The Walters Critique
HALF WAY through his much-puffed book Sir Alan Walters asks himself: 'Is the Walters Critique now accepted and re- spected?' Those who cannot guess his answer and want to know what it is should rush out and buy Sterling in Danger (Fon- tana, f6.99). I pity the Sunday paper which bought the serial rights to this tract and now has to make it exciting. Any antidote to the current outbreak of European monetary euphoria is worth having, and Sir Alan has not changed his diagnosis. His former patient, however, has had to. The book and the puffery were greeted with a sour blast from the Downing Street gui- dance machine. Pay no attention, it said, we've learned to love the EMS and soon we'll be wedded to it. Love it or not, the Prime Minister is stuck with it. Her power of resistance is not what it was in the days when Sir Alan, back stage, and Nigel Lawson, front of house, were carrying on their whispered quarrel. That quarrel was bad for all three of them. She cannot now afford to fall out with a second Chancellor — or, for that matter, a Foreign Secretary. John Major and Douglas Hurd can negoti- ate their way towards the EMS from positions that are (as she might say)
unassailable. Sir Alan's position was not. It depended on the Prime Minister's patron- age. Without that, he is just another professor of economics, writing another tract. Exciting it isn't.
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