Baby, It's Cold Outside
(More footnotes will be added)
1951-1955: Winston Churchill (Conservative majority)
1951: Clement Attlee (Labour), Clement Davies (Liberal)
1955-1957: Anthony Eden (Conservative majority) [1]
1955: Clement Attlee (Labour) [2], Clement Davies (Liberal)
1957-1960: Selwyn Lloyd (Conservative majority) [3]
1960-1963: Hugh Gaitskell (Labour majority) [4]
1960: Selwyn Lloyd (Conservative), Jo Grimond (Liberal)
1963-1969: Barbara Castle (Labour majority) [5]
1964: Iain Macleod (Conservative) [6], Jo Grimond (Liberal) [7]
1969-1972: Keith Joseph (Conservative minority with Liberal confidence and supply) [8]
1969: Barbara Castle (Labour), Richard Wainwright (Liberal)
[1] The short premiership of Anthony Eden was, in the eyes of many, an unmitigated disaster. Having won a great mandate against Attlee's divided Labour Party, it seemed as if the relative calm of Churchill's second premiership might continue on and on without any sign of turmoil on the horizon. It was not to be, however, as Eden made a series of miscalculations with regards to President Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal. The international crisis it provoked, handled poorly by Eden's Foreign Secretary, Harold Macmillan, led to a chasm opening in Anglo-American relations (President Eisenhower refused to back Britain and France over their interventions into Egypt and saw to it that they would pay with a run on the pound in late 1956) and the weight of public opinion in Britain turning against the Conservative government.
[2] The expulsion of Nye Bevan from the Labour Party was a huge blow to the confidence of the Labour Party, which was facing an ideological crisis as it entered the 1955 election. Unprepared for facing criticisms from both left and right, Attlee stumbled into a second defeat and promptly resigned following the election. With Bevan out of the party and the right brimming with confidence, it was an easy win for Hugh Gaitskell and his faction in the election to succeed Attlee. The token left-wing candidate, Richard Crossman, was trounced by Gaitskell's 176 votes in the first round (Crossman managed only a paltry 59 votes; Herbert Morrison gained just 30 votes) in spite of the tiresome efforts of Bevanites like Ian Mikardo and Barbara Castle to rally the Labour left.
[3] The Conservative Party was in disarray when Eden resigned in January 1957, with the formerly expected candidates for leader - Rab Butler and Harold Macmillan - having been tainted by their closeness to Eden during the Suez Crisis (both had considerable factions aligned against them in the Parliamentary Conservative Party). The entire Cabinet might have seemed tainted by the affair, but one prominent member still had enough political capital and a lack of "bloodied hands" over the crisis to rise to become both leader of the party and Prime Minister. Selwyn Lloyd, Eden's Chancellor and self-appointed disciple, was recognised for his efforts in stabilising the pound after Eisenhower placed economic sanctions on Britain for the country's tactics in Egypt. Sadly for Selwyn, he would be unable to shake the Suez Crisis off of the Tories' collective backs and the burden of the disastrous intervention under Eden would plague any attempts by his government to commit to peace and decolonisation - Britain bore the scent of imperialism, whether deserved or not. Behind the international politics, however, a series of missteps in the economy - a lack of confidence leading to a lack of inward investment, making the government cut interest rates in a move that consequently backfires and sees erratic jumps in inflation - would culminate in massive public spending cuts under the new Chancellor, Peter Thorneycroft, and hammer the last nail into the coffin made for the Tories' electoral chances come 1960.
[4] Hugh Gaitskell was dealt an almost perfect hand: the Conservatives had made a mess of the economy and lost the public's trust, his opposition to Suez elevated his standing within his own party and the country at large, and Nye Bevan was left out in the cold by his expulsion. With 362 seats and a promise of industrial harmony and economic renewal, Labour began to reverse the disastrous decisions of the previous government. Bevan's death in July 1960 dampened the optimism of the new government, certainly, and the plans to have him readmitted into the party that summer were mournfully discarded upon the news. But, from 1960 to 1963, the government seemed to be getting back on track with an internal left-wing opposition divided amongst itself over whether to serve in Gaitskell's Cabinet or not and the Meyner administration across the pond championing greater co-operation with Britain. The sunny days of the early '60s grew cloudy with the coming of 1963, however, as a mysterious illness took the Prime Minister's life in January 1963. The interim leader of the party, Jim Callaghan, took over for a few weeks whilst a leadership election was held.
[5] Out of the misery of January 1963 came Barbara Castle, storming to victory against the Chancellor, Douglas Jay, and the opportunistic Colonial Secretary, Harold Wilson. The female firebrand, whilst in government as Minister of Education, had remodelled herself as the respectable face of Bevanism and promised unity when she came to power. Keeping many of Gaitskell's appointments (the only high-profile sacking was Douglas Jay, who was promptly replaced by Jim Callaghan) did little to allay the fears of the likes of Roy Jenkins and Tony Crosland, who viewed Castle as an "pain in the arse" for all social democrats in the party. Thus began the rumours of a coup perhaps taking place before the next general election, which was expected for 1965. This coup never got off the ground, however, and Castle used the election she called in June 1964 to sweep away the ardent Gaitskellites and try to bring nationalisation back onto the political agenda. This would ultimately prove disastrous as, in 1966, a Commons revolt took place to defeat the government's plans for steel renationalisation. The humiliation was just the first of many, leading to a lack of confidence in the leadership brewing and renewed calls for Castle to step down. The papers turned on her in 1967 after pushing Alfred Robens from the Ministry of Labour and replacing him with Ian Mikardo, which was viewed as a dangerous appointment born from "Bevanite patronage". The unions grew restless as time went by, demanding higher pay and causing serious breakdowns in industrial relations, and inflation shot up from 6% in 1965 to almost 15% in 1969. The hope for Labour, just like the hope for the Tories less than a decade earlier, had evaporated.
[6]