Gaitskell's death left an opening for Harold Wilson in the party leadership; Wilson narrowly won the next general election for Labour 21 months later. Nobody imagined Labour would be out of power for more than a few years, and Attlee expected to be Prime Minister again by 1953. His library of books and pamphlets was presented to Keighley Public Library by his widow, and a cairn was erected to his memory on Ickornshaw Moor in 1938.

He was not a pacifist; however, he did not support recruiting for the armed forces, and he campaigned against conscription. However, only the first of these measures was realized during the first Labour Government's time in office. He was attached to the University of Vienna for the 1933–34 academic year and witnessed first-hand the political suppression of the social democratic workers movement by the conservative Engelbert Dollfuss's government in February 1934. Gaitskell thought balance of payments problems should be solved not by realignments of currencies but by asking surplus countries like the US and Belgium to inflate their economies (so they would import more).The need for the breaking down of trade restrictions, which took various forms, was universally recognized even by those who were unable to throw off those shackles. 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.

At the time Gaitskell was much-criticised in the press, especially for his ill-judged and unsuccessful plea for Tory dissidents to remove Eden from power. While he was convalescing at his mother's house at Cowling he began to study socialist theory and history.Historian Brian Brivati believes that the importance of the charges was "irrelevant" to the huge cost of rearmament, which damaged Britain's recovery in the years which followed by absorbing earnings from exports. Gaitskell agreed to limit health charges to three years (subject to Parliament voting to extend them), made concessions on pensions to the Trade Union Group of MPs, and a diary entry suggests he was not happy about dividend constraints – yet he was not prepared to make significant concessions to Bevan. Gaitskell argued that with employment high, the balance of payments in decent shape and inflation a containable problem, the only problem was shortage of dollars, with US opinion very reluctant to help the UK any more. There was much talk that Bevan might now seize the party leadership, but it seems unlikely that he had the stomach for this anymore, not least as he had never wanted to be leader solely for its own sake. Gaitskell passionately condemned the eventual Anglo-French military intervention to secure the Suez Canal, supposedly launched to enforce international law and to separate the Egyptian and Israeli combatants; the Israeli attack had in fact been launched in collusion with the British and French to supply a pretext for the invasion.

After leaving office in October, he was created a viscount and made lord privy seal, but he left that office in 1932. On 4 November 1956 Gaitskell gave a powerful broadcast, attacking the Prime Minister now it was clear Eden had been lying to him in private. In 1956 the Egyptian ruler Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal Company, beginning the Suez Crisis.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. Along with Dalton Gaitskell was moved to the Board of Trade in February 1942, where for the first time he came into contact with the leaders of the miners' unions, who were later to support him in his struggles against Aneurin Bevan in the 1950s.

Philip Snowden, First Viscount Snowden, the British politician, was a forthright and convincing speaker. Future Prime Minister Harold Wilson would also be inspired by Snowden's policies to resist a devaluation of the pound sterling in 1967. 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. Not only were higher interest rates seen as associated with the Gold standard and the deflationary policies of the 1920s, but the policy preference in the 1940s was for quantitative controls (e.

There were also very real worries that the Soviets might invade western Europe (which was unarmed, with strong communist influence in many countries) and that the US would not help Britain if she did not help herself. Lord Snowden died of a heart attack at his home, Eden Lodge, Tilford, Surrey, on 15 May 1937, aged 72. Gaitskell won the admiration of Treasury officials for his stance: on the morning of the budget Sir Edward Bridges came to tell him of the respect he had earned in the department and that it was "the best day we have had in the Treasury for ten years".