THE SPECTATOR
WESTLAND HO!
Mr Michael Heseltine no doubt has a rich variety of motives in the Westland affair, but 'vaulting ambition, which o'er- leaps itself is a description that fits him as well as any of the smart gardening clothes in which he loves to be photographed. The fact that his argument with Mr Leon Brittan has been pursued in a 'war of leaks', Washington-style, through the col- umns of the daily press, rather than in Cabinet, where it properly belongs, is also a damaging reflection on Mrs Thatcher's personal style of government. It is certainly a style which needs to be tempered by the occasional well-publicised row. But these party political considerations should not be allowed to obscure the larger issues of national interest in the future of Westland. Mr Heseltine is by background and politic- al instinct an interventionist. In another ministry — Mr Brittan's for example — he might very probably be found attempting to intervene in the private sector when the economic philosophy of this government would forbid such intervention. In the case of vital defence industries such as West- land, he has a special reason and indeed a duty to intervene, as do all other govern- ments in the free world. He has a special reason to intervene because his ministry is Westland's single most important custom- er. And he has a duty to bring into the argument Britain's long-term national de- fence interests. Whatever his motives, and whatever the result, Mr Heseltine has done us a service by bringing forward the Anglo-
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