Is Attlee really more worthy than Churchill?

As the toxic furore over statues continues, a number of left-wingers yearn to see the monument to Winston Churchill in Parliament Square replaced by one to Clement Attlee. In their eyes, the austere, long-serving Labour leader is far worthier of veneration than the cigar-chomping imperialist. To them, Attlee is the man who not only helped win the war by taking charge of the home front but also created the socialist New Jerusalem in its aftermath. ‘Let’s have a statue to Attlee. He is the really great figure in our history,’ tweets one enthusiast. ‘He did more to build up the future of our country than Churchill,’ says another.

But this adulation is overblown. Contrary to progressive mythology, Attlee was no secular saint. The record of his long career would not pass any ideological purity test. Like Churchill, he was a complex figure whose outlook and actions would have caused outrage to modern woke sensibilities.