Three things:
Weird politics
Weird plant-things
Weird battles in which nobody dies
The world of the Viner Codex assumes that the Agreement of the People was not suppressed by Oliver Cromwell in 1649, and hence became the core basis for the constitution of their Commonwealth of Britain.
This, with the influence of groups such as the Diggers and the Quakers, would lead to a polity based on themes such as these:
- direct democracy, rather than covert oligarchy or plutocracy
- genuine equality before the law, rather than ‘one law for the rich, another for the poor’
- ‘spirit of the law’ taking precedence over the more easily manipulated ‘letter of the law’
- genuine equality of the sexes, races, religions and more, including complete and explicit separation of church and state
- responsibility-based relations in work, business, law and more, with strong emphasis on ethics
- responsibility-based ownership, rather than ‘winner-steals-all’ possession-based ownership
- no possession-based monopolies of any kind, including copyrights, patents and more
- no conscription or other enforced servitude to others’ benefit
The overall guiding-principles would probably include:
- in social matters, rules are for guidance only – there are always exceptions to every rule, hence the only absolute rule is that there are no absolute rules
- everything centres on personal responsibility, as ‘response-ability’ – ‘rights’ declare desired outcomes, not arbitrary self-centred absolutes
- in a social context, we should always be responsible to and about all others, but cannot be responsible for those others – the distinction may at first seem subtle, yet is crucial
- we have no choice about what we feel, yet are always responsible for how we respond to what we feel – hence ‘response-ability’
- belief is a private matter – no-one has any ‘right’ to impose their beliefs on anyone else
- religion is a private matter – no-one has any ‘right’ to impose their religion on anyone else
- war is a breach of the peace – war is violence, hence all forms of war, or preparing to create war, are likewise classed as violent crime
This would give us a social milieu and politics very different from that which in our timeline we might think of as ‘normal’. The contrasts between these two ‘worlds’ are interesting… – or a lot more than just interesting, we might hope?