Why was Churchill voted out in 1945?

[Moriarty]

You must remember that, technically, Churchill was never voted IN to office. After Neville Chamberlain resigned as Prime Minister after only narrowly surviving a vote of "No Confidence" in his conservative government and the Labour party leaders refusing to work in a coalition war cabinet with Chamberlain at it's head, there were only two contenders. Lord Halifax and Winston Churchill. Halifax refused the job, so on the 10th May 1940 Churchill was invited to form a coalition government.

When the war in Europe came to an end exactly five years later, Churchill was indeed extremely popular. At no point had his polling figures dropped below 78% and at that point stood at 84%. But one of the reasons why Churchill lost the general election in 1945 was because he had succeeded in completing the almost superhuman task he had taken on in 1940, and in a way this made him redundant. He had formed an outstanding coalition government that were able to use each members skill to to mobilise the British for total war, leaving Churchill free to become the epitome of national wartime leader and military victory was by far the most important of his goals - thus everything else, including party politics, was secondary. As a result, when the war came to an end and party politics resumed, Churchill suddenly found himself without a clear sense of purpose or direction.

Meanwhile, the Labour party had already set themselves up as the party of social reform with the Beveridge Report published in 1942. This report amounted to a comprehensive manifesto of social reform, including social security, a National Health Service, a full employment policy and other advances. Then during the election Labour and its allies in the media ran an effective propaganda war. They vilified members of the pre-war Conservative party as having been appeasers of Hitler, and of having been responsible for the failure to re-arm Britain. And they painted the 1930s in dismal colours as an era of poverty and mass unemployment. At the same time, they held out the prospect of a new social order that would ensure better housing, free medical services and employment for all.

Of course, the Conservatives built their campaign around the personality of Churchill and he still remained hugely popular, but the Conservative party, of which he was the de facto head, was not. 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. Also, Churchill's concern for Britain's imperial holdings put him at odds with the war weariness of the British public, who really didn't care about British colonies but were more concerned with housing (especially after the destruction caused by the Blitz) and the rebuilding of their country in all forms. Clement Attlee and the Labour party were the ones gearing up for that and consequently won in a landslide victory.