‘This afternoon the PM called Baldwin, Chamberlain, Thomas, Runciman and myself together and told us formally that he was, on grounds of health, giving up the Premiership. He spoke with manly dignity and one felt it was a historic moment. We all expressed our sympathy and devotion in sincere and unstudied terms. I could not help contrasting the scene with the satirical, not to say malignant, description which Rosebery once gave me of Gladstone's leavetaking – “William Harcourt, blubbering like a child, produced from an inner pocket a much corrected manuscript, yellow with age, from which he read a valedictory address”. Today all was simple and between real friends and omrades’.

‘If S.B. offers the deputy leadership in the Commons to Simon until the end of this Parliament in order to soften his fall, he is not proposing to give the post any increased importance…I am quite aware that Simon likes the idea of being deputy leader because he thinks it would bring him back into touch and sympathy with the House of Commons and might enable him possibly to become PM on the ground that a minority leader was required to preserve the character of the National Government.

‘In this Simon deceives himself and I need never be jealous of him because I know now that he lacks certain qualities essential to a leader …The fact is the House detests him; he hasn't a friend even in his own party and the reason is that, quite wrongly, they distrust his sincerity’.