Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the Name of God, go.

During the final hours of the debate, Cromwell’s words—powerful, contemptuous, unanswerable—resonated through the House, making everything that came after them sound anticlimactic. At about midnight, the debate over, the House emptied out into the warm May night. The government had sustained a potentially mortal blow, and the Chamberlain men knew it. In seven hours or so, “In the Name of God, go,” and “Missed the bus!” would be bold-faced headlines in a hundred morning papers, and by the next evening they would be the punch lines to a dozen pub jokes. Henry Channon went to bed “most uneasy about tomorrow,” and the next morning John Colville awoke in a “nadir of gloom.” A week before, the junior whips who had descended on the departing MPs on the evening of May 7 might have extinguished a backbench revolt with an “Iron Man defense” of threats, bribes, and promises of cabinet changes. But, emboldened by Amery’s speech, the dissidents now would settle for nothing less than Chamberlain’s head. “The efficacy of the Government depend[s] on the character of the Prime Minister, and the [present] Prime Minister’s character ha[s] not proved sufficient,” Harold Nicolson wrote in his diary that night. In Downing Street, Chief Whip Margesson warned a group of government supporters that compromises, unthinkable a few days earlier, might now be necessary to save Chamberlain.

Impressed by the strength of anti-Chamberlain sentiment in the Conservative backbenches, Clement Attlee agreed to file a motion for a confidence vote. The government would win, Attlee knew; the large Conservative majority in the House ensured that. But Chamberlain needed more than a numerical majority to survive. If a significant minority of Conservative MPs defected to the opposition, the government would suffer a moral defeat and the prime minister would have to resign.

The next afternoon, the Strangers’ Gallery and backbenches were abuzz with gossip when Herbert Morrison rose to speak a little after 4:00 p.m. Rumor had it that Morrison, a senior Labour politician, would introduce the confidence motion, and rumor proved correct. As Morrison was concluding—“I ask that the vote . . .”—Chamberlain suddenly sprang to his feet and approached the dispatch box. Almost for the first time since the Whitsun debate began, the House was perfectly quiet.

“I do not seek to evade criticism but I say this to my friends—and I have friends in the House.” Here, Chamberlain paused and turned to the Conservative backbenches. He seemed to be expecting a show of support; none was forthcoming. The House’s silence, previously respectful, now became embarrassing. “Anyhow,” the prime minister resumed, “I have friends in this House . . . I accept the challenge. I welcome it indeed.”

A brief burst of cheers from the Conservative backbenches produced a nod of appreciation from the prime minister, but when he returned to his seat on the front bench, the smile was gone and he looked old and tired and wounded. “Little Neville,” Henry Channon thought. “[He seems] heartbroken and shriveled.”

The speeches that followed retraced the pattern of the previous night. Battalion after battalion of government “yes men” rushed into the breach to defend the prime minister, and anti-Chamberlainite MPs continued to exclude Churchill from their criticism of the government. When the first lord rose to protest the exemption, Lloyd George gave the House a master class in needle threading. “The right honorable gentleman must not allow himself to be converted into an air raid shelter to prevent the splinters from hitting his colleagues.”

Delivering the government’s closing statement on Norway, Churchill attempted to thread the needle himself. For an hour he interspersed a factual account of the campaign with lamentations about Labour’s decision to ask for a vote of confidence. He called on Conservative dissidents to end “prewar feuds,” and he defended Chamberlain’s right to appeal to his friends. Arguably, what Churchill left out of his speech was more significant than what he put in. He did not defend the prime minister’s conduct of the war or praise his fellow ministers. Indeed, almost the only person he did praise was himself.