WI: Churchill Steps Down in 1945

If Churchill has retired from politics, including the Tory Party, after the 1945 election, what would have happened to the Conservatives and how would their future government have acted, if it even would have taken shape at the time it did for us?
 
Off the top of my head, Anthony Eden succeeds Churchill ten years earlier as Conservative leader. Since Churchill wasn't that heavily involved in day-to-day affairs in his second term - he had a stroke and this was able to be covered up - and Eden was running foreign & empire policy anyway, it probably wouldn't make any early-50s Tory goverment too different. The elections would likely go the same, Eden's likely to call an early election instead of waiting the full five years and Suez is still going to happen as long as Nasser's around...

The butterflies will start to come in from people being in different positions than big-picture policy - it'll be an Eden man as Foreign Secretary and not Eden himself, for example, which means no Eden to move up and make way for Macmillan, so Mac's not going to be as prominent by 1956. (Macmillan might not even become Defence Secretary) That changes a lot after '56.
 
1950 and Beyond...

I just wonder if, with a more active and telegenic leader like Eden, the Conservatives might have been able to deprive Attlee's Government of their majority in 1950 and formed a minority administration with Liberal support.

I think you need a second POD to make Eden leader and that's not having his eldest son die in Burma in June 1945. The death of his eldest son was a profound blow to Eden and led to his divorce and a period of depression which would be poorly treated an lead to considerable health problems in the 1950s.

Have Eden's son survive and Anthony takes over in late 1945 and works with men like Butler, MacLeod, Powell and Heath in the Reform Group to re-build and re-launch the party.

Eden becomes Prime Minister in 1950 and wins a landslide in 1954 when at the height of his powers.

So would a healthy Eden get Suez so wrong and would he have simply walked away having got it so wrong ? Butler would probably have succeeded him and won his own elections in 1957 and 1961 before losing to Wilson in 1966. Eden would have been a huge figure in Conservative circles long into the 60s and 70s -it's possible to argue had Eden not been disgraced, there would have been no Thatcher with the One Nation tendency remaining in the ascendancy.
 
After losing 190 seats, in the 1945, general election, Clementine persuades her husband to retire, with Winstone angry at being booted out of 10 Downing Street, after winning a war against an untold evil.

Churchill was succeeded by, 47 year old, Anthony Eden, who was an opposition leader that was able to battle wits against the 62 year old, Prime Minister, Clement Attlee.

In 1950, Anthony Eden was able to take office as Prime Minister with Edward "Clement" Davies' Liberal Party assisting him in his efforts. Eden would hold the office until the 1955 election, when Labour's left wing leader, father of the National Health Service and former Minister of Health, Aneurin Bevan was able to win a majority.
 
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