Philip Snowden: The First Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer

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Bevan's ally Michael Foot wrote an editorial in Tribune comparing Gaitskell to Philip Snowden (the Chancellor whose cuts in 1931 had brought down the Second Labour Government, after which he and other leading members of the Cabinet entered into the Tory-dominated National Government). The government eventually collapsed over arguments about a budget deficit when Snowden accepted the Committee on National Expenditure's recommendations for budget cuts while a significant minority of ministers led by Arthur Henderson, the National Executive Committee, and the General Council of the Trades Union Congress refused to enact cuts in unemployment benefits. Gaitskell visited Washington in the autumn of 1951, where he thought US Treasury Secretary John Wesley Snyder "a pretty small-minded, small town, semi-isolationist".

He argued that higher interest rates would be perceived as generating profits for the banks, which would not sit well with trade unions, and he was only prepared to consider demanding that the banks restrict credit.Snowden claimed that because of the lowering of duties on foodstuffs consumed by the working class, the budget went "far to realize the cherished radical idea of a free breakfast table". Throughout the summer of 1960 union conferences, many of whose rule books had their own equivalent to Clause IV, were hostile to the new proposal, and in the end four of the six largest unions opposed Gaitskell's plans. Besides repudiating the unquestioned commitment to public ownership of the means of production, now seen as merely one of numerous useful devices, he emphasised the goals of personal liberty, social welfare and above all social equality. Philip Snowden, 1st Viscount Snowden ( 18 July 1864 – 15 May 1937) was a British politician, and the first Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Gaitskell took on Frank Cousins and wanted to show that Labour were a party of government, not just of opposition. After breaking with Labour policy in 1931, Snowden was expelled from the party but continued to serve as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Ramsey MacDonald’s National Government coalition.Although the first Labour government only lasted nine months, it achieved much, including the Wheatley Housing Act that saw half a million council homes built over the next decade. On the Tuesday after the election Gaitskell lunched "bibulously" with Bevan at Asheridge in the Chilterns to discuss his plans for party reform. Snowden later wrote in his autobiography: "I was brought up in this Radical atmosphere, and it was then that I imbibed the political and social principles which I have held fundamentally ever since".

Unilateral nuclear disarmament was increasingly popular amongst union activists and was also debated in several union conferences in the spring and summer of 1960. Dalton and Gaitskell were often referred to as "Big Hugh and Little Hugh" over the next fifteen years. However, Snowden's use appears to have predated those of Johnson while being more consistent with the now-common, "Truth is the first casualty of war.Britain still preferred to encourage trade in pounds sterling within the Commonwealth, and Gaitskell wanted to preserve Britain's ability to avoid downturns like the US downturn of 1948–9, which Britain had largely escaped because of devaluation. However, Gaitskell told an audience at Doncaster that Bevan had made "a direct challenge to the elected Leader of our Party" and accused him of not being a team player.