May 16, 2008...11:35 pm

What if Labour had won in 1992?

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Dizzy had a headline recently that caught my attention: “Kinnock defeats Maggie Thatcher at the 1987 general election”. It’s a plug for the new Prime Minister Forever computer game. And it reminded me of “Prime Minister Portillo”, a collection of British political “what ifs”, edited by Iain Dale and Duncan Brack. These kind of alternate history books are completely pointless and most of them inevitably include a photograph of Hitler arriving at Parliament in the aftermath of his victory in 1945. But the Portillo book is interesting for political anoraks like myself. There were two (I thought) glaring omissions in Dale’s and Brack’s collection, though: (1) What if John Smith had lived; and (2) what if Kinnock had won in 1992?

Both are utterly pointless, though fascinating, questions. I have my own views, but it would be interesting to hear others’.

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