Brown calls his 2007 General Election

[nodealbrexiteer]

I think his majority would have gone and according to the Nuffield study we may have got a result not too far from 2010

[pragmaticidealist]

I'd say a lost majority - just. Perhaps 320 seats. His authority is diminished and in this scenario David Miliband takes over in 2008 or 2009, who then loses in 2012 due to the recession and the longevity of the government. Cameron may face problems of his own in the 2007-12 Parliament though, particularly over the EU.

[rivers10]

Aug 24, 2020 15:53:33 GMT pragmaticidealist said:

I'd say a lost majority - just. Perhaps 320 seats. His authority is diminished and in this scenario David Miliband takes over in 2008 or 2009, who then loses in 2012 due to the recession and the longevity of the government. Cameron may face problems of his own in the 2007-12 Parliament though, particularly over the EU.

In this scenario it would be next to impossible to speculate what would happen in elections following cos a Brown minority gov would have almost certainly introduced a form of PR as the price to pay for support from smaller parties and unlike the Con's they wouldn't have held a referendum on it, they would have just done it as Peter Mandelson's offer to the Lib Dems in 2010 shows.

Once PR is introduced all bets are off

[slon]

Aug 24, 2020 14:48:21 GMT nodealbrexiteer said:

I think his majority would have gone and according to the Nuffield study we may have got a result not too far from 2010

Nuts ... what lost him the election was the financial crisis, without that he would have sailed through.

The Tory party were still tearing themselves apart over Europe, so did not have any policies to put forward .... and the winning 2010 policy of 'Not being Labour' would have got them nowhere in 2007

[timrollpickering]

Aug 24, 2020 16:11:09 GMT rivers10 said:

Aug 24, 2020 15:53:33 GMT pragmaticidealist said:

I'd say a lost majority - just. Perhaps 320 seats. His authority is diminished and in this scenario David Miliband takes over in 2008 or 2009, who then loses in 2012 due to the recession and the longevity of the government. Cameron may face problems of his own in the 2007-12 Parliament though, particularly over the EU.

In this scenario it would be next to impossible to speculate what would happen in elections following cos a Brown minority gov would have almost certainly introduced a form of PR as the price to pay for support from smaller parties and unlike the Con's they wouldn't have held a referendum on it, they would have just done it as Peter Mandelson's offer to the Lib Dems in 2010 shows

Once PR is introduced all bets are off

You're assuming Brown would have found a majority for PR without a referendum both in the Commons and the Lords. The 2005 manifesto said:

Labour remains committed to reviewing the experience of the new electoral systems – introduced for the devolved administrations, the European Parliament and the London Assembly. A referendum remains the right way to agree any change for Westminster.

2010 said:

To begin the task of building a new politics, we will let the British people decide on whether to make Parliament more democratic and accountable in referenda [sic] on reform of the House of Commons and House of Lords, to be held on the same day, by October 2011.

To ensure that every MP is supported by the majority of their constituents voting at each election, we will hold a referendum on introducing the Alternative Vote for elections to the House of Commons.

Since the basic commitment that the voting system should only be changed with a referendum is in both it's hard to see this slipping out in 2007. In reality in 2010 a lot of Labour MPs baulked at the prospect of changing the system without the promised vote no matter what Mandelson promised.

There had also been a prolonged attack on Labour from the constitutional change campaign sector for a referendum on the voting system. If you spend a lot of time calling for a referendum to get a change you want you can't really credibly complain when a referendum gets in the way of the government making that change.

The history of electoral system change and referendums has been rewritten in the last nine years to make it seem that it was only Conservative insistence that resulted in a referendum on AV but in actuality Labour had long reached the position that this was the only way a change should happen and promising smaller parties PR without one would have been a very bouncy cheque.

[The Bishop]

In the context of 2007, a lost Labour majority (even narrowly as with the Tories in 2017) would have been seen as a clear defeat.

That is a major reason why Brown was scared off an early election, even though he knew there was a good chance things would get worse if he waited.

(and, of course, they very much did)