At the November 1935 election MacDonald was defeated at Seaham by Emanuel Shinwell, but he was re-elected to Parliament at a by-election in January 1936 for the Combined Scottish Universities seat. After Hitler's re-militarisation of the Rhineland in 1936, MacDonald declared that he was "pleased" that the Treaty of Versailles was "vanishing", expressing his hope that the French had been taught a "severe lesson". MacDonald was one of the signatories to the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936.