Political Commentary
Waits and Measures
By DAVID WATT /THE air of unreality has been dizzying. Black- 1. pool, of course, could scarcely be more irrelevant to the future—a dream city, sleazy and pathetic, built and still furnished as an escape from the horrors of industrial poverty. The Winter Gardens where the Conservative Conference is being held, with their art nouveau lavatory tiling and dark brown plaster caryatids and wheezing great organ, do not exactly strike the note of urgent realism appropriate to a modern Party. Nevertheless, the Conference opened on Wednesday with most of the outward appear- ances of normality. We sang 'God Save the Queen,' we prayed for the health of the Prime Minister and with rather more mixed feelings for a clean press, and we heard Mr. Graham Part- ridge, MA, IP, propose the first motion of the Conference with the words, 'Are you sitting comfortably?'
And yet, of course, no one in the hall was really giving his undivided attention to these dear, familiar sights and sounds. The first disastrous result of the Prime Minister's illness has been to make it very difficult, if not impossible, for the Conservative Conference to match the Labour Party in the serious discussion and projection of its electoral programme. Scarborough was, no doubt, as Mr. Edward Heath informed the Tory agents, the place where Mr. Wilson discovered Pythagoras and Mi.. Brown discovered Mr. Wilson. But it was also the place in which Labour discovered a theme which requires urgent rebuttal if it is not to become the permanent and exclusive property of the Opposition. In the frenetic atmosphere of Blackpool the discussion of Conservative plans and achievements may be worthy and even mildly inspiring but' it has not looked like getting off the ground. Mr. lain Macleod, arriving in Blackpool on Tuesday hot- foot from a Cabinet, informed the press that Mr. Macmillan would 'make the position absolutely clear' in his speech on Saturday. Among other more or less subtle objectives of this remark the most important was the hope that next morning's headlines would abate speculation for the follow- ing three days and so allow rational and undis- tracted discussion of policies on the Conference floor. Within three hours all this was in rnins.
The other result, far more beneficent, has been to force a real decision about the Leadership. The general assumption during recent months has been that the Prime Minister could not go until the party • had chosen, or rather (to Use the fashionable word) evolved a successor for him. The guidance to inquirers at 10 Downing Street after last Tuesday's Cabinet was precisely along these lines—that unless the other members of the Cabinet could decide during three days' enforced inspection of each other in Blackpool whom they wanted, the Prime Minister would aye, bravely and reluctantly of course, to soldier on.
The truth should all along have been stated the other way round—i.e., if the Prime Minister could be persuaded to announce his decision to retire, then the party would at last have a real incentive to pick his successor. Now fate (or, as Mr. Brian Inglis no doubt would say, psycho- somatic strain) has stepped in and proved the point by doing what the Prime Minister refused to do himself. The decision will have to be taken willy-nilly—and quickly.
A few hard-bitten characters, badly caught out before in their estimates of the Prime Minister's intentions, are hedging their bets now and pre- dicting that Mr. Macmillan will be back anon with a new bloom on his cheeks and the light of election battle in his eyes. But I am informed (on the most impeccably Conservative medi- cal advice available at the Conference) that even if his operation is entirely successful the Prime Minister could not expect to be back in the driving seat before the Christmas recess. It is almost inconceivable that the awful prospect of this interregnum will fail to force a solution of the succession problem. Quite apart from the fatal damage to the party's public image caused by having an absent leader in hospital with an old man's ailment, there is the all-important question of certainty.
There is no doubt that all sections of the party are in a mood of acute irritation with the long- continued uncertainty. The professional party apparatchik are getting worried about the election and especially the absence of a central figure upon whom to centre their propaganda. The mandarins of the National Union, to whom party unity is indeed the most important of all objectives, are in a state of understandable gloom. MPs have, been excluded as a body from the scene for three months but the thought of another session like the last has them individually screaming in their sleep. The nerves of Cabinet Ministers are being stretched to breaking-point. The ordinary constituency rank-and-filer feels unhappily cut off from the rest of the party because he cannot understand what all the fuss is •about. In short, everyone arrived at Blackpool on Tuesday in search at least of certainty. If the only certainty available had been the certainty that Mr. Macmillan was going to lead at the election, the • majority would have received this thankfully if not enthusiastically.
Now, in the nature of Mr. Macmillan's illness this form of certainty has been ruled out, for no one can possibly know how the Prime Minister will be feeling when he comes out of hospital. It follows that another form of certainty must be found, and the party managers therefore return somewhat wearily to the old argument about the merits of the various candidates.
The effect of Mr. Macmillan's sudden removal from the scene must naturally help the chances of Mr. Butler. He immediately takes on the mantle and authority of Head of Government. Further- more the urgency of the situation may at last persuade those who support the chances of Mr. Maudling, of Mr. Heath (astonishingly. many, I found, in a recent tour of constituencies) or Mr. Macleod, to abandon their hopes for the time being and to throw in their lot with Mr. Butler as an interim leader. There is not much doubt that most of the Cabinet still regard him as the most obvious choice, and if he can clinch matters quickly he should succeed. If the argument is protracted, the opposition among MPs and at the grass roots may make itself heard effectively.
Lord Hailsham had a Force Eight welcome (by my decibel counter) from the Conference when he landed artlessly on the wrong end of the plat- form on Wednesday at the exact moment at which the Chairman had finished introducing his colleagues for the inspection and approval of the meeting. But these extravagant huzzas are a red herring in any serious consideration of his chances, for the role of the constituency associa- tions is still almost entirely negative in matters of this sort. They may be able by sheer disapproval to prevent the accession of Mr. Butler; they can- not impose their own darling, upon an unwilling Parliamentary Party and Cabinet—and it is not at all clear that either group is sufficiently con- vinced that the situation is desperate to put up with Hailsham's semi-Churchillian volatility for the sake of the Dunkirk spirit.
There remains Lord Home. The Foreign Secretary has been ruled out in the past on the grounds that his health is precarious and that he has a patrician distaste for shedding his title, leaving his grouse moors and becoming plain Mr. Alec Douglas-Home, MP. I do not think the last of these factors would deter Lord Home from accepting the Prime Ministership gracefully; the first may well deter his colleagues from making the offer.
In spite of all the excitement and uncertainty entailed in these choices and the bewilderment of shock, it does not need a profound cynic to detect a strong sense of relief among the dele- gates at the way things have gone. After all these months something positive is happening at last. Of course, there is acute sympathy for Mr. Mac- millan, who throughout the summer has put up a fight worthy of the rest of his career, but I have found a large section of opinion which believes it is all for the best. Many, including important party managers, felt that a firm state- ment from the Prime Minister on Saturday that he proposed to lead at the election would rally the ranks decisively, because individual members would respond to fear of electoral defeat and the loss of post-electoral favours if the party won. I believe this was a dangerous over- simplification. There are enough Members of Parliament of real influence who feel, even after the recess, that Mr. Macmillan' should go at all costs by Christmas. Perhaps they would have toed the line, but there would have been, in the immortal words of Messrs. Browning and Birch, 'doubt, hesitation and pain.' This is not an at- mosphere in which it is possible to carry on the self-confident government necessary to win elections. The Prime Minister has always left the important loophole in his various statements of defiance that he will lead his party in the election 'provided health and strength last.' His present illness is cruel bad luck, but after the vindication of his honour in the Denning Report it allows Mr. Macmillan to make an honourable and dignified exit.
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