Winning the '38 Derby - WI Eden overcomes Chamberlain in the late 1930s?

"The trouble with Anthony is that he was trained to win the Derby in 1938 but not let out of the stalls until 1955."
Harold MacMillan​

We've all heard the saying about poor old Eden not getting the chance to shine that he (allegedly) deserved because of Chamberlain's ambition and Winston's bombasticity. But what if he somehow followed Baldwin, or undermined Chamberlain to the point that he wins the leadership of the government, for example just after the Anschluss in 1938?

Taking this POD (feel free to propose others), how would Eden have acted at Munich? Would he guarantee Poland and go to war over her? Would Hitler see Britain as he did if Eden was in charge? If the war goes as usual, surely Eden wouldn't be forced out in the name of Winnie like old, ill Neville was.

If this has been discussed before, you have my apologies - if this is the case, could anyone direct me to the thread(s)?
 
Eden had little support in the Conservative Party when he resigned as Foreign Secretary in Chamberlain's government in February 1938 over its policy towards Italy.

In the opposition motion of censure in the House of Commons, only one Conservative backbencher voted against the government, though more than twenty abstained and eight spoke in support of Eden in the debate.

Eden did not have enough support in the Conservative Party to replace Chamberlain as leader. Also the Conservative machine worked actively for Chamberlain.

The following quotation is taken from A Class Divided: Appeasement and the Road to Munich, 1938, Robert Shepherd, London: MacMillan, 1938:
Eden secured a rousing public endorsement for his stand at a packed public meeting in his constituency, Leamington. But his closest supporters felt the wrath of local Conservatives, who remained loyal to their Party leader. Cranborne [Lord Cranborne, Eden's deputy at the Foreign Office who resigned with him] was in serious trouble in South Dorset [he was Conservative MP for that constituency], where all his prominent suppporters were furious, and he sensed that might almost be stoned. Jim Thomas [one of Eden's two Parliamentary Private Secretaries who both resigned with him] likewise was in difficulty, prompting Cranborne to sympathise about the 'shortsighted and wrong-headed Tory machine'.

The Tory machine was plainly rattled, and was determined to keep tabs on the rebel MPs. A group of them began meeting at Ronald Tree's [a Tory MP who supported Eden] home in Queen Anne's Gate, near St. James's Park, conveniently near to the House of Commons and just a stone's throw from the Conservative Research Department, then housed in Old Queen Street.

Tree was tipped off by Helen Kirkpatrick, a journalist on the Chicago Daily News , who worked across the street, that his telephone was tapped. Tree had heard some 'odd clickings', but as he later wrote, 'I had not realised that the Government thought us to be so dangerous.' The instigator of the 'phone tap later identified himself to Tree: 'during the war, I came across Sir Joseph Ball at the Ministry of Information, a dislikeable man with an unenviable reputation for doing some of Chamberlain's "behind-the-scenes" work....he had the gall to tell me that he himself had been responsible for having my telephone tapped.'

I would say there would have to be a POD in British politics in the 1920s for Eden to be Prime Minister in March 1938. I need to develop possibilities further.
 
It also stems from the general political philosophy that Eden operated to during the 1930s that would be considered outlandish today and even somewhat 'amateurish' by some of his contemporaries at the time.

Basically his principal was quite simple. He disagreed with government policy, said his bit in the house or in public at the time and then did the 'honorable thing' having resigned from the FO and returned to the back benches, where for the most part he saw it as being 'improper' to be a highly visible critic of the government (in comparison th Churchill).

Like has been mentioned, the party machine of the Conservative Party was tightly controlled and there were few mechanisms that Eden could have used to get the leadership.

Secondly, Eden by this stage had only limited exposure to domestic affairs. Being a PPS under Hicks at the Home Office between 24/29.

Thirdly, there was considerable generational differences within the party and much complex factionalism that was fairly fluid depending on the issue with Eden being (at the time) unable to seemingly win over enough of the party to mount a 'palace coup'.
 
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