5 FEBRUARY 1965, Page 3

Night Must Fall

I-OLITICS have started again. Mr. R. A. Butler has left the House of Commons and Mr. Buxton (Con., Leyton) has arrived. The Hundred Days have come and gone, and with it the Opposition's motion of censure. Sir Alec's speech to the burghers of Hampstead confirmed his intention to lead the Conservatives to victory at the next general election. Three by-elections are being declared in what would normally be safe Conservative seats. It has been quite a week.

Writing before the results of the by- elections are declared there is little sensible comment that can be made on them. Prob- ably in a low poll in February weather, Tory majorities will drop, perhaps sharply.

This is not important. What is important is the percentage of total votes that the Tory candidates secure. If this goes up, then the Nuneaton and Leyton_slide will have con- tinued, and it is hard to see how Mr. Wil- son can check it. The worst of the winter is still to come, and a ghoulish actuarial forecast in the Spectator of October 30 last calculated five deaths in the Parliamentary Labour Party in its first year. Government is not yet impossible, but the ability to pro- vide firm government depends now on fac- tors quite outside even Mr. Wilson's control.

The censure motion provided a curious debate. The Tories were fully satisfied that Sir Alec had mastered Mr. Wilson and Mr. Maudling had the better of Mr. Brown. The Labour Party held equally fiercely that a decision on points was theirs. With one accord the press thought little of the behaviour of the House as a whole.

Mr. Wilson's tactics were interesting and not unsubtle. He secured the headlines for next day by inserting a long section on the future of the aircraft industry, ending with the dramatic ,announcement that he had taken no decision yet on the TSR2. As an exercise in chilling the temperature of the House, for a while it was no doubt a suc- cess, but it had little relevance to the debate.

His discourtesy to the House in general and Mr. Maudling in particular at the end of the debate by not taking his seat until Mr.

Maudling had finished his speech should not pass without comment. No engageinent, however important, takes precedence over attendance at the House of Commons when one's conduct of affairs is under censure.

Mr. Wilson's arrogance, always formidable, has grown like a weed in the Hundred Days. The most significant speech came from Mr. Grimond. He was in a hopeless position and he knew it. A clarion call to abstain is not the most thrilling of trumpet notes. Sir Alec's taunt that Mr. Grimond was keeping a discredited Labour government in office will clearly be the basis of Con- servative attacks on the hapless Liberal Party. Mr. Grimond not surprisingly now does not relish the very situation he sought to bring about in the general election. Most of his speech was directed against the Tories and amounted to the offer of a Lib-Lab pact if the Government would drop the nationalisation of steel. Probably there will be no response.

Yet Mr. Grimond was surely right on two points. First, as the Spectator argued last week, it is now vital to carry out a fundamental reappraisal of our role in Europe. Until that is done there can be no clear thinking about our future. Second, he was right to insist that a new general elec- tion is always preferable to a frustrated and sterile Parliament. It was excellent that Mr.

Maudling made it clear that the Opposition were ready to defeat the Government 'at the earliest possible moment.' An Opposition that cannot say this cannot be an effective Opposition at all.

So one more 'Hundred Days' ends. The idea was born in a moment of folly which Mr. Wilson, for all his brave talk, surely regrets. It is a mistake to ape great men. Leyton will do as a passable substitute for Waterloo, and there was never any simi- larity between Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Wil- son except that they were both elected on paper-thin majorities. This commitment to the calendar has produced febrile rather than firm government. As Sir Alec said, `The honeymoon is over,' and for the best of reasons—because the vows and promises have not been kept.

What will Mr. Wilson do now? Probably he will cram on all sail and head for the reef, on the off-chance that he may find a way through. He will remember how the first Labour government staggered to dis- reputable defeat because it did not dare to be Socialist. So he will press on. With steel, with his nationalisation of urban building land, with the most controversial Finance Bill since Lloyd George's famous budget. And almost certainly he will fail. He is whistling in the dark to cheer himself and his party. But night must fall.