POLITICAL COMMENTARY
The opportunist election
PETER PATERSON
A nagging feeling remains that Harold might have miscalculated, stampeded by the opinion polls and the press into a June election for which the Labour party is not ready, except in self-induced confidence and astonished relief that the tide has turned at last for them after the long, hard slog. But is it enough? If we lived without opinion polls, I doubt very much whether the Government would have surrendered office almost a year before it has to—in spite of the Prime Minister's characteristic assertion on Monday night that he made up his mind to go to the country on 18 June 'before a single poll had deter- mined in favour of Labour'. Mr Wilson is a card, knows he is a card and finds it as difficult as Arnold Bennett's hero to drop the role for a single moment. The proposi- tion cannot be proved one way or the other, but if he really did make his decision without the good news from the polls, he must have been contemplating electoral suicide—which is even harder to believe.
The Prime Minister is secure enough in the affections of the British people—no matter what happens four weeks from now —not to have to indulge in such childish claims for infallibility and prescience. In any case, a great many good judges in the Labour party, their voices now inevitably stilled on this subject, were convinced that Mr Wilson should wait until October before seeking a fresh mandate. We are now told that Mr Roy Jenkins had no particular preference one way or the other so far as the economy is concerned; but the state of the Labour party's organisation in the country is causing such anxiety to some other members of the Cabinet that they may regret that the Chancellor did not plump for October and thus give the party a few extra months to gear up the machine. The message of the polls, however, and the insistent nudging of the indispensable Daily Mirror, swept aside the reservations. So we approach this unusual election.
It is unusual not only in its timing (June elections are a rare phenomenon),but because this is really an election about an election. One suspects that all the fever pitch excite- ment of the past couple of weeks has failed to percolate very far from Westminster and Fleet Street, for an earnest citizen could comb the public prints for hours without finding an issue that justified the curtailment of the life of this Parliament. The Common Market negotiations have been mentioned by the Prime Minister. Well, we have a tri- partisan policy for going in provided the terms are right, so a change of government in the United Kingdom some months after the commencement of negotiations would make little if any difference. Law and order, perhaps? The Government has made it clear that it has no intention of banning the South African cricket tour, and the stubbornness of the Cricket Council is hardly sufficient reason for an electoral appeal to the country. The economy? Here is at least the makings of an issue, but neither Labour nor Tories are going to campaign on the need for a wages freeze. Still, maybe we can put this down as a silent issue. And if they had not been so keen to display their own conven- tional Opposition eagerness for the fray, the Tories might have demanded why Mr Wilson did not use the unexpired time available to improve his Government's record on employment, housing, taxation and prices.
Instead, we are to have an election in which the Government sits like a hen on all the eggs, defying the Opposition to come up with some other method of procreation. The motive for consulting the people is not to determine their view on some great issue, but sheer political opportunism. Mr Wilson's gamble—for this is still not an open-and- shut contest—is based on the proposition that Labour is now the conservative party, and that it is the Tories who will frighten the electorate with suggestions for change. Leaving aside legislation still in the pipeline, such as the nationalisation of the ports, and handicapping oneself by not waiting for the party's manifesto, it is difficult to foresee one radical, reforming measure a new Wilson government would introduce, apart from decimalisation. It is almost as if the Government, contemptuous of the Opposi- tion and seeing the polls turn in its favour, decided to jump almost from boredom.
Where does this leave Mr Heath and his friends? Judging by the Tory plans to harness the white heat of the technological revolution, to give industry a new cutting edge and to assess almost everything but the Established Church by the yardstick of cost- efficiency, still fighting the 1964 election seems to be the answer. Why, some of their supporters ask despairingly, did they allow themselves to be out-manoeuvred in such an obvious way? The reason, surely, lies in the philosophy of Opposition as the alterna- tive party preparing for government. Or, in the Conservative view of themselves, the natural governing party preparing to resume power. Mr Heath is not particularly well equipped to play the sniping, undermining Vietcong kind of opposition role that Mr Wilson managed so consummately before 1964. It was, in fact, cruelly unkind for the Prime Minister to accuse Mr Heath of having no policies_ when he has always had a plethora of the things. Stung by the jibe, he convened the Selsdon Park conference, which gave birth to Selsdon Man—one of Mr Wilson's rare in-jokes—and the idea, sedulously fostered by Labour ever since, that the Tories intended to reduce direct taxation on their middle class supporters, while making them pay for treatment under the National Health Service.
By misrepresenting the Opposition, the Prime Minister drove them on to the defen- sive at the very moment when they should
have been on the attack. It was skilfully done. Only last week, one Opposition spokes man, Sir Keith Joseph, found himself fight. ing a desperate rearguard action on two separate occasions. One day he was under pressure from Mr Wilson in the House of Commons insisting that the Conservatives would not abandon a differential incentive to investment in development areas—they have never suggested that they would—and the next he was on the platfom of the Ad- vertising Association denying that his party was totally committed to the value added tax. To be wrong-footed twice in a week, and Sir Keith is certainly not dim, betrays an opposition on the run rather than on the rampage.
But the fast footwork and stinging jabs of his opponent are not the end of Mr Heath's problem. If this were the sum of it, he might hope to produce his own knockout blow right up to the last moment. His real dilemma is that the British people are not in the mood for any more New Frontiers. The Kennedy style requires years of com- placency and weariness on the part of government for it to succeed, a desire for radical change. The national mood must be on the boil, and in Britain today, unlike 1964 when Harold rather than Sir Alec was playing with the matches, no one has even lit the gas.
For Mr Heath of all politicians this is an unhappy plight. Stern as Gladstone, stub- born as Attlee, the Tory leader detests opposition and its attendant humiliations. Now, after years of careful preparation and planning, he is faced with a vacuum election in terms of issues. What is he to do? He could stump the country spelling out his policies, or he could set out to destroy the Government's record, threatening economic disaster if Labour is returned again. The policies are intricate and complicated and require changes of people; and whatever the shortcomings in their record, the Government can claim to have done what the Opposition wanted, by putting the bal- ance of payments right.
Classically, in the absence of issues, elec- tions are fought on people. How does Mr Heath stand in such a contest? On what might be called the presidential approach, Wilson versus Heath, the latter must realise that he is heavily outgunned. An early riser he may be, but no one in British politics gets up early enough to catch Harold Wilson. So it has to be a team event, and here again Mr, Wilson would seem to have the advantage. Mr Roy Jenkins is now as well known as most disc jockeys, Barbara Castle is as famous as Anna Neagle, Mr George Brown, in or out of the Cabinet, attracts as much attention as a circus arriv- ing in town, and even foreigners have heard of Mr Denis Healey's witticisms. Apart from yesterday's men—it would be invidious for me to list them—Mr Heath depends en young, no doubt thrusting and ambitious men of whom few of us have ever heard.
So in the end, if he is to win, Mr Heath may find himself driven back on the re- sources of his party machine. He will have to rely on salvation on the patient, painstak- ing work done by the professionals in the marginal seats, on the zeal with which the postal voters have been pursued, and on the hope that Mr Wilson has erred in choosing June because it will reduce the turnout of Labour voters tied to their tellys by the World Cup. For a man so badly in need of acceptance, on merit, by his party and the country, it would be an inglorious way to win.
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