Sir : I do not know if Mr Skeffington-Lodge (Letters,
16 February) will respond to your invitation to adduce evidence of the Conservative 'whispering campaign' against the Prime Minister but perhaps I might assist him with an example of a rather loud attack on him at the time of his first government.
The nature of this attack can perhaps be best appreciated by its use of such unpardonably nasty words as 'unprincipled . . . opportunist.' There really ought to be a law against people calling our Prime Minister such awful names. (Quite easy to arrange. In France you will soon find yourself in trouble if you take the name of the lord thy Gaulle in vain like this.) As your correspondent invokes the Lord Chancellor, he should be just the man'to frame an anti-Wilson-defamation law.
Oh, I almost omitted to mention the name of the name-caller. None other than that staunch Tory MP Mr Mikardo. It is true that this opinion did not stop him supporting his leader in the last election or the previous one. But I must not pursue that line. It would never do to suggegt that all Mr Skef- fington-Lodge's lot are `unprincipled opportunists.' L. E. Weidberg 14 Templewood Avenue, Hampstead, London NW3
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