Labour's entry into Winston Churchill's coalition government in May 1940 not only facilitated a crucial strengthening of the war effort, but played a key part in transforming the party's own future political fortunes. Since September 1939 the party had been in an uncomfortable position. Prior to the onset of military disaster, Chamberlain remained as personally popular as ever, whereas there were doubts about Attlee's leadership even from within the Parliamentary Labour Party. Moreover, direct attacks on the government could lead to charges of disloyalty in war time; yet equally, ‘patriotic’ measures such as the electoral truce led to accusations of pusillanimity from constituency activists. By joining the government at a moment of incipient national catastrophe, however, Labour not only gained directly from its association with Churchill but, at the same time, all its previous criticisms of the terminally discredited Chamberlain now appeared vindicated. The party also threw off, virtually at a stroke, the charges of narrow sectionalism that had dogged it since 1931, and recaptured its status as a genuinely national party. As Steven Fielding has noted, ‘despite their best efforts the Conservatives could not overcome the fact that it was they rather than Labour who had come to be identified as the defenders of a sectional interest by 1945’. All this would in due course bring great electoral rewards for Labour; but in the early summer of 1940 considerations of such advantage were forgotten. With the fall of France imminent, all minds focused on Britain's own fight for survival.