WI: Denis Healey Elected Leader of the Labour Party in 1980
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Labour and the SDP combined got more votes than the Tories in 1983. Would a Labour Party led by Healey stand a chance of beating Thatcher in '83?
Assuming the Falklands War happens as OTL, no, none whatsoever.
The Labour Party would have been severely split between its right and left wings no matter who won in 1980. Even if there wasn't an actual split by defecting MPs as there was in OTL (only by leftists in this case) Healey would have been leading a party with a very unhappy and combative faction and faced with a victorious Thatcher he'd have been heavily defeated.
Its tempting to think that it wouldn't change anything, but I think a Healey led Labour party in the 1980s could have a lot of butterflies. I assume the Tories still win in 1983, but it is a closer election.
No SPD, and Thatcher faces a stronger opposition than she got, which may effect government policy in some ways. Labour doesn't get into an electoral hole in 1983, which means they have a good chance of winning in 1987, and if not probably will win in 1992 if they don't win in 1987. Just getting the same electoral swings as IOTL starting with 32% of the vote instead of 28% of the vote will at least push into Lib-Lab government territory in 1992. The leaderships of both Kinnock and Blair also are almost certainly butterflied away, the internal dynamics are such that there is really no point to either, and without the SDP there are stronger leadership contenders post Healey.
Ironically, the Labour left is also stronger in the 90s and the 00s, since there is no narrative of them taking over the party and screwing everything up.
No SPD, and Thatcher faces a stronger opposition than she got, which may effect government policy in some ways. Labour doesn't get into an electoral hole in 1983, which means they have a good chance of winning in 1987, and if not probably will win in 1992 if they don't win in 1987. Just getting the same electoral swings as IOTL starting with 32% of the vote instead of 28% of the vote will at least push into Lib-Lab government territory in 1992. The leaderships of both Kinnock and Blair also are almost certainly butterflied away, the internal dynamics are such that there is really no point to either, and without the SDP there are stronger leadership contenders post Healey.
Ironically, the Labour left is also stronger in the 90s and the 00s, since there is no narrative of them taking over the party and screwing everything up.
If you swing 10% of the vote from the Liberals/SDP to Labour in 1983 and 1987, they still lose but by much narrower margins. I think this puts Labour in a position to win in 1992, even if they might have to enter a coalition with the Liberals to actually have a working majority.
If Labour wins in 1992 (probably under Kinnock) would they win again in 1997?
A post of mine from 2015:
***
On the occasion of the death of Denis Healey, http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-34434378 I would like to review the question of what would have happened if he had defeated Michael Foot for the Labour Leadership in 1980. (Remember, 1980 was the last time the Parliamentary Labour Party chose the Leader.)
The vote on the second ballot was quite close--139 to 129. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_(UK)_leadership_election,_1980 A change of six votes would have made Healey the Leader of the Labour Party. According to Ivor Crewe and Anthony King in *SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party* (Oxford UP 1995), p. 75, the votes of a few right-wingers who were already planning to leave the party--and who wanted Labour to choose the most left-wing possible leader (in the absence of a Benn candidacy) in order to weaken the party--were crucial to Foot's victory. They quote one MP as saying
"It was dirty politics. I admit it. I--and I reckon quite a few others--thought that Foot had to be elected in order to convince the waverers that the game was up and that we had no choice but to move. I was particularly concerned about Shirley [Williams]; if Healey had won, I still think she wouldn't have come over."
To find how typical this MP was, Crewe and King questioned all the living Labour MPs who had defected to the SDP "and asked them...to tell us in confidence whom they had voted for in each of the two ballots in the 1980 election. Most of them replied. Most said they had voted for Healey on both ballots, and many of them were obviously surprised that we should even have asked the question. But five, whose names we cannot reveal, including the MP just quoted, acknowledged that they had voted for Foot, in the second ballot if not the first. One of them added: 'I voted for Foot because I thought he would make the worst leader for Labour, not only in a personal capacity but also because he was nearest to the left.'
"In other words, we know that enough of those who subsequently deserted Labour for the SDP voted for Foot to have produced a tie in the election. We expect that at least one other did so. If he did, he would have produced the margin by which Foot won. If our findings are correct, Foot was indeed the left's candidate in the leadership election, but he was also the candidate of a crucial minority of the future SPD. He was the product--and Labour the victim--of what the French call *la politique du pire*, the politics of the worst."
So my POD is that the Labour right wing votes unanimously for Healey. Or, if it be objected that by 1980 it is implausible that *no* Labour right- wingers would play *la politique du pire* and vote for Foot, let's say that only three did so, instead of six, and that in addition three centrist Labour MPs voted for Healey instead of Foot. Anyway, Healey wins. Consequences? The formation of the SDP is at any rate delayed. Jenkins and a few Jenkinsite MPs might leave Labour anyway, but the Gang of Three, and most of those who followed them, would not. The question is how Healey would have used the time this would buy for Labour. Crewe and King suggest that Healey would not have fought the left aggressively as Gaitskell had done, but would be more of a compromiser like Callaghan--and that if he had tried to fight the left aggressively, he would have lost. In either event, there would be a party split--one which, though delayed, might actually have ultimately taken more Labour MPs out of the party than in OTL.
Indeed, one admittedly biased source actually suggests that the defeat of Foot would open the way for Tony Benn to become Labour Leader! (Which sounds more plausible to me now than it would have before Corbyn's victory, though admittedly that took place under one-person one-vote rather than under an electoral college). "If Healey had won, a challenge under the new rules might have been unstoppable, and once the choice lay with a broader-based electoral college, Benn might have won." https://books.google.com/books?id=lIM_b98LgdIC&pg=PA189
Anyway, let's say a Labour split can at least temporarily be avoided. Does Healey stand a chance against Thatcher in 1983, or does the "Falklands factor" guarantee a Conservative victory, even if not by the same margin as that against Foot in OTL?
**
Another post of mine (from 2020):
I know that a lot of people think that Healey was the best PM the UK never had but his son disagrees: https://independentblogposts.wordpress.com/2017/12/31/denis-healeys-son-my-father-would-have-made-a-rubbish-pm/ ("I think my father would have made a rubbish prime minister. He was not clubbable enough; never bothered to nurture a coterie of supporters. And, suffering fools not gladly he could privately be very diminishing about people who were in his own camp. Dad’s supreme confidence in his own judgements, forged in that mighty, double-first Balliol man’s brain, meant that he lacked the simpler chairman-like skill of listening to other people.")
***
On the occasion of the death of Denis Healey, http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-34434378 I would like to review the question of what would have happened if he had defeated Michael Foot for the Labour Leadership in 1980. (Remember, 1980 was the last time the Parliamentary Labour Party chose the Leader.)
The vote on the second ballot was quite close--139 to 129. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_(UK)_leadership_election,_1980 A change of six votes would have made Healey the Leader of the Labour Party. According to Ivor Crewe and Anthony King in *SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party* (Oxford UP 1995), p. 75, the votes of a few right-wingers who were already planning to leave the party--and who wanted Labour to choose the most left-wing possible leader (in the absence of a Benn candidacy) in order to weaken the party--were crucial to Foot's victory. They quote one MP as saying
"It was dirty politics. I admit it. I--and I reckon quite a few others--thought that Foot had to be elected in order to convince the waverers that the game was up and that we had no choice but to move. I was particularly concerned about Shirley [Williams]; if Healey had won, I still think she wouldn't have come over."
To find how typical this MP was, Crewe and King questioned all the living Labour MPs who had defected to the SDP "and asked them...to tell us in confidence whom they had voted for in each of the two ballots in the 1980 election. Most of them replied. Most said they had voted for Healey on both ballots, and many of them were obviously surprised that we should even have asked the question. But five, whose names we cannot reveal, including the MP just quoted, acknowledged that they had voted for Foot, in the second ballot if not the first. One of them added: 'I voted for Foot because I thought he would make the worst leader for Labour, not only in a personal capacity but also because he was nearest to the left.'
"In other words, we know that enough of those who subsequently deserted Labour for the SDP voted for Foot to have produced a tie in the election. We expect that at least one other did so. If he did, he would have produced the margin by which Foot won. If our findings are correct, Foot was indeed the left's candidate in the leadership election, but he was also the candidate of a crucial minority of the future SPD. He was the product--and Labour the victim--of what the French call *la politique du pire*, the politics of the worst."
So my POD is that the Labour right wing votes unanimously for Healey. Or, if it be objected that by 1980 it is implausible that *no* Labour right- wingers would play *la politique du pire* and vote for Foot, let's say that only three did so, instead of six, and that in addition three centrist Labour MPs voted for Healey instead of Foot. Anyway, Healey wins. Consequences? The formation of the SDP is at any rate delayed. Jenkins and a few Jenkinsite MPs might leave Labour anyway, but the Gang of Three, and most of those who followed them, would not. The question is how Healey would have used the time this would buy for Labour. Crewe and King suggest that Healey would not have fought the left aggressively as Gaitskell had done, but would be more of a compromiser like Callaghan--and that if he had tried to fight the left aggressively, he would have lost. In either event, there would be a party split--one which, though delayed, might actually have ultimately taken more Labour MPs out of the party than in OTL.
Indeed, one admittedly biased source actually suggests that the defeat of Foot would open the way for Tony Benn to become Labour Leader! (Which sounds more plausible to me now than it would have before Corbyn's victory, though admittedly that took place under one-person one-vote rather than under an electoral college). "If Healey had won, a challenge under the new rules might have been unstoppable, and once the choice lay with a broader-based electoral college, Benn might have won." https://books.google.com/books?id=lIM_b98LgdIC&pg=PA189
Anyway, let's say a Labour split can at least temporarily be avoided. Does Healey stand a chance against Thatcher in 1983, or does the "Falklands factor" guarantee a Conservative victory, even if not by the same margin as that against Foot in OTL?
**
Another post of mine (from 2020):
I know that a lot of people think that Healey was the best PM the UK never had but his son disagrees: https://independentblogposts.wordpress.com/2017/12/31/denis-healeys-son-my-father-would-have-made-a-rubbish-pm/ ("I think my father would have made a rubbish prime minister. He was not clubbable enough; never bothered to nurture a coterie of supporters. And, suffering fools not gladly he could privately be very diminishing about people who were in his own camp. Dad’s supreme confidence in his own judgements, forged in that mighty, double-first Balliol man’s brain, meant that he lacked the simpler chairman-like skill of listening to other people.")
The hard left will ironically be better off than IOTL since they won't have the legacy of the 1983 catastrophe hanging over their heads, which means people like Diane Abbott and John McDonnell may become prominent in the Labour Party earlier. I wonder if the Greater London Council will still be abolished ITTL (EDIT: According to Wikipedia, the law which abolished the council passed by a margin of only 20 votes)? If not, could Ken Livingstone (ew) also get a significant following in the party, perhaps even enough to become leader?
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I think that's a very important point, and I'm not convinced Healey could hold the Labour party of the time together. Even without a formal split there'd be a lot of strife between the factions.
Would you see the left-wing break off instead of the right? 1983 could be a four way election between the Tories, Labour, the Liberals, and whatever hard left splinter group that might bolt in protest against Healey.
I could see this happening once Healey loses to Thatcher. Benn however, would easily lose to Thatcher in 1987.
Healey wouldn't pick a fight with the left and try to compromise. And exactly this would lead to the defection of the right-wingers who formed the SDP: They didn't leave Labour just because Foot was left-wing. They left Labour because even Healey was too much to the left for their taste. Anyone except a Blair-like candidate will see the right-wing split.
Benn would probably challenge Healey for the leadership instead of the Deputy position, and he could well win and trigger an even bigger breakaway from the right of the party..
Otherwise, Labour would still have the four years of civil war that we got IOTL. Healey would be harder on the left than Foot, but maybe not as hardline as his reputation may suggest.
Still, with a more popular leader and a more moderate manifesto, Labour would do better in '83, albeit whilst still losing seats. The right would own a second defeat in a row, and Benn would be a strong candidate to succeed him if he holds his seat, though I'd still make Kinnock or some other soft left politician the favourite.
Otherwise, Labour would still have the four years of civil war that we got IOTL. Healey would be harder on the left than Foot, but maybe not as hardline as his reputation may suggest.
Still, with a more popular leader and a more moderate manifesto, Labour would do better in '83, albeit whilst still losing seats. The right would own a second defeat in a row, and Benn would be a strong candidate to succeed him if he holds his seat, though I'd still make Kinnock or some other soft left politician the favourite.
There wouldn't be a meaningful left wing breakaway, because they would still have a huge influence at a grassroots level, and a good chance of electing the next Labour leader, with the electoral college in place. Why would they split if they consider themselves to be on the verge of taking over the party?
This was true for Jenkins and his followers, but not for the Gang of Three. Crewe and King's book makes pretty clear that they weren't happy with Healey's lack of fight against the left, but they would have stayed and fought had he been elected. You probably see a smaller Jenkinsite breakaway, rather than the exodus we got IOTL.