Deputy Prime Minister of Australia accepted the view put to him by McEwen that to commission a Liberal temporarily as Prime Minister would give that person an unfair advantage in the forthcoming party room ballot for the permanent leader. McEwen's appointment was in keeping with the previous occasion when the main non-Labor party was without a leader; Earle Page of the Country Party was interim Prime Minister between 7 and 26 April 1939—the period between Joseph Lyons' sudden death and the United Australia Party naming Robert Menzies his successor. Since 1968 only two Deputy Prime Ministers have gone on to become Prime Minister: Paul Keating
Prime Minister of Denmark "Council President" (). Carl Christian Hall became the first Prime Minister/Council President to lead a political party (the National Liberal Party). The modern Prime Minister's Office was founded on 1 January 1914, when the Council Presidium was established as a department under the Prime Minister, when it had previously existed as an informal council gathered by the Prime Minister. The title of the Prime Minister changed again in 1918 under the Premiership of Carl Theodor Zahle, becoming titled the "Minister of State" (in-line with its Scandinavian neighbours, Norway and Sweden), which it remains to this day. By the mid-nineteenth century