"What calibre of Conservatism Chamberlain would have sought to impose is open to conjecture, since he never properly had an opportunity to impose one. He was kept cramped in the wings for so long that he reached the centre stage only moments before the intermission. Yet there is a strong impression that he would have tried to impose something: his politics was a doctrine of action because that was the sphere where he knew himself to be at his best and because that was what he thought he was there to do. It is far from clear, on the other hand, in which direction he would have gone. His own introduction of tariffs in 1932, with suitable acknowledgement to "name and blood", had blocked one path. It may be that he would have extended the moderate collectivism towards which Conservatism, in its "national" guise, had been moving; certainly he took pains to rebut the charge that the National Government was a sterile administration. His view that British government in the 1930s was reformist may have been heartfelt for his achievement, as much as his propaganda, suggests that he pursued a measure of social reform as an end in itself. To that extent the European imbroglio to which Chamberlain was heir has masked the degree to which he was a radical democrat. He was closer to a compassionate understanding of "the people" than any other leader examined here. He understood the urban poor, as Baldwin did not, and he had the organizational equipment to direct those who agreed with him."