AT WESTMINSTER
THERE can be little doubt that it was Sir Winston Churchill who most enjoyed the reassembly of Parham ment on Tuesday. The knighthood and Garter conferred on Mr. Eden made Wednesday his day, but Sir Anthony had to live through Tuesday first as plain ' Mister.' The Foreign Secretary was mocked throughout his statement on the Anglo• Egyptian agreement on Tuesday by Labour members who wanted to throw the ' Suez rebels' at this feet and trip him up. Was he sure that he had the full and unqualified approval of the whole of the Government supporters behind him ? ' Oh yes,' said Mr. Eden, ' we are quite happy about that.' He has never been so frankly contemptuous of his Tory critics before. His mood was one of grand assurance, yet he was tetchy with Mr. Gaitskell, supported for once by Mr. Bevan, for asking how much the new Western defence pro• posals would cost Britain. This seemed a pertinent question. and one which it would have been the duty of any Opposition to ask. Mr. Eden tried at first to snort his way through this question. Perhaps he had forgotten for a moment that the House is less tractable than the party conference. * * * .
But the day of reassembly was Sir Winston's moment of fun. Seldom have the amusements of the office of Master of Ceremonies (one of the minor appointments held by the Prime Minister of the day) been so openly displayed. Just over a week earlier he had been hugging to himself the secrets of the impending Cabinet changes which the Tory conference would have given much to know. On the day before reassembly, the changes \ were published. What a bustle followed within the next few hours ! Seals and portfolios were hurriedly passed from one figure to another like a furious game of ' Post is Passing' at a children's party. The holders of new offices appeared before Parliament in their latest mani- festations. Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, still a Commoner, sat on the Woolsack as the new Lord Chancellor, and immediately left it to take his seat as a peer—Viscount Kilmuir, of Creich in the County of Sutherland. It was a superb piece of irony that forced him to take off his finery at once and resume the chores upon which be had spent so much time in the Commons. He had to move the second reading of the Town and Country Planning Bill, and to promise an amendment to prevent a recurrence of the Pilgrim case. Like Cinderella, Lord Minna. Is nagged by two ugly sisters—Party and Conscience. -.Miss Horsbrugh ceased to be Minister of Education but immediately appeared in a yet more glorious (and permanent) form as Dame Florence. No wonder Sir Winston was bland on Tuesday. While so many of his colleagues were making a quick change for the next act, he had leisure to perfect the form of his replies to questions. The labour was rewarding. It is depressing to realise, as one listens to Sir Winston, how striking and unusual an effect can be secured in the House of Commons by the mere use of clean English. J. F. B.
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