I agree, but what do you think about Churchill winning the 1945 general election? Do you think that makes him more amendable to a quicker transition of power to Eden, not feeling he had to carry on to battle socialism in Britain after the public had rejected him? I think Clemmie even by the late 40s was growing increasingly concerned for his health.
A Better Britain: POD 1944
- Thread starter Chris Nation
- Start date
I think that the main thing that swung the 1945 general election was the votes from servicemen. They were all resounding for Labour. Do you think that this rather targeted platform of appealing to them would have made the difference in that particular vote? Labour is always going to continue their rise into the only credible opposition to the Tories - but they'd made failed pitches in the 20s as well.
Powell was not a fascist by any reasonable definition of that word. Not even when he is best remembered, in the 60s and 70s. But certainly in the 50s he's actually considered to be on the reforming wing of the Tory Party.
You're poking fun, but I've looked at the data comparing the postwar economic performance of the UK vs the US, UK vs West Germany, and UK vs France. The capital gains tax in the UK certainly hampered postwar economic growth, by a lot. It was by far the largest in the Western world, a product of having wholly embraced Keynesian 'War Finance' during the Second World War, That's the reason British industry languished while West German industry miraculously recovered - the West German government wasn't punitively penalizing them for doing so.
As a matter of fact, OTL, the Tories at least, including Churchill, were indeed paying attention to their electoral prospects post-war. I know this because I know there was some ambiguity about the mandate to hold elections "on completion of the war." But which war?
A straightforward way of interpreting the terms of a War Cabinet for the duration of "the war" would be to wait until the Commonwealth was no longer engaged in war on any front. But one could argue "the" war that the WC formed to fight and win was the war against the European Axis; this was the war declared in 1939, upon Hitler's invasion of Poland, and that the war with Japan which started years later was a separate thing. Since the war cabinet itself was formed during a general state of war, there was no reason in principle why another cabinet, a normally partisan one, could not form; the pledge for a national unity cabinet could be read to apply only until V-E day.
And it was Churchill who had the authority to order a new election, and he did so precisely because the Tory leadership, himself much included in the party circle discussions, judged that their chances of winning were better the sooner the general election was held. Thus they surprised (I believe, I haven't seen discussion of how Labour and Liberal leaders might have thought, or guessed, or debated among themselves) their rivals with a call for a GE immediately upon the Reich's final capitulation.
The idea that poor Winston was just blindsided, head in the clouds of world leadership, without paying attention to grubby partisanship or without notions of his own how to game things to favor his own party, is just ridiculous. He acted as he did with every intention of maximizing the chances of a Tory victory. It is just ironic and humorous then how he maneuvered himself out of 10 Downing and put Attlee there before the Potsdam Conference.
If people know me they know I'd rather a thread about Labour Mary-Sueing itself in the postwar period, and have little sympathy for attempting to instead Mary-Sue the Tories with a dose of uptime Thatcherism.
I will say that while relying on Enoch Powell as the genius behind this Conservative victory ought to be a flashing red light in view of his OTL racism, which has led threads based on his appearing as an earlier preemption of Thatcher for another round of Tory-wanking in the 1970s into moderation warnings and actions, certainly I have to agree that skewing the compromise "GI Bill of Rights" mode of promoting petty property rights for veterans is probably spot on as a winning electoral strategy--assuming the Services members believe Conservative promises anyway. Which has to involve some skepticism; everyone in Britain knows the Tory track record, so it has to ring true in that context.
Granting the deployed soldiers and sailors and airmen of the British forces find these Tory promises credible, I suppose the outcome of a Tory victory in the global GE is possible.
Because you see, many sources affirm that OTL, it was the Services vote (which was a special innovation, not normal British practice for Commons elections by any means) that torpedoed the Conservatives OTL. I've never seen a source offer a breakdown in numbers, but I presume people making that statement are implying that if only the vote from Britons actually resident in the UK at the time, voting in their constituencies, had been counted, the Tories would win that block, and it was only when the votes from overseas service members were added in Labour emerged as both popular vote (legally irrelevant) and MP count (the name of the game) leader.
So--there are two paths to Tory victory in the period between VE and VJ day:
1) just hold the election the traditional way and tell the service members they have to abide by the vote of those who are privileged to stay on the home front--most if not all US soldiers were screwed in that way I believe during WWII.
That would be politically radioactive of course, and given the truth of the matter the Service members were strongly Labour and would thus be screwed, it would be quite explosive.
So, while holding to "traditional" norms would perhaps be justifiable after the whole war is over and the troops had a chance to return home, it was clear enough to the Tories attempting their victory through early election OTL they damn well had to count the overseas service members if they wanted to claim it was OK to hold an election while a hot war demanding all Britain's efforts was still on.
I imagine Churchill and other Tories simply assumed the Services vote would lean Conservative because of the general notion that the military and the Right are natural allies; that, from a conservative point of view, leftism is a mental disease of the lazy and undisciplined and putting a man in uniform and sending them to fronts where they depend on their band of brothers naturally makes them conservative.
If they had believed otherwise and not had the advice of this ATL Powell to reshape their whole platform around flattering and courting the service members, perhaps they would have decided to wait until VJ day and then play it fast and loose, scheduling the election technically after victory but before it would be practical for many service members to have actually returned home. That would again be of questionable legitimacy and probably lead to a new GE in which they'd be buried in the landslide.
As things are in this TL, I can well believe the Conservatives can win. Note that the generous and flattering package of veteran benefits need not actually flip a great many Service votes, just enough to permit the domestic Tory margin to prevail.
A straightforward way of interpreting the terms of a War Cabinet for the duration of "the war" would be to wait until the Commonwealth was no longer engaged in war on any front. But one could argue "the" war that the WC formed to fight and win was the war against the European Axis; this was the war declared in 1939, upon Hitler's invasion of Poland, and that the war with Japan which started years later was a separate thing. Since the war cabinet itself was formed during a general state of war, there was no reason in principle why another cabinet, a normally partisan one, could not form; the pledge for a national unity cabinet could be read to apply only until V-E day.
And it was Churchill who had the authority to order a new election, and he did so precisely because the Tory leadership, himself much included in the party circle discussions, judged that their chances of winning were better the sooner the general election was held. Thus they surprised (I believe, I haven't seen discussion of how Labour and Liberal leaders might have thought, or guessed, or debated among themselves) their rivals with a call for a GE immediately upon the Reich's final capitulation.
The idea that poor Winston was just blindsided, head in the clouds of world leadership, without paying attention to grubby partisanship or without notions of his own how to game things to favor his own party, is just ridiculous. He acted as he did with every intention of maximizing the chances of a Tory victory. It is just ironic and humorous then how he maneuvered himself out of 10 Downing and put Attlee there before the Potsdam Conference.
If people know me they know I'd rather a thread about Labour Mary-Sueing itself in the postwar period, and have little sympathy for attempting to instead Mary-Sue the Tories with a dose of uptime Thatcherism.
I will say that while relying on Enoch Powell as the genius behind this Conservative victory ought to be a flashing red light in view of his OTL racism, which has led threads based on his appearing as an earlier preemption of Thatcher for another round of Tory-wanking in the 1970s into moderation warnings and actions, certainly I have to agree that skewing the compromise "GI Bill of Rights" mode of promoting petty property rights for veterans is probably spot on as a winning electoral strategy--assuming the Services members believe Conservative promises anyway. Which has to involve some skepticism; everyone in Britain knows the Tory track record, so it has to ring true in that context.
Granting the deployed soldiers and sailors and airmen of the British forces find these Tory promises credible, I suppose the outcome of a Tory victory in the global GE is possible.
Because you see, many sources affirm that OTL, it was the Services vote (which was a special innovation, not normal British practice for Commons elections by any means) that torpedoed the Conservatives OTL. I've never seen a source offer a breakdown in numbers, but I presume people making that statement are implying that if only the vote from Britons actually resident in the UK at the time, voting in their constituencies, had been counted, the Tories would win that block, and it was only when the votes from overseas service members were added in Labour emerged as both popular vote (legally irrelevant) and MP count (the name of the game) leader.
So--there are two paths to Tory victory in the period between VE and VJ day:
1) just hold the election the traditional way and tell the service members they have to abide by the vote of those who are privileged to stay on the home front--most if not all US soldiers were screwed in that way I believe during WWII.
That would be politically radioactive of course, and given the truth of the matter the Service members were strongly Labour and would thus be screwed, it would be quite explosive.
So, while holding to "traditional" norms would perhaps be justifiable after the whole war is over and the troops had a chance to return home, it was clear enough to the Tories attempting their victory through early election OTL they damn well had to count the overseas service members if they wanted to claim it was OK to hold an election while a hot war demanding all Britain's efforts was still on.
I imagine Churchill and other Tories simply assumed the Services vote would lean Conservative because of the general notion that the military and the Right are natural allies; that, from a conservative point of view, leftism is a mental disease of the lazy and undisciplined and putting a man in uniform and sending them to fronts where they depend on their band of brothers naturally makes them conservative.
If they had believed otherwise and not had the advice of this ATL Powell to reshape their whole platform around flattering and courting the service members, perhaps they would have decided to wait until VJ day and then play it fast and loose, scheduling the election technically after victory but before it would be practical for many service members to have actually returned home. That would again be of questionable legitimacy and probably lead to a new GE in which they'd be buried in the landslide.
As things are in this TL, I can well believe the Conservatives can win. Note that the generous and flattering package of veteran benefits need not actually flip a great many Service votes, just enough to permit the domestic Tory margin to prevail.
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Powell had different views at different times. You seem to be talking of the "Tiber foaming with blood" one, who, in any event was unlikely to become a Fascist.
There were "other" Powells, such as the one who was a fierce defender of the NHS in the 1950s, the "Hola Camp" speech one when he told the House that Britain could not treat its Kenyan prisoners in Hola Camp less well than it treated it's own citizens. The speech was described by Michael Foot as the best he had ever heard in the House.
I think the main principle Powell adhered to throughout his life was his dislike of the American "empire".
This is interesting. I take on board a lot of what you've said. However, allow me to put a few things back to you and see what you think.
I think a pretty fair chunk of the returning servicemen would actually go to get retrained and reskilled. They've been in an organization that is much more meritocratic than society back home. Indeed, this was a Labour policy in 1945, It just wasn't implemented in full due to...you know, the whole country going bankrupt in the late 1940s thing.
What do you mean by road building programs in the mid-1940s? British infrastructure in the 1930s was much below the standard in Germany. I think any sensible government would have done that. Labour tried to as well. They had grand plans for London in particular. Again, money.
As for Powell, I feel the same. But it's fun. And better than writing in 25 similar minor functionaries in the Conservative Research Department.
Now, on paying for it, I do think that this is a legitimate point, and one that I've spent a fair bit of time thinking about. However, honestly, I don't think it will cost an absurd amount. A lot of this is just a government guarantee of loans, meaning that the money actually comes from the private sector. Britain still had quite a lot of loanable funds in the 1940s, because it hadn't yet all gone overseas (again, in my view, due to tax policy). I think the most expensive parts of the platform are going to be infrastructure, which I think is easily paid for by not nationalizing everything that can move. What do you think on the specifics of the cost, because that's an area I have lots of concerns.
From what I understand Churchill was never really deeply involved IOTL with domestic affairs. During the war he delegated to Labour figures, during 1945-50 he spent more time meeting international figures, warning about socialism and writing instead of trying to set up a serious conservative alternative to labours plans, and then in 1950 - '55 he delegated almost everything to his cabinet.
I think the rumours that he was near crippled by his illness are overstated but he really should have resigned earlier. Unfortunately there was some personal animosity with Eden that needs to be smoothed over before he will.
This is your TL. As you can probably tell the suggestion that Churchill would have led a better post-war Government than Attlee isn't a popular one, but that doesn't mean you should't set out a case and write it.
I trust you know me enough, Garrison, to know I am not a fan of this thread's project. But let's give the conservative devils their due!
Perhaps you know a lot more about the details of British electoral politics in the Depression, but the fact stands OTL several general elections were held, and the Tories held the balance of power after each. Certainly I'd assume they were guilty of certain repressive measures, as we both judge it. But among these I have never heard of vote suppression being among them. Labour had an open field to seize legitimate power in the Commons and yet they did not. Why?
My impression is that fundamentally, the Conservatives expediently bowed to the necessities of the Depression circumstances and did provide a certain degree of social welfare. The American analogy would be that in certain states of the USA (leaving aside the "Solid South" where extreme reaction and a quite high degree of progressivism, barring racial policy, shared the same party in the New Deal era) the Republicans held power at the state level, winning majorities in state houses and governorships despite the national landslide toward the Democrats under FDR--but in these nominally Republican thus oppositional states, the Republicans expediently supported a considerable degree of welfarism too. "Welfare" was a good word in American politics until the 1960s or later, when it became coded for allegedly supporting African Americans and other minorities at the cost of "white" people; the Depression generations were grateful for it. Democrats could embrace this memory of salvation more forthrightly than Republicans could of course.
We also have the example of Bismarck in Germany to consider. It is quite possible for conservative politicians to buy off sufficient numbers of potential hard left voters with judicious doling out of sufficient degrees of quasi-socialistic policies carefully left in control of elites, or so they hope. It is a compromise of their avowed principles, but it can easily be justified in nationalistic terms and typically has been.
Also of course Britain and France controlled vast colonial systems; it is my impression a lot of the hardship of the Depression was shifted onto the backs of colonial subjects, but then both empires undertook "imperial preference" to try to set their separate, parallel systems on a stabilized autarkic basis. This, along with British conservatives having leadership more pragmatic and astute than American, might well complete the explanation of how the nominal Conservative Party held sway despite the massive failure of global capitalism undermining their basic ideological premises.
And finally they could blame American misleadership in that debacle, claiming poor Britain was towed along helplessly into a maelstrom caused by Yankee incompetence at high finance. I don't believe this merely superstructural deficiency of the ramshackle US finance system was by any means the deep cause of the Depression, which IMO was laid in the foundations of how capitalism works and no amount of clever policy dancing by Herbert Hoover's administration (had the basically humanistic Hoover jettisoned his Wall Street cronies like Mellon and dived deep into serious thinking about how best to manage, which he did not do) could have done much to mitigate it either. Perhaps fast and clever action could have significantly lowered the sheer magnitude of the collapse in confidence by capitalists in daring to invest in recovery, but not I think warded off the basic fact that world capitalists were frightened and unwilling to risk their remaining fortunes in the black hole of failure the markets appeared to have turned into. We often encounter people who blithely assume the Depression could be handwaved away; I can't take any such TL seriously. But that would not stop British conservative leaders from pretending it was even so I suppose.
Again, give the Devil his due. I grew up with a certain image of who Churchill was and what he valued and liked, and it turns out, if I am to believe some recent summary reviews of very private communications he shared with a few cronies much closer to his views than typical (including the King of the UK) that actually the man was a Tallyrandish master of presentation and image, quite capable of dissembling and putting a politic face on a situation when his private and personal reaction was quite something else.
A lot of Churchill hagiography I grew up with the USA for instance assumed that he was a great friend and admirer of Americans; much is made of his own partially US ancestry, and the major evidence lies in his frequent appeals to American public opinion and his apparent close friendship with Franklin Roosevelt as in his wartime correspondence with "former naval person." Forainstance we get the phrase "Iron Curtain" from a later 1940s speech he gave in Missouri. Obviously he was appealing to sway American opinion and thus policy, and his ability to do that, as far as his own speechifying was effective anyway, related to Americans both regarding him as a hero and believing he actually liked us, loved us even.
It seems though, from reading over his shoulder in the few correspondences where he could honestly express himself, he was quite resentful of surging Yankee power, quite impatient with our obstinate insistence on having our way at British Empire expense, just generally sad to be living in an age where his whole career was bent around currying American favor. I'd like the chance to read this stuff firsthand sometime to see if it goes so far as to suggest even his purported admiration of Roosevelt was yet more cynical flattery aiming at manipulating the stupid Yanks to do what they ought to do as he saw it. Even in his OTL published work in his lifetime, where presumably he kept an iron hand on every nuance and every phrase so as not to dispel this painfully crafted illusion of Yankee sycophancy, he let slip, in his memoirs of the war period (published in the later '40s, clearly with an aim at regaining control of 10 Downing which of course he managed to do for some years in the early '50s) his resentment that the USA demanded and got Britain dropping her long time alliance with Japan, and his suspicion that had the Yankees been less insistent on this point the whole Pacific mess might have been averted. (He'd be wrong about that I think, unless the British system could somehow figure out how to dole out quite a lot of imperial preference to keep Japan afloat without their OTL strategy of trying and largely succeeding in conquering China, or perhaps if British alliance had amounted to British blessing of Japan proceeding to do that very thing, perhaps within limits of a defined sphere of influence. But anyway it is a glimpse of his mentality).
So--I do think Churchill was a smart man if not possessed of the values I would admire, and part of his cleverness was the ability to project a chosen self-image at odds with his real personal judgements about things. When Churchill lets loose some ire, as he often did with say the Irish or Indians (perhaps any country whose name starts with an I in English?) we can infer a hell of a lot more is pent up--God help either nation if Churchill could be granted a free wish without personal accountability for the outcomes on the fate of either! He was a master of doublethink, or the somewhat saner if even more morally objectionable ability to clearly separate what he deeply believed from what he wanted people to think he believed. He could keep track of thousands of lies apparently without tripping up, and these abilities in this timeline suggest he could and would remain the face of the Tory party for a decade or more to come, if he doesn't slip up.
The Tories are betting on wooing over military veterans, who surely do comprise a huge percentage of British population (if they have the wit to count the comparable number of women who also put on uniforms and served on many fronts of aid, and devise something to recognize the service of those who never enlisted but did provide vital home front services too, they would have a pitch for nearly everyone) and even narrowly limited to uniformed male service, all these men had close ties to others not directly appealed to whom they could sway.
I am quite sure a solid core of Labourites who take it all with a grain of salt and discount the value of preferences even as they avail themselves of, counting them as only partial reward, will remain solid, and while I have just glanced over the author wikibox of the '45 GE, it does seem the Tory victory is quite thin.
But it has been rare, since 1930 which is as far back as I ever looked, for the House of Commons majority party, even when its majority is quite overwhelming, to be based on actual solid majorities of popular vote. Even in the USA where all but a handful of percents of voters if that many vote for either D or R, it often happens the dominant party still has failed to have a 50%+ majority of popular vote, and it also happens that the party running the House of Representatives can be the one of the two that got less votes--the plurality party can be in the minority of the body! In Britain, there have generally always been third parties in serious contention, who win variable numbers but never (not going back to 1930 anyway) fail to get some MP seats. I observe few cases when the leading two parties involve a flip where the one with the second number of actual votes manages to outnumber the one with the most in seats, but it has just about always been true than the leading party, while indeed being the true plurality party, has just about never had over half the votes cast.
Given dynamics like these, the people who remember Churchill most bitterly are those who have already decided to vote Labour (or conceivably some other party at some point in this evolution) no matter what. They are in the minority in this case, as they would generally be in the 1950s OTL, and are disregarded. The question is, can Churchill present himself as the leader and face of a Conservative coalition that wins a majority of HC seats? He can be hated all the Opposition likes to hate him, that's normal Parliamentary politics I think and fear. He'd still be PM and imagined to represent the majority of British opinion. (I've explained why this is an illusion, but it is true at least it would represent the plurality of British opinion).
I think what returning servicemen wanted was jobs, and in OTL they got them. Certainly some went to university, and many became teachers...some taught me. But as for wholesale retraining, I think most just wanted a paying job.
Of course, the British economy actually did well until about 1950, with good trade surpluses. Naturally there were few competitors. But it is still an arguable point as to whether the re-armament caused by the Korean War knocked the economy off course. Certainly there was a huge inflation in the price of raw materials, mainly caused by US re-armament and its huge demand for them. West Germany was helped to recover so it didn't go Communist...as Macmillan said "we are defending them while they are stealing our markets".
Btw, thank heavens London was left alone mainly; there were plans to demolish Soho, which would have made it a brutalist concrete wasteland.
I don't think nationalisation was necessarily bad. The railways were clapped out, and much of British industry needed to be rationalised...too many small inefficient companies. But nationalisation needed firm management and co-operative unions; it got neither.
Incidentally Capital Gains Tax wasn't introduced until 1965.
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I agree, returning servicemen are going to get jobs either way, because the British economy is going to experience a postwar boom regardless. The question becomes why did the British economy so dramatically underperform comparable economies, despite still growing? I think this disparity highlights what became of the British economy later on, particularly following the election of The Great Satan in 1964, but that's another story for another day. Re-armament for the Korean War should have and did provide a classical Keynesian stimulus to the British economy in the early 1950s, which, when combined with the somewhat more even-handed approach of the But side of Butskellism in that decade, led to the greatest absolute prosperity the British had ever experienced. (i.e. Harold Macmillan's "you've never had it so good" in 1958)
As for Marshall Aid, Britain was the single largest beneficiary of Marshall Aid. The Labour government squandered (again, my view) this money on nationalization, building a very large social welfare state (much larger than most of the Western Europe in this period), and government waste. Instead, it should have been invested so as to provide the basis for growth much further down the line.
As for British industry needing to be rationalized - I'm interested to hear your perspective on this. British industry was actually relatively competitive - even despite the hampers put on it - well into the 50s. It wasn't until much later that the cost of subsidizing failing industries became a serious drag on the British economy.
As for capital gains tax - I should have been more specific. The capital gains tax may not have been around in this period, but tax on capital income (which is another way of saying capital gains) definitely was.
Per "Postwar British Economic Growth and the Legacy of Keynes" by Thomas F. Cooley and Lee E. Ohanian:
This is a graph of UK vs US economic output per capita. We could blame the war for this - but in reality, it has much more to do with:
Note how the lines begin to converge.
In my view, having the Tories in power, lowering wartime taxes, especially on investment, and investing Britain's Marshall Aid in increasing the wealth of a specific, but broad-based section of society is going to produce...a very different postwar British economy.
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Because they were still a growing party and a significant number of voters still viewed them as outsiders. Remember as recently as the 1920's the two main parties were the Conservatives and the Liberals and in the British system its rare to have more than two parties actually in a position to win enough votes to achieve a majority. Labour increasingly became the second party across the next couple of decades but it isn't really until its role in the national government during WWII that it showed it was 'fit to rule'. This, combined with the massive desire for social change that grew out of the war created the landslide victory of 1945.
The Conservatives suddenly embracing a set of ideas and ideals such as the welfare state and National Health Service is inevitably going to ring hollow.
The war was the pivotal event that changed the perception of not only of the Labour Party but of social expectations. The war brought together people from all classes and walks of life and as the war went on there was a growing sense that there had to be real change when peace came. Britain couldn't simply return to way things had been before the war after all the sacrifices that had been made, there couldn't be a repeat of 1918 when the promises of 'A land fit for heroes' were systematically betrayed. What was being discussed wasn't just social change but Socialist change. At the same time Labour's commitment to the war and its role in the national government dispelled any lingering notion that they were just a bunch of suspect radicals incapable of actually running the country.
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That's what happened. The 1945 Tory Manifesto was essentially Labour-lite. In my view, the electorate made the understandable calculation that if the Tories were conceding the point to Labour, then they may as well have the real thing. Which is why I've set out an alternative vision in TTL.
However, it's worth noting that...Labour only won the one general election. They "won" in 1950, but with an unworkable majority, and Churchill was back in 1951. There wouldn't be another Labour PM until 1964. And Labour spent the 50s appealing to the center (Gaitskill was definitely no Michael Foot) as much as the Tories did (making peace with nationalization and the welfare state).
And I think that means you are starting from a false premise. I think its more realistic to say that the public wanted what Labour was offering and weren't going to buy the dubious proposition that the Tories had suddenly embraced the working class and social reform. When you understand that what Labour was proposing was actual Socialism, you understand why Tories effectively adopting Socialism-lite policies is not going to fool anyone.
I definitely understand that Labour were offering Socialism. I think everyone at the time understood that as well. What I don't accept is that it was a fait accompli that the Labour vision was so enthralling that a Labour victory was inevitable. I think the public looked around, saw what the Tories were offering, didn't trust them to deliver socialism as well as the Socialists, and voted for the real thing. If instead the Tories make a specific appeal to the veterans who had won the war, don't you think it would have had some appeal to that group?
Obviously it's not going to particularly appealing to the people who spent the war going down pit in South Wales or Yorkshire, but I think specific programs (different from what Labour, as socialists, were offering) for veterans would have appeal to the beneficiaries of them.
India will still go, which is inevitably going to lessen British interest in Asia. However, I haven't quite decided how to handle Malaya yet. The Commonwealth is going to look a lot different though, so it's possible there's a larger British presence in East Asia in TTL. What are your thoughts?
And I believe you are fundamentally wrong. People wanted what Labour was offering and the notion that some last minute change from the Tories is going to fool people into thinking they've suddenly embraced socialist ideas is bizarre. If the Tories won in 1945 the story of the next 5 years would be the Tories finding excuses to postpone or outright renege on any socialist promises they might have made. Now that's my belief based on the long painful history of British politics in the 20th Century. You choose to believe otherwise that's your privilege but nothing you've offered remotely makes me see the idea of these kinder, gentler Tories existing let alone winning in 1945 as remotely likely. So I guess I'll have to leave it there.