British Prime Ministers: Neville Chamberlain

When Neville Chamberlain succeeded Stanley Baldwin as prime minister on May 28, 1937, he was convinced that “there is no one else,” and he thought that the office had also perhaps come to him “because I have not made enemies by looking after myself rather than the common cause.” It is a useful convention of our political system that a prime minister must accept individual responsibility for the major disasters that befall his country: national triumphs he is expected to share, but he is the guilty man when things go wrong. No statesman could have been better fashioned by the times and his own personality to play this scapegoat role than Neville Chamberlain.