Eighty years ago Churchill's general election campaign flounders even more deeply

 

 Churchill continued to flounder in his campaign for the general election by treating  Harold Laski's proposition that the left-wing National Executive Committee (NEC) would be the dominant force in any Labour government with an ounce of seriousness. Clem Attlee had disposed of Laski's insulting and irrelevant claim that he would only attend the Potsdam conference as an observer with ease but Churchill insisted on pressing Attlee publicly as to how a Labour government would relate to the NEC. Answering this presented Attlee with no greater difficulty. The kindest analysis of Churchill's moves was that he genuinely did not understand what was going on and was slave to a vision of the Labour Party as a totalitarian force.

Labour astutely declined to field a candidate against Churchill in his South Woodford constituency. By implication his reputation as war leader was not to be challenged, leaving unspoken the opposition to him as the leader of the Conservative Party. Attlee himself faced a Conservative candidate.

The Bristol Aircraft Company presented its project for a transatlantic airliner. It was an adaption of a long-range bomber design and was was originally called the Bristol 167. It was rechristened the Brabazon in honour of Lord Brabazon who had chaired the committee which had drawn up the specification for an aircraft to be the standard-bearer of British civil aviation after the war. The British aircraft industry had been expanded to a colossal size to support the RAF's heavy bomber strategy so it would be necessary to find it some occupation in peacetime unless it were to undergo a drastic shrinkage.