Jim's clanger
Ever since Mr Callaghan exchanged the cares of the Treasury for those of the Home Office he has displayed an almost arrogant air of relaxation. After the titanic battle for sterling, he seems to have believed life at the Home Office was child's play, a rest cure for a weary giant. It must be hoped that his appalling lapse in the House of Commons on Tuesday will jolt him out of this unreal mood. His casual assumption of the guilt of two men who have been arrested in murder cases, long before any question of their standing trial even had arisen, ought to alert him for ever more to a fact which he should have known all along—namely, that the office of Home Secretary is as delicate, as responsible, and at least as lavishly provided with booby- traps as any other office in the Cabinet.
It is arguable that Mr Callaghan ought to resign after committing such an enormity. We do not take this view, although in the past ministers have paid this price for in- - discretions of a far less shocking nature—the late Hugh Dalton was one such. On the other hand, Mr Hogg's chivalrous interven- tion to extricate Mr Callaghan, dismissing „the whole episode as 'a slip of the tongue,' 'although it was creditable and appropriate in the House of Commons, does not adequately dispose of the matter.
The fact is that to use the words which fell from Mr Callaghan is to disclose a grossly inadequate conception of the nature of the Home Secretary's office. No minister who had properly thought himself into this role would ever be likely to appear either to flout the processes of justice, or to equate police accusations with proven guilt. Mr Callaghan has had close links with the police forces in the past, and the public is cordially on his side when he shows pride in their achieve- ments and an anxiety to help them in their work. But the Home Secretary must never permit himself to dwindle into a mere mouthpiece for the police. Although Mr Callaghan's gaffe was serious enough in it- self, the hint it provides of a state of mind altogether unsuitable for his office gives wider grounds for concern. Mr Callaghan will have to think more deeply about the true nature of his new responsibilities if he is not to bring about a fresh devaluation of his personal reputation. It would be a step in the right direction if he were now to make a full and formal apology to the House of Commons for Tuesday's revealing lapse.
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