At the 1935 general election, he stood unsuccessfully as the Labour Party candidate for Chatham. Gaitskell helped to draft "Labour’s Immediate Programme" in 1937. This had a strong emphasis on planning, although not as much as his mentor Dalton would have liked, with no plans for the nationalisation of banks or the steel industry. He also drafted documents which would have been used in the election due in 1939–40. Dalton helped him to be selected as candidate for South Leeds in 1937, and had it not been for the war, he would very likely have become an MP by 1940.