This became a campaign issue during the 1964 general election. Alec Douglas-Home's incumbent Conservatives stated that the British deterrent was both necessary for independence from the Americans and maintaining British world influence, and was "working for peace" in such cases as the passage of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Led by Gaitskell's successor Harold Wilson, Labour emphasized domestic economic issues but called deterrence the "Tory Nuclear Pretense" which would be neither independent nor effective. The populace's greater interest in domestic over foreign policy likely contributed to Labour's victory.