The Liberal Split (The Second One) and the 1992 election

The Karavoka Man

So, I'm thinking about doing an alternate history based on a weird game of Prime Minister Forever, where I managed to win 1 seat for the continuity Liberal Party (Michael Meadowcroft's seat).

The big problem is I know literally nothing about Meadowcroft, nor the effect that Meadowcroft and some guy named Dave Nellist (I did a bit of research, and him getting re-elected would probably be a headache for Labour).

I would really appreciate some help working this kind of thing out! Especially if anyone had any interesting sources I could read.

Any ideas and any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
 
KingCrawa

KingCrawa

Well for starters the Continuity Liberals didn't split. They see themselves as the original Liberal Party. As far as they are concerned, it's the Lib Dems who are the splitters.
 
Uhura's Mazda

Uhura's Mazda

Banned
The Karavoka Man said:
So, I'm thinking about doing an alternate history based on a weird game of Prime Minister Forever, where I managed to win 1 seat for the continuity Liberal Party (Michael Meadowcroft's seat).

The big problem is I know literally nothing about Meadowcroft, nor the effect that Meadowcroft and some guy named Dave Nellist (I did a bit of research, and him getting re-elected would probably be a headache for Labour).

I would really appreciate some help working this kind of thing out! Especially if anyone had any interesting sources I could read.

Any ideas and any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
Click to expand...
First of all, Nellist - he was a member of the Trotskyist Militant Tendency, which had been causing trouble for about a decade in internal Labour politics. Kinnock was all about getting rid of them, which is why he ejected Nellist from the Party. If Nellist won in 1992, then I don't expect a lot of difference from OTL - he could have acted as a thorn in the side of New Labour, but ultimately I think he was just too well-meaning to mount a concerted attack in the media or in Parliament (there were plenty of MPs in Labour to do that, frankly), and he still thought he would be accepted back into the Party at this point. He almost certainly loses in 1997 against the Blairite tide.

Councillor Meadowcroft was a bit of a character, and not in a good way. His article here should give you a good idea of his personality and the nature of his grievances with the Liberal Democrats. The Continuity Liberals have remained in existence to this day, and have a few seats in local government. If Meadowcroft does get in (or if Steve Radford got in for Liverpool West Derby later on) then he's unlikely to win a second time - unless he rejoins the Lib Dems, as he did IOTL.

I don't know whether you're sticking ruthlessly to the PM4E game, but two Continuity SDP MPs also came close to re-election in 1992 in the Greenwich and Woolwich constituencies, with Lib Dem assistance.
 

The Karavoka Man

I was actually thinking about making it the most chaotic result possible. The actual PM4E result had Major with a 2 seat majority, the Lib Dems on 20 seats, with David Nellist returned and Michael Meadowcroft elected. I actually almost won a second seat in scotland, but that was a near miss.

I wasn't really planning on rigorously sticking to the PM4E game, just with the Liberal party gaining a seat and Nellist being returned.

Any idea for where to go from here/where to start?
 
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