John Smith doesn't die in 1994

I've seen a lot of interesting ideas about British politics on the board recently, so ...

What if John Smith (Neil Kinnock's successor as leader of the Labour opposition) doesn't die in 1994? Although he had a reputation as a reformer, he definitely wasn't (to my knowledge) into Blair's Third Way, New Labour, sun-dried-tomato-socialism.

One scenario is that John Smith loses the '97 election and hands over leadership of the party soon after to Tony B, who wins government in 2001. So possibly nothing much changes.

However, I have a sneaking suspicion that the British public would have been ready for a change in 1997 even without Tony B, and that John Smith (had he survived) would thus have had a good shot at becoming PM.

Any thoughts on how plausible this is, and how it might have affected recent UK policy? (I can't see Smith being so friendly with Georgie W, for a start.)

The first question here is how long does John Smith then live?
He would have won in 1997 I think, but what if he had died a couple of years after?

Perhaps John Smith might have made a better PM than Tony Blair. While more moderate than Kinnock and quite open to non-ideological solutions to Britain's ills, Smith was closer than Blair to Wilsonian Labour. He was also unapologetically pro-European, whereas Blair's position on Europe has been lukewarm at best; Smith, I think, would have had the political will to dispel the myths on Europe that have been spread by the Murdoch media group and assorted nutcases.

John Smith in '97 - oh how I wish it had been so.