The recent elections in England are a little confusing. I’m not sure why anyone would want to be Prime Minister there anyway. All they do in Parliament is yell at each other and heckle the Prime Minister as he gives his speech.

I think Winston Churchill would approve of the new government. When he was elected as Prime Minister in 1940 he received a lukewarm welcome. On May 13, 1940 he gave his famous speech to the House of Commons and said, “ I have nothing to offer except blood, toil, tears and sweat. The speech was a call to arms against Hitler who was one of the greatest menaces the world has ever known. Hitler was running ruff shod over Europe and Churchill had the courage to stand alone in opposition to Fascism and in support of Democracy. He finally persuaded Roosevelt and the US to join the effort and Hitler was eliminated from the planet. Time magazine voted him as the most influential leader of the 20th Century. Unfortunately, most high school and college students today never heard about Churchill.

In spite of Churchill’s great leadership during WWII he was defeated as Prime Minister in the election of 1945. Churchill was a conservative and did not believe in a welfare state. He was defeated by Clement Attlee who Churchill described as a modest man with much to be modest about. Attlee was a socialist and a member of the Labor Party. He enlarged the system of social services, nationalized major industries and started the National Health Care System. He was Prime Minister from 1945 to 1951 and Churchill was reelected. Attlee was also responsible for the decolonization of a large part of the British Empire. Before Attlee the sun never set on the British Empire because of its immense size, but that ended with his time in power.

The Conservatives are back in power in Great Britian and Churchill would probably be happy. I have no idea whether this is good or bad for those folks and in fact it probably doesn’t matter as far as we are concerned. Our biggest concern with England is that they are being overrun with Muslims and this could pose a threat to our mother country and to us. Their immigration problem is worse than ours.

All this is of no concern of mine on the porch, but as always I wonder if there are lessons from history. For example, the Panic of 1837 and the resulting depression should have been a lesson for our situation today.