TABLE TALK
The royal jelly
DENIS BROGAN
After Mr Attlee's first year at Downing Street an observer (so the story runs) expressed his surprise at the effectively authoritative manner of the new Prime Minister. This was unlike the accepted public picture of Major Attlee, as people were still calling him although he had abandoned his military rank before the Second World War. His predecessor made a characteristic and highly intelligent remark : `He has eaten the royal jelly'. And there is no doubt that either great new qualities hitherto unsuspected are revealed by coming to supreme power or are created by the experience of political leadership. It seems absurd today that peo, ple thought Mr Attlee would be a dim Prime Minister, eclipsed, for example, by Herbert Morrison, for it was not very long before At- tlee made it plain that he was Prime Minister and expected to exercise all the power of that great office.
In the same way, we may be.sure that the new Prime Minister will very quickly develop all the powers that come from residing in 10 Downing Street. Mr Heath has had a more varied administrative experience than Mr Attlee had had when he became Prime Minister in 1945, but, again, a surprise election has added greatly to the intrinsic power of Mr Heath's new office. For some time to come, people who, have written him off (and there are a great many people outside the pollsters and the press who did) will be more cautious in criticism since, as far as any one person won the election, it was former Colonel Heath.
Theoretically, and usually in practice, a Prime Minister has worked his way to the top by effective political action. There are no records in modern British history of Prime Ministers with the limited background .of Mr Truman or the absurd background of War- ren Gamaliel Harding. Yet there is no absolutely established curses honorum for an ambitious politician to follow. Somebody once commented on the 'future Prime Ministers' in the Conservative ranks who had missed the boat before the Second World War, and of course there are always eminent politicians who cannot understand, or perhaps cannot accept the fact, that they have not managed to climb to the top of the greasy pole, as Dizzie put it. Thus, there is no reason to believe that Herbert Morrison ever really accepted as just the pre-eminence of Atlee over himself; and in Mr Heath's new Cabinet there are several 'future Prime Ministers' who yet never made the grade (the one who did make the grade can be relied on to be one of the most loyal of his new chief officers).
But the question of prime-ministerial or presidential selection is still not answerable in terms of any fixed system of political priorities. Andrew Bonar Law became leader of the Tory opposition (I think a very ir- responsible leader) largely because more, formally impressive candidates cancelled each other out. (It is a solemn thought that Walter Long was a serious candidate when Balfour was pushed out by the Young Turks of the Tories after his conspicuous failure as leader of the opposition.) In the nineteenth century things were either more simple or more complicated, depending on how you look at them. Before becoming Prime Minister, Palmerston served under Lord John RuSsell, and later Lord John Russell served under Palmerston. Both served under the Earl of Aberdeen, and there were several possible Prime Ministers who did not make the grade, perhaps because they didn't try hard enough. It was not, in fact, until the coming of something like democracy after the passage of Disraeli's Reform Bill that the offi,e of Prime Minister became extra- parliamentary as well as' parliamentary and the power of appeal to the mass of voters became as substantial an asset as the support of 'the Venetian oligarchy', i.e. the members of the great 'revolutionary families'.
Gladstone was the first of the new democratic or demagogic Prime Ministers, and his political campaigns at Greenwich and in Midlothian can be seen in a curiously modern light. Despite the speech at the Crystal Palace, Dizzie never could get the 'touch' with the masses of the new voters. The franchise was still very limited in the countryside, and of course, there was a great deal of deference to their betters among the workers, notably in parts like Lancashire. But Disraeli's real trouble came from the fact that he had had very little effective ex- perience in high office before 1872, whereas Gladstone was put into office very early in- deed and received an absolutely first class political and administrative education under that great man, Sir Robert Peel. By the time Disraeli really got power in 1872, he was old,
tired, and sceptical. Even looking back to the =Berlin Congress, it seems, despite Bismarck's compliments, Dizzie's was a very limited achievement, and although our new Prime Minister appeals to the Disraeli tradition, i am not sure there is any genuine Disraeli tradition to appeal to. But then I am an old- fashioned Liberal.
In this century, we have had all kinds of Prime Ministers, including some very remarkable ones. People forget too easily how admirable a peacetime Prime Minister Asquith was. They forget even more easily how effective a Prime Minister Campbell- Bannerman was for his short period of office. Then there is the great democratic exception to both the Grand Whiggery and the new business oligarchies, David Lloyd George. But David Lloyd George, if his career- is looked at in cold blood, a thing I find difficult to do, as a peacetime Prime Minister cut his own throat, and that helped to wreck the Liberal party, leaving us with the unsatisfactory choice of a trade union dominated Labour party and a business dominated Conservative party. With all the will in the world, I cannot think our two most conspicuous business men Prime Ministers, Baldwin and Neville Cham- • berlain, suggest that we should go very far in recruiting our political personnel from peo- ple who have either inherited or acquired considerable fortunes in the business world. It is not even certain that they are gdod ad- ministrators in governmental jobs. After all, as Cavour said, one of the greatest political virtnes is le tact des chases possibles, and that involves an understanding of the realities of political life—an understanding totally absent in that highly self-satisfied business observer Lord Beeching.
In a way, an American President is better off than a Prime Minister because he can disregard,. to a very large degree, the ac- quired political assets of other leaders of his party. The presidency is a semi-sacred office which can be exploited by a great political artist like FDR, and perhaps might have been equally successfully exploited by John nedy had he not been murdered. The waiyyq-"' which Harry Truman, from being obscure though worthy Senator who ha =1,- believe, spoken to FOR only a few tinies,. became an extremely effective President, was due not only to the great qualities of that remarkable_man but to the potentialities of the office which he inherited accidentally. But no British Prime Minister could have come into 10 Downing Street with so little personal prestige as had Mr Truman when he entered on his office. It must be remembered that he had been chosen for en- tirely fortuitous reasons by FDR and by some of the most astute politicians in the Democratic national machine.
For the moment, Mr Heath has all the prestige of his victory, for it was his victory rather than the victory of some of the more officially brilliant leaders of his party,. No doubt there are people ready to murmur behind the arras, Capax hnperii nisi iln- perasset. There are many more ready to worship the rising sun whose rising must have taken many of his own party leaders by surprise and certainly added greatly to the gaiety of the British nation. I myself believe that Mr Heath has far more qualities to fit him to be Prime Minister than he had to be leader of the opposition, but the mere fact that he is Prime Minister will give him power, prestige, and a certain charisma which he hadn't got before. He will need all of these assets.
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