Labour’s triumph - on a 12% swing - dispatched five members of the cabinet and 27 ministers. Attlee now had 393 Commons seats compared with the Conservatives’ 213, giving Labour a majority over all the other parties of 146.
Labour’s share of the vote, although not an outright majority, was high at 48% - a 10% leap on the election of 1935. The Conservatives took 39%, leaving the Liberals on 9%.
Attlee’s party strengthened its position in Scotland, Wales and London, winning 79 seats which had never previously returned a Labour MP.
The shock with which contemporaries saw the victory was immense, despite the fact that Gallup polls had given Labour a strong lead over the Tories since 1943, around the same time the Beveridge report became a national best seller.
As large as it was, the Labour victory may have been even larger if not for the dislocation caused by the war.
The electoral roll was out of date and excluded many who had moved home. While numerous servicemen - more likely to vote Labour - stationed in remote areas of the of the globe also missed the chance to vote.
The extent of the leftward swing in the UK was further underlined as the communists polled more than 100,000 votes, and the status of the Liberal Party as no longer a real contender for government was made plain by its failure to secure more than a dozen seats.