IT IS RISKY, perhaps, to take a young man who
has been a Member of Parliament for only three days and tip him as a future Minister. But I am prepared to take that risk with Mr. Geoffrey Rippon, who held Norwich South with a majority which, for East Anglia, was very creditable. Mr. Rippon is thirty-one, a barrister who has planned his career with enviable common sense. He was determined to establish his practice at the Bar before entering politics seriously, but in the interval he kept his hands on the political levers by playing an active role in local government and by standing for a hopeless London constituency. His application to local government is what interests me. Very few young Conservatives would think of it as a way into politics. But Mr. Rippon established himself sufficiently in Surrey local government to become Mayor of Surbiton at the age of twenty-six. He was an alderman at about a third of the age which one assumes aldermen to be. The Conservatives will find him as formidable a colleague as the Labour Party will find him an opponent.
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