[In 1924] To everyone's surprise, Winston Churchill was appointed chancellor of the exchequer, the second most powerful position in government.
No one was more taken aback by the appointment than Churchill himself. He was then a few days short of fifty. After a spectacular early career—home secretary at the age of thirty-five and first lord of the admiralty in 1911—he had fallen on hard times. The debacle at Gallipoli in 1915 had been a turning point. Politically damaged, he had gone off to fight on the Western Front, continued to deliver his brilliant speeches, and had become a follower of Lloyd George; when the "Welsh Wizard" was ousted in 1922, Churchill had lost his seat in Parliament and spent the next two years trying to rehabilitate himself.
It was a daunting task. Within political circles, he was almost universally distrusted as a man who had changed parties not just once, but twice. In 1903, after the Tories had split over free trade and their political fortunes seemed bleak, he had crossed the floor to join the Liberals, becoming a junior minister in barely two years. Now again as the Liberals were being shunted into the political wilderness, he had abandoned them—although for the sake of form he did not officially join the Conservatives for several more years. Many people thought the vaulting ambitions and poor judgement were the hereditary traits of the Churchills, echoing Gladstone's verdict, "The was never a Churchill, from John Marlborough down, that had either morals or principles."
