There was already friction between Gaitskell and Bevan. At one meeting, probably 28 June 1950, Bevan had been about to walk out of the room until Attlee called him back. Bevan stopped attending Cripps’ Thursday night dinners for economics ministers. After one of those dinners Bevan's old ally John Strachey, now Minister of Food, rebuked him for attacking Gaitskell, whom he thought "one of the really considerable men of the Government", a suggestion to which Bevan responded with derision, calling him "nothing, nothing, nothing".