?
No?
THOUGHT NOT.
Nobody else was bothered either. That, unfortunately is life and that, sadly, is politics.
Actually, 12.01, some of us did protest to the NEC. They maintained a profound silence.
Well - you didn't shout loud enough then.
To quote a saying: CANNOT BE WATCHDOG IF HOWL LIKE WOLF --- oh and where were your protests on television; radio;national and local media?
Especially when that idiot journalist from The Chronicle Joe something or other, went on Radio 4 to announce that Jane would definitely be de-selected BEFORE the vote? Hey?!! Trying to create a forgone conclusion or what?
For those of us in Westminster who observed all this, it appeared that Jane was beset by a quite evil and disloyal neighbouring fellow Labour MP and a meek and supine CLP, happy to be led to electoral disaster by Salter; Singlet Black; Fatboy Pisspot and others of that kidney.
SO the noble counter attack - the Jane Galahads and Galahadesses were just shrinking violets - in fact they wilted at the first cloud.
WIth friends like them, pass the sick bag.
Oh wowser! We complaiend to the NEC and they didn'r reply so we said 'Well, OK then'.
Lesson for today. Define appeasement.
Chapter 15 will give me nightmares.
18.30 and 21.31 - As far as media goes, we wrote regularly and profusely to the local press, as read, presumably, by the CLP electorate, protesting at the underhand and disgraceful campaign to get Jane deselected; wrote individually to each member of the NEC; protested on the local television and radio news; and also drummed up as much CLP support for the anti-anti-Jane camp as we could. What did you do?
Anonymous 13 September 2011 18:30
That horrible Chronicle journalist Joe Wise had no credibility with anything he said about Jane as he had been the mouthpiece for the men campaigning against Jane for a long time.
He said before the 2001 election on BBC Radio Berks that she was the most vulnerable MP in Berkshire to lose her seat yet she increased her majority and others nearly lost their seat. People did notice that. Joe Wise had no credibility.
Sorry -- he had entire credibility with the people in authority like the Chief Whip aand Chair of the NEC. ( Who could have helped Jane and stopped the whole scene by suspending the Reading CLP and imposing Jane. They did this for Fiona Mactaggart!!!! They hung jane otu to dry. They didn't know who he was the mouthpiece for. They just saw that he had been selected to speak as an authoritative local journalist against her on BBC Radio 4 on a key current affairs programme. He said she was awful and generally regarded as extremely unpopular and was even living in cloud cuckoo land. Who do you think they believed? !!!! Especially when they were already predisposed to believe Martin Salter's evil lies.
Anonymous 14 September 2011 22:04
You're not wrong. You have to wonder about the intelligence of the whips who believe the nonsense from a journalist, with no credibility in Reading, that another journalist rides into town and elevates to all knowing sage. Not Fi Glover's best moment, by a long stretch.
Its just another part of this story, the way arsehole Whips like Anne Taylor and Hillary allowed themselves to be convinced by the arse of Salter, preying in aid the nonsense of a discredited piece of shit like Joe Wise.
The point is that Anne Taylor and Hilary Armstrong had alreday decided, well in advance that Salter ( and Clare Ward) were right and had to be believed and supported and that Jane was wrong/unsuitable and had to be removed. So the Joe Wise stuff didn't 'convince' or 'sway' them -- merely confirmed them in their original choice and decision. As intended. And he was therefore very useful for them, so that if the proposed Griffiths de-selection came up at the NEC , then they could say 'Oh well - she was terribly unpopular with just about everybody. Don't rely on what the Reading Labour Party says - or even the likes of Martin Salter. An esteemed local journalist, with no axe to grind has surveyed the scene as an outsider and come to the conclusion that she is a liability and is finished. So we really must trust to that'.
Sorry, but that is how it goes. They were all in it together and there wss no fairness at all. Sad really, and silly that the people in the local party who did support Jane were so easily silenced; so easily bought off -- and that people like Stuart Singleton White, who only a few years ago had been bleating to anybody and everybody at Labour Party Conference how badly Jane was being treated, was bought off by the Opposition. People are weak and vulnerable, but this guy was supposed to be Andrew Tatersall's oldest friend - kindergarten etc. So that stinks really, doesn't it? And where was Mish Tullah when the shit hit the fan? As an ex national Press Secretary, he would have carried some weight -- didn't appear to use it.His wife worked for Jane too.
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