May 13 The Coalition Government Is Endorsed
By May 13 most of the senior government posts were filled. That day was Whit Monday and therefore normally a Bank Holiday. However, the Bank Holiday was cancelled by the incoming government, Churchill spoke to a specially convened sitting of the House of Commons. Speaking to them for the first time as Prime Minister, he began as follows:
I beg to move, That this House welcomes the formation of a Government representing the united and inflexible resolve of the nation to prosecute the war with Germany to a victorious conclusion.
He went on to make one of his most famous speeches ("I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat") which includes a brief account of how the Cabinet had been formed.
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“The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)