Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-10975360-20131216191302/@comment-10975360-20131220180805

on the contrary, people did not vote for attlee to be PM, they voted for the labour party. A large majority of people still wanted Churchill to be Prime Minister, and attlee himself was overshadowed by more vibrant labour figures like Bevin and Morrison.

The leadership election at the beginning of each parliament was introduced partly to prevent a labour leader from doing like macdonald and form a coalition without the consent of the party. There are many instances in british political history of party leaders not becoming Prime Minister and instead someone else from their party, it happened to gladstone several times.

Morrison's main ambition was to be prime minister, i mean he ran for the leadership in 1955, everone knew he was far to old (67) to become leader of the party, but he ran. Morrison wanted to be leader of the labour party, he had many supporters for this aim.

The simple facts are:

If labour lost in 1945 Attlee would have lost two elections as leader and would have probably resigned himself, or he would be challenged for the leadership

Bevin was too loyal to attlee to challenge him, but if attlee had stood down himself he would probably have stood.

Morrison was not loyal to attlee, he wanted the leadership. He was well known to the public.

A Bevin-Morrison leadership contest would have been bitter, and close fought, (but i think morrison would have come out on top)

Even if Bevin won the leadership, his health would be in decline and he would be out within the parliament.

Those are the facts (apart from the brackets)

Churchill would have faced similar economic problems, maybe not on the same scale, and he may have been able to negotiate a fairer deal with the americans over stirling convertability. The late 1940's were still a very rough time to be in government, the worst until the oil crisi of '73.

It does, as i said before it only elected inexperienced leaders under specific conditions. 1945 did not meet those conditions, Bevan was too junior to be a realistic leadership candidate, and if he had run he would surely be defeated swiftly by bevin and/or morrison.

Churchill sup[ported elements of the beveridge report, he was very contradictory during the 1945 campaign, one moment saying he thought setting up national schemes such as the NHS and nationalisations as "requiring some kind of gestapo" and the next saying he would introduce the beveridge report in full. Churchill would not have introduced beveridge in full, at his heart he was essentially a classical liberal.