Chamberlain Resigns; Churchill to Accept Position as Prime Minister
LONDON - After a stirring speech by the former Chancellor of the Exchequer & First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Spencer Churchill, and a resounding vote of no confidence in the government of Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister has responded with a swift letter of recognition. In this letter he recognized Churchill as his likely successor even after what he calls "needless rabble rousing in the Commons and empty saber rattling".
The Parliament was likely to anoint Mr. Churchill even without the input of the former Prime Minister. Conservative leaders and Liberal leaders had both lambasted recently the decisions Mr. Chamberlain, especially in regards to his appointment of Sir Thomas Inskip to the post of Minister for Coordination of Defense, skipping over Churchill who most viewed as a far more worthy candidate. The decision was seen as Mr. Chamberlain placing the security of the British people under the priority of keeping his own political power.
The Prime Minister appeared to lose all sense of direction and leadership as the situation continued to deteriorate in Europe. Austria was annexed outright by the Germans as Hitler continued to lead diplomatic circles around the Prime Minister, and Czechoslovakia soon followed. All it seemed the Prime Minister could do was respond with more harsh rhetoric against a potential ally, the Soviet Union, even going so far as to declare war. Parliament has done all it can since to retract the damage done by Mr. Chamberlain, but as it currently stands, Moscow refuses to even accept a new British ambassador to discuss the crisis.
This was followed by the unfortunate events in France. As, critics of the outgoing Prime Minister say, Britain sat and watched from the sidelines, she made an enemy of the French. Marshall Philippe Petain, a war hero from the battle of Verdun in WW1, seized power in a relatively bloodless coup as the government of President LeBrun collapsed before a single bullet had even been fired.
The deathknell of Chamberlain, though, was likely the leaked message from the Prime Minister to Moscow, personally addressed to Josef Stalin, wherein the Prime Minister pleads the Soviets to accept peace and attack Hitler. It was quickly rebuked and led to a record low approval rating for a Prime Minister, now marked at the error margin of 0 for the month of June.
