A Spectator's Notebook

I, for one, am delighted at the Liberal Party's by-election successes. Apart from anything else, it serves Central Office right. The Tory Party brass in its wisdom sought to gain advantage over the Liberals by issuing writs for the Ripon and Ely by-elections with almost indecent haste, while delaying the writ for Berwick. Now they have lost Ripon and Ely, and Jeremy Thorpe is obviously right in supposing the Liberal Party to have become favourite to win Berwick, which is an old Liberal seat anyway.

New chairman?

The rumours that Lord Carrington is to be replaced by a full-time Chairman of the Tory party organisation should prove correct. There has always been something extremely inappropriate about Ted Heath's Tory notion that the Ministry of Defence is not a full-time job, and now it must surely have dawned on the Prime Minister that the party chairmanship is no doddle either.

This said, who is to pull the party organisation together and make that formidable political machine once more fit to fight and win a general election? The question is easier asked than answered. Peter Walker is the obvious answer; but he'd be a fool to accept the job. Likewise, Willie Whitelaw, who anyway deserves much better than this. Francis Pym? He has done the job of Chief Whip brilliantly; but different qualities are required for the job of party chairman. What, then, about the housewives' presumptive friend, Sir Geoffrey Howe? He comes closest, perhaps, of modern Tories to old Uncle Fred Woolton, whose tenure of the party chair was so brilliant and successful. Also, being in the Cabinet but without a ministry of his own, he possesses the quality of being movable without having to be replaceable, a combination which could well commend this preferment to the leader of the Party, who finds it much easier to change his measures than his men.

Sir Geoffrey combines most disconcertingly cosiness and intelligence. I don't suppose anyone can persuade housewives that prices have not risen at an appalling rate; but he would be able to say, with more apparent conviction than most, "It hurts me as much as it hurts you."

Withholding news

The Daily Telegraph has a well-earned reputation of not missing much as far as domestic news goes. It is easily the most comprehensive of newspapers in this respect. Without fear or favour it publishes every misdemeanour of note, every divorce, every libel action. But quite apart from its interest in such matters, it also misses very little politically. It is an extraordinarily mean newspaper in attributing to its rivals and others stories of which they were the source. Fleet Street tolerates this as a foible, unpleasant but not serious, like a wart on the face, and acknowledges that, for home news, the Telegraph is best.

Like all newspapers, the Telegraph likes to put its own slant on the news. There is nothing much the matter with this: indeed, I think it is unavoidable. Slanting is one thing, deliberate omission is another; and I, for one, would not have thought that the Telegraph being so avidly interested in news and espe

daily in news about people, would ever be guilty of keeping news out of its pages, either inadvertently or as a matter of policy. It was with much surprise, therefore, that I learned that the Telegraph appears to have been pursuing of late a deliberate policy of withholding news from its readers. I refer to the results of the monthly Gallup polls.

Gallup on Europe

The Telegraph has an arrangement with Gallup whereby it, and it alone, may publish the detailed findings of the poll. Naturally, it pays substantially for this privilege; and one might expect, for this reason as well as because of its interest in news, that it would publish all Gallup's newsworthy findings. Not so. The Telegraph is extremely selective in what it publishes. For instance, if Gallup shows a pro-Market move in public opinion it might well publish this. In January of this year, under the headline "36 pc still opposed to Common Market entry" the Telegraph published a series of Gallup findings on Europe. Similar questions were asked last month and the results were available for publication on July 19; but in the Telegraph's report on Gallup no mention was made of the findings. Private subscribers to Gallup will realise that public opinion has shifted substantially since January and is now much more hostile to the Market, particularly clearly shown in response to the question," I f you were to be told tomorrow that the Common Market had been scrapped, would you be sorry about it, indifferent or pleased?"

It would be interesting to know why the Telegraph thought the Gallup Poll findings on this were newsworthy in January but not in July.

Party request?

Gallup has also conducted, and reported upon, a poll dealing with politicians as assets to their party and attempting to discover their personality images. A whole series of questions were asked about leading politicians. Tables have been produced, showing the standing of these politicians in the public's mind. They make fascinating reading and again one wonders why the Telegraph despite having paid Gallup for the right exclusively to print these tables, has decided to withhold these highly interesting details from its readers. Can it possibly be at the request of the Conservative Party, whose leader, Mr Heath, comes out so badly from the tables? Or is it that the Telegraph itself believes that its readers cannot be trusted with the evidence of Mr Enoch Powell's outstanding popularity?

Heath to Ottawa

The conference of Commonwealth Heads of Government opens in Ottawa this week, and I wonder whether it will be as stormy as the last one, in Singapore two years ago, when Ted Heath got very cross — and rightly so — with some of the Africans and Asians. The mood in which he departs, so those who have talked with him on the subject say, is chilling. He gives the impression that he has neither forgiven nor forgotten Singapore and his struggle there to establish Britain's right to make its own policies unbound by those of other Commonwealth (and particularl! African) states.

It seems quite likely that he will not sta)' for the entire period, but will dash back !° I Cowes, where his own boat is one of the Brit' ish entries in the Admiral's Cup competition. It is certain, however, that his public relation5 people have advised him that to leave the Ot tawa conferencein order to skipper at Covv,e5 might strike an already sour and dis: A enchanted public here as a pretty frivolow rr

way to behave. ti

Graceless motions f( As Heath flew off, the agenda remained un" dertermined. But British positions on the ex' pected topics are very clear: the Prime Minis' II ter and the Foreign Secretary have supported French nuclear tests, arguing that they have b, provided no danger to any Pacific depend. encies; our Rhodesian attitude — determined LI largely by our need to remain on good terms with Nigeria — should prove acceptable; and the tensions aroused by Bangadesh are slacl(' Ir er now. One thing is obvious: the Prime it Minister goes through the motions of the Q Commonwealth conferences without mucl; gi grace;his heart remains, despite everything U. in Europe.

On the face of it tc

I am no great admirer of John D. Ehrlichman.

ti but I have found extremely nasty and offen' ti sive the language employed by Mary McCathy in describing him: "Perhaps he can' not help his face, but he looks like somenodY of a deeply criminal nature, out of a mediae"' 13 al fresco: the upward sneering curl of the left' hand side of the mouth, matched on the St (1( by the upward lift of the right eyebrow, above St which there is a barely discernible scare •• Everything about his features and bodY movements is canted, tilted, slanting, sloping, askew. .. A deformed personality , . , one remembered Ehrlichmann's raised right hand as he took the oath on Wednesday with a gesture one newspaper had compared to a al Fascist salute."

Miss McCarthy's writing strikes me as canted, tilted, slanting, sloping, askew and to be compared to Fascist journalism. I make no remark about her face nor the depths of her tl nature as shown by her appearance.

That Brussels report

The report that a group of senior British civil a servants in Brussels have written to Whitehall suggesting that EEC is a disaster for a Britain is, I gather, substantially correct. Our man in Brussels, Sir Michael Palliser, has denied Stephen Fay's report in the SundaY Times. Palliser is a Foreign Office chap, and and it is well established that all the really hard-line Eurocrats are Foreign Office chaps — or lapsed Fellows of All Souls like Uwe Kitzinger. What I think happened is this. Despairing of the FO bunch surrounding Corn: missioner Soames, some of the British civil servants in rival Commissioner George Thomson's less doctrinaire set-up met wall several economic, food and agricultural people, some of them attached to Palliser's EEC embassy, to produce the disputed report.

Of course the Treasury, like the good old Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries has always been opposed, deep down, to the European venture, which it regards (rightly) as a piece of expensive Foreigh Office tomfoolery. The Foreign Office is more flashy, of course! but in the long run it is usually the Treasury which wins.