Eighty years ago, Churchill dismantles the last relics of the old regime

Once again fate had intervened on Churchill’s side. Just as the final illness and death of Neville Chamberlain had allowed Churchill to consolidate his hold on political power, so the death of Lord Lothian, the British ambassador to the US, opened an opportunity for him to dismantle the last serious relics of the old regime that had held him back from power during the long miserable years of appeasement. The first piece of the jigsaw was to replace Lothian. Clearly the Washington embassy was the most critical of all Britain’s representations abroad and it was going to take an exceptional figure to fill the job. Churchill’s first choice was the former prime minister David Lloyd George but he pleaded ill-health; more likely Lloyd George’s dwindling hopes of being installed as a defeatist leader as part of a compromise peace with the Nazis was a more powerful factor. Churchill’s next choice was the Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, the most conspicuous holdover from Chamberlain’s premie