Following Woodsworth's stroke in 1940, Coldwell was appointed parliamentary leader of the CCF in October 1940 while Woodsworth remained the party's honorary president (or leader). Coldwell was unanimously elected the party's new national leader at the party's July 1942 convention, three months following Woodsworth's death. He led the party through five general elections. After an upsurge of support for the party in the mid-1940s, the party embarked on a long decline during the Cold War. The Liberals, appropriating many of the CCF's policies, made them government policy. Liberal governments implemented unemployment insurance, family allowances, and universal old age pensions, which stole much of the CCF's thunder with the electorate, which helped cause the party's electoral fortunes to turn downward during the prosperous 1950s. Coldwell cared much more that his party's policies were becoming law than that he and the rest of the CCF received little credit for the policies.