Comments by "" (@TheDavidlloydjones) on "David Frum: Losing the Dominance Primary | The Bulwark Podcast" video.
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But, David, you're not quite right about Britain "suspending elections for ten years." Byelections went on regularly, and there were seven while Britain was at war.
In every one, the main candidates were the National Government and the Commonwealth Party.
The National Government was supporters of the War Cabinet, i.e. "the Churchill Administration"; in the large, it was a formal, go to meetings together, alliance of Labour and the Conservative Party, with individual Liberals involved.
Commonwealth was a temporary alliance of Independent Labour and the Communist Party with, I imagine, some Trotskyite/ist involvement.
The results: Commonweath 7. National Government Zero. A 7-0 shut-out.
This, incidentally, should have warned Churchill that he was on ver-ree thin ice -- and given that back in his first election campaign, in Hammersmith, a multi-member constituency, as barely an adult, he had cooperated with Labour and written sympathetically about them -- this is the Keir hardy era, remember -- it is surprising how oblivious poor old Winnie was in '45.
The Communists, foolishly, took this to mean England was on the cusp of The Revolution. It was nothing of the sort. Independent Labour simply walked away from the thing some time around Portdam, and the Communists went back to drinking too much with coal miners.
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