Britons who cheered the king, the queen, and Chamberlain on the palace balcony after the Munich Conference were left in no doubt about where the Crown stood on appeasement; and guests within earshot of the queen and Chamberlain at a dinner party in July 1939 were left in no doubt about the Crown’s dim view of Churchill. During the Norway debate, the king pushed his unofficial powers a step further. Knowing that Chamberlain’s political survival rested on convincing a reluctant Labour Party to join a national government under him, during an audience after the first day of debate, the king asked Chamberlain, “Would it help if I spoke to Attlee . . . and say that I hoped they [the Labour Party] would realize that they must pull their weight and join a national government?” The prime minister said he wanted to think on the matter, and as he was thinking on it his luck appeared to take a turn for the better.

On May 9, a sizable number of the Conservative MPs who had voted no or had abstained on the confidence motion awoke with a severe case of morning-after guilt. Heartened by the sudden shower of mea culpas raining down on the Conservative Central Office, the Tory whips prepared a package of promises, including a pledge to form a national government and to increase Churchill’s powers and offer perks, such as choice committee assignments and better constituency services. Then they invited the penitent, the mournful, and the self-seeking into the office for a talk. The third element in what became known as the prime minister’s “Iron Man defense” was a whispering campaign against Churchill. Just before lunch on the ninth, Harold Nicolson heard that “the Whips are putting it about that the whole business [the confidence vote] was a snap vote cunningly engineered by Duff Cooper and Amery.” For his unexpected turn of good luck on May 9 Chamberlain also owed a debt of gratitude to his opponents.

Almost to a man, the rebel Tories who voted no on the confidence motion stood under the flag of Churchill, and, almost to a man, the Labour MPs who voted no disliked Churchill as much as, and in some cases more than, they disliked Chamberlain. In many Labour homes, the name Churchill was synonymous with the name Tonypandy. In Labour Party legend, when miners in the Welsh town went on strike in 1910, Home Secretary Churchill sent the army in to break the strike; in reality, Churchill sent the army in to protect the miners from the local police. But over the years, the Tonypandy legend acquired—as legends often do—the power of truth. In Labour households, a generation of children absorbed it with their mother’s milk. If Labour was going to serve under a Conservative prime minister in a national government, then Attlee, Greenwood, Hugh Dalton, and the other senior party leaders wanted that Conservative PM to be Lord Halifax. Steady of temperament and sound of judgment, the word that most naturally attached itself to the name of Edward Halifax was “blameless.” Accordingly, the foreign secretary was also the first choice of the king, who was “bitterly opposed to Winston succeeding Chamberlain,” and of the queen, who shared the king’s feelings about Churchill.

Fearing a divisive fight over the succession question, on the morning of the ninth the leading opposition groups agreed to put aside that question for now and to focus their energies on bringing down Chamberlain.

“Don’t agree and don’t say anything.”

It was the lunch hour on the ninth, and Anthony Eden and Churchill were sitting in a London restaurant with Kingsley Wood. Perhaps because the whips had been offering Wood’s head to dissident Tories all morning, the lord privy seal was in an indiscreet mood. “Neville ha[s] decided to go and wants Halifax to succeed him, and you to endorse the choice,” Wood said, then offered Churchill a piece of advice. The prime minister had called an afternoon meeting to discuss the leadership question. When he raises the succession issue, “don’t agree and don’t say anything.” Eden was “shocked” by Wood’s indiscretion. He was a Chamberlain man, and here he was, casually betraying years of loyalty and friendship over lunch in a noisy London restaurant. Still, Wood’s advice was “good,” so Eden “seconded it.”

There were other betrayals on the afternoon of the ninth, as events forced men to choose between loyalty to country, loyalty to party, loyalty to friends, and loyalty to the truth. Clement Davies, Duff Cooper, and Bob Boothby, three of the most influential antiappeasement MPs, began the morning pledging not to politick for individual candidates, and spent the afternoon politicking on behalf of Churchill. That day, the first lord was an easy sale. Bellicosity, tenacity, daring, certitude—qualities that had alternately annoyed, exasperated, and frightened two generations of MPs—looked different on a day when four hundred German tanks had been sighted in a wood east of the Belgian Ardennes and the German merchant fleet had switched to the frequency it had used just prior to the Norway invasion.

Later that afternoon, Lloyd George gave a remarkable speech. “When the history of [this period] comes to be written,” he told an almost empty House of Commons, “it will be seen that most of this trouble has originated in the fact that the victors in the late war did not carry out solemn pledges in the Treaty [of Versailles] which they themselves gave.” Many found it beyond strange that on the eve of war, Lloyd George would choose to make such an inflammatory accusation—but not his old nemesis, Neville Chamberlain. Lloyd George is “stak[ing] out a position from which ultimately he might be called on to make the peace,” the prime minister told his sister Ida a few days later.

As the afternoon wore on, sentiment continued to move in Churchill’s direction. Bob Boothby reported that there is “a gathering consensus of opinion in all quarters that you are the necessary and inevitable prime minister.” Clem Davies said that his lobbying had left Attlee and Greenwood “unable to distinguish between the P.M. and Halifax.” The euphoria in the Churchill camp was premature. Kingsley Wood’s intelligence was wrong. Chamberlain opened the afternoon meeting he had called to discuss the succession question with the announcement that he would remain in office if the Labour Party agreed to serve under him. Clement Attlee, who joined the meeting at a little after six, quickly disabused the prime minister of that notion.