27 DECEMBER 1968, Page 28

Comeback

Sir: J. W. M. Thompson is singularly perverse ('Spectator's notebook,' 20 December). He writes that Mr Wilson had 'better hasten his nobbling of the House of Lords or he might find some latter-day Duke of Wellington emerging as the saviour of the nation.' Not at all. If Mr Wilson hastens, on the lines pro- posed, this will make His Grace eligible for the call to service since he will be able to obtain election to the House of Commons.

Next, Mr Thompson suggests that `any issue on which government and opposition were agreed might be thought to have an over- whelming case in its favour.' The crushing evi- dence of the last quarter century (Anglo- American loan on which we now owe £1,262 million on the f931 million borrowed in 1946; years of dogged opposition to the European Common Market; the $2.80 parity; East of Suez; and so on and so on) is that any such issue must have an overwhelming presumption in its disfavour.

To cap it all, Mr Thompson thinks there is something modern and newfangled about celebrating in carols Three Wise Central Bankers. But isn't that just what the Three Wise Men in the story were? Gold, frankin- cense, myrrh. True,' there was a flight from commodities into spiritual futures. But evidence —was it not?—of a millennial dimension in speculative foresight.