So Mr. Churchill has not been able to save the Tory party from defeat! It has fallen as low as that. One of the half-dozen greatest leaders in war that we have produced, while at the summit of his achievement and prestige, could not induce the British people to give the Tories another lease of power. Such is their disrepute. Where, then, would they have been without him? They would have been annihilated. It would have been the debacle of 1906 over again, only worse. Most things were obscure about the election, but not this. The mass of the people palpably did not want the Tories back, but what was incalculable was whether their hostility to the Tories was stronger than their disinclination to part with Mr. Churchill.
Most people at the beginning of the election started from the assumption that the bulk of the electors were moved by a desire to keep Mr. Churchill. In the circumstances and within a few weeks of victory, what more natural assumption? Multitudes, it was felt, would cast a vote for the Tories ╤ often a very reluctant vote╤ simply in order to keep Mr. Churchill at the helm. To-day╒s result is a drastic refutation of all such calculations.
It is almost an intimidating object lesson for Governments. The country has preferred to do without Mr. Churchill rather than have him at the price of having the Tories, too. Such an exercise of independent judgment has rarely been witnessed in a democracy, and it has been reached in the teeth of one of the most fierce and unscrupulous campaigns ever waged by the Tory party and its press, or a section of it.
Of course to-day╒s landslide cannot be interpreted only in terms of a negative hostility to the Tories. That is but the obverse side of the medal. The reverse is a positive shift of opinion to the Left. The Tory party is not merely condemned for its past; it is rejected because it has no message for the times. Great Britain, like the Continent, is clearly straining after a new order.
The swing is probably a much vaguer movement than some Labour Left-wingers would like to think. That it is a vote for any rigorous application of Socialism is certainly not true. What is more likely is that it is prompted first by a widespread desire to give Labour a chance, as the only available alternative to the Tories, by presenting it with power as well as office; this for the first time. Equally, it could be interpreted as a vote for bold action on reconstruction, demobilisation, housing, town planning, and fuel, coupled with a willingness to accept innovating State action and planning where it can be shown to be indispensable to a successful attack on these problems.
