THE LOST LEADER
WHEN, a year ago this week, Sir Anthony Eden took office as Prime Minister, the Spectator commented that the Conservative Party existed again for the first time since 1940. This has proved to be dramatically true. The removal of Sir Winston Churchill, whose position and power owed little to any section within the Conservative Party, has enabled the normal play of opinions and forces within the party to begin again. It is against this background—of a party resuming its rightful position after years of unnatural sub- mission—that today's widespread criticism of Sir Anthony Eden must be seen. It was a year or so before Sir Winston Churchill resigned that the first signs of restiveness within the Conservative Party became apparent. But, even though he had from time to time to bow to party opinion, Sir Winston Churchill was usually able to rely on his personal authority, sit heavily on the bump of discontent and flatten it out. Since he resigned the bumps have been breaking out alF over, and Sir Anthony Eden, lacking both Sir Winston Churchill's prestige and Baldwin's intuitive skill, has done little more than scratch at them and produce even more irritation than before. His friends do him little service by pretending that his difficulties are merely temporary. Within a mere twelve months the Prime Minister has committed almost every possible mistake, and it is only the loyalty which attaches to any leader and a certain hold on his party born of years of political apprenticeship which have saved him. Both of these can evaporate.
The nature of the criticism of Sir Anthony Eden must be understood. In the first place, it is general : at least as general as the criticism which eventually ousted Balfour and much more general than that which Baldwin had to face from a batch of diehards in 1930. From some Ministers—who seem to have decided that at the present moment silence, if not golden, is at least likely to prove more profitable than anything else—to party workers in the constituencies there is a well-defined feeling that the Conservative Government cannot survive the next three years and win the election at the end of them if Sir Anthony Eden remains its leader. Secondly, the criticism is persistent. After the premature out- burst at the end of last year it has grown steadily, and one of the most remarkable features of it is that it has attained such strength and coherence without any leader and without any rallying issue. If Sir Anthony Eden had one acknowledged rival, if there were one single issue which would precipitate all the latent and explicit discontents, his position would be hopeless. Thirdly, the criticism is concerned directly with the character and capacities of Sir Anthony Eden. Seldom can the debility of a Government have been so generally attri- buted, and with, so little qualification, to a single man and to the failings in him which are alleged to be ineradicable.
How far is this criticism justified? The Prime Minister's friends argue: of course, that the past twelve months have brought problems so thick and fast that even the greatest of statesmen might have faltered. This might be true if the comparison was with forty years ago. But the problems of the past year have been no more testing and no more numerous than those which beset either Lord Attlee or Sir Winston Churchill after the war. Both of these faltered : Lord Attlee when the impetus behind the Labour Government had been exhausted and when he was deprived of the support of Cripps and Bevin; Sir WinstOn Churchill during the first six months of his government, when he and the Conservative Party were finding their feet in office again. For Sir Anthony Eden neither excuse can be offered. His irremediable faults appear to be an exceptional lack of vision or originality and an excess of vanity. Lack of originality need not by itself be a fault in a Prime Minister. Many of Sir Anthony Eden's predecessors have had only the most limited vision; but they have had other political virtues to offer. Sir Anthony Eden appears to have none, except a vanity which sustains him in his con- viction that he has vision and originality enough to see his Government and the country through. The result is not only that he believes his own clichés—or, as a Conservative back- bench member has said, is in love with them—but that he acts in clichéS as well. Sir Anthony Eden's solution for every problem, foreign or domestic, is to seek a conference and an exchange of views, regardless of whether he has anything to propose or exchange, and never considering in advance what he will do if the conference fails. This is the abdication of statesmanship.
The Conservative Party, as the history of this century has shown, can be ruthless in ridding itself of a leader whom it no longer wants, although it has not in peacetime displaced its leader when the party has been in power. Sir Anthony Eden's expressed intention to lead the party into battle at the next election may be firm, but firmness by itself would not be able to resist any one of the possible hostile combinations which might form within the party in the coming months. At the present moment the lines of such a combination cannot be clearly seen. For one thing, an obvious alternative to Sir Anthony Eden does not present itself. Mr. Butler has been re- gaining some of his reputation but he still has a long way to go before he fully recovers it. Mr. Macmillan—in spite of his obvious personal advantages—has yet to prove himself in high office, and the support for him at the moment is based more on desperate hope than on well-founded fact. The rest are no- where. This absence of a recognisable rival is the only strength in Sir Anthony Eden's position. The coalition of mixed motives, interests, opinions and discontents which eventually persuades a party to dispense with its leader is largely a matter of party interest only. But the time sometimes comes when the interests of the party must be related to those of the country. Sir Anthony Eden can hardly do worse than he has done so far. But cannot the party which upholds him find someone who could do better? The country needs a leader who can command respect; and, if party interest has to be considered, it would seem wise to make the change now instead of just before the next election.
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