Churchill's fame as a war leader was now a very mixed blessing. The repeated emphasis he gave to the need to finish the war against Japan suggested once more that war was his only real interest. The East End of London was flooded with rumours that he was planning a war against Russia.

The result plunged him into depression ... but it was not quite as bad as it seemed.

After polling on 5 July, Churchill and Attlee returned to Potsdam while the service vote was collected. On 25 July they returned home to await the results, which began to come in the following morning. By the afternoon it was apparent that Labour had won by a landslide - with 393 seats and an overall majority of 183 in the House of Commons.

The notion that the Conservatives were defeated by 'the forces vote' is mistaken - as the opinion polls showed, the civilian vote was strongly pro-Labour - but war weariness was probably a factor against Churchill among civilians and servicemen alike. The result plunged him into depression and his party into shock, but it was not quite as bad as it seemed. The first-past-the-post system gave an exaggerated picture of Labour's triumph, disguising the fact that just over half the electorate had voted against them.

Churchill soon recovered his spirits. He reinvented himself as a global statesman, doggedly retained the leadership of the Conservative Party, and confidently awaited what he saw as the inevitable reaction against Socialism.

He had, in fact, performed one great service for Conservatism. After the failure of appeasement and the disrepute into which the pre-war leaders of the Conservative party had fallen, he had restored the party's patriotic credentials and saved it from the possibility of a defeat far worse than it in fact suffered in 1945.