The Nationalists received what could have been their coup de grâce during the War. Their association with Italy, the wartime enemy, antagonised them with the electorate, and their leader Enrico Mizzi (son of Fortunato) was first interned and then exiled to Uganda during the War along with other supporters of the Party. The Party did not even contest the 1945 elections for the Council of Government which for the first time raised the Labour Party from third-party status to that of a major party at the expense of the Constitutionals.