Elected as a Radical-Socialist Deputy in 1932, he was an economics minister in the government of Leon Blum in 1938. He was imprisoned by the Vichy government, escaped to London (1941), and joined the exiled Free French government of General de Gaulle. He became Premier in May 1954, after the disaster of Dienbienphu, promising that France would pull out of Indo-China. He resigned from the Radical Party in 1959, after which he never had an effective power-base, becoming increasingly opposed to the autocratic use of presidential power by de Gaulle.