Spectator's Notebook
T SEE that Mr Denis Healey has said that Mr 1Heath 'has 'a clear duty' to sack Mr Enoch Powell as his shadow Minister of Defence. I can't for a moment imagine that Mr Heath— whose emergence as a major national figure, dis- playing a warmth and humanity that he had hitherto hidden, has been the only positive result of the whole election campaign—will allow his shadow cabinet to be chosen by Mr Healey. But what is Mr Powell's great sin?
Well, he suggested that the Government had a contingency plan to send British troops to fight alongside the Americans in Vietnam. It seems he was wrong. There is almost certainly a contin- gency plan to help the Americans by sending more civilian supplies to Vietnam, and we have already, of course, lent moral support by pub- licly endorsing the renewal of the bombing of the North. But to troops we've said no, with the Malaysian confrontation as our principal alibi.
Yet, as usual, Mr Powell may get the facts wrong but he's certainly got the logic right. We have misguidedly bought American support for the £ at the cost of abandoning any independent foreign policy c.nd giving wholehearted approval of official American policy in South-East Asia. We have accepted a major military 'role' East of Suez, again as an American auxiliary. We are likely to remain in debt for years to come—in- deed, we shall be relatively fortunate if the amount doesn't get any larger. We have, in short, succeeded in manoeuvring ourselves into a posi- tion in which, if the American government presses its case, to send British troops would be wrong and not to send them dishonourable.
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