Attlee versus Thatcher: We need to pick better heroes.

[Ken Burch]

3. Attlee is probably a victim of his own personality in this particular contest.

From all that I've read about him, he was a notably dreary man, and probably felt he had to present himself as even drearier than he actually was in order to allay the fears of those who saw the prospect of a Labour government as tantamount to a Bolshevik takeover. Attlee seems to have started the Labour tradition of choosing leaders who were as uninspirational and passionless as possible on a personal level.

He was also hurt politically(and I'd argue that this cost him the chance to get a sustainable majority in the 1950 election)by the need to impose a rationing system that may have made it harder for some to see the gains that were being achieved for working people by his government. Churchill used this against him in 1951 by promising "a bonfire of controls"-and even when he did, Churchill and the Tories still LOST to Labour in the popular vote that year, winning their parliamentary majority only because:

a)The constituency boundaries were biased towards Conservative candidates;
b)Labour's vote was concentrated in safe seats in Scotland, Wales, and the North of England(a pattern that continues today)
c)The Conservatives had formed an alliance with a right-wing breakaway group from the Liberal Party, the National Liberals, whose 19 seats were counted as part of the "Conservative majority".