The British will hold, a British-Soviet war in the 1980s.

Also i doubt the African countries like Algeria, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt are going to offer any support to the British ore Free French, that leaves only Gibraltar and Cyprus as their basses.

If the Soviets are not in Italy and decide to do a Siege of Malta 2.0 it might be possible.

  Guys

  I can't see Cyprus being much use since the RN will be drawn into the battle to defend the British Is.  Once Italy starts to fall I think any allied operations would be either west of that or operating from Gibraltar only. 

  Which raises the question of what happens to Spain?  Can it avoid the general collapse?  Depending on the date as to whether its still under Franco or tending to democracy or whatever.  If it falls as well then Gibraltar's position is hopeless, there is the probability that Soviet Med/Black Sea forces will be sortieing into the Atlantic and also a/c operating from Iberia widens the range of attacks on British supply lines.

  With France securely under Soviet control, even if say much of the fleet and say some air units and possibly ground ones manage to get away to form a new Free French force, I'm not sure how long Britain can maintain a defence against the sort of power the Soviets can commit.  Unless Britain has a much stronger economy than OTL and resulting technological and military resources.  Even then it would be a matter of time and given the advances in lethality of weapons in the decades since 1940 I suspect that the time wouldn't be a long period.

  Steve

  I suspect they wouldn't given their strongly Catholic and also at that time there were still fairly strong links with Britain.  Coupled with I think Libya had designs on the island you could see another siege, although that would be the 3rd one at least in recent centuries.  How much support Britain and an also beleaguered Italy could give would be another issue.

  Depending on the timing and run up you might have seen the OTL Israel-Egypt treaty in the late 70's might have occurred so you could Egypt no longer aligned with the Soviets and hence probably neutrality in the conflict, which would make the eastern Med a bit less than a Soviet lake.  Also I'm not sure Turkey especially would lay down for Soviet domination since, whatever they might say then sooner or later the Soviets would want control of the straits at a minimum.  As such I could see them fighting, tying up a lot of Soviet forces and blocking the straits for a long period.

  Note that just because most/all of western Europe falls to Soviet control doesn't mean the rest of the continent will give up and if you want a realistic scenario for Britain to fight anything but a very short defence something needs to be done to tie up at least some of the Soviet resources.

As to tying up Soviet resources maybe wars in Finland (Finns refuse to do as they are told) and a bigger conflict with Yugoslavia and Romania where both likewise refuse to play ball too?

  Finland probably will bend if the democracies are being overwhelmed as resistance would look pointless but its not much good for attacking Norway unless you go through Sweden, which very likely would fight.  They will go down but not without causing some problems.