Westminster Commentary
Bleak House
By ROY JENKINS, MP Mlik political prospect for this year, even by 1 recent standards, is a dismal one. Few people can believe the recent performance of the Government to be much short of calamitous. After the signal success of the Conservative Party at Brighton in October almost everything has gone wrong. The Immigration Bill, however mis- takenly popular its principle may be with the mass of the electorate, has a high claim to be amongst the worst thought out and most incoherent major measures ever to be presented by a government to Parliament. The other principal attempt at legislation—the Army Bill—is almost equally chaotic; particularly ;with Mr. Profumo in charge, it would stand little chance in a free-voting House of Commons.
Nor is the position any better if administration rather than legislation is looked at. Mr. Selwyn Lloyd's economic flounderings grow even more pathetic. He gives no sign of knowing what the pay pause is designed to achieve (except for ill- will), when it is to end, or by what it is to be replaced. And in the last economic debate his few coherent remarks were contradicted by the Minister of Labour four hours later. Meanwhile, in spite of all the trouble and the unfair discri- mination against those working in the public sector, wages generally continue to go up much as they would otherwise have done. Indeed, ironi- cally enough, in the last month for which figures are available, the index of weekly wages rates rose by 1.4 points with a pay pause as against a rise of .2 of a point in the same month last year without a pay pause. And any prospect of achieving a reasonable rate of growth for the British economy recedes still further.
The position is hardly redeemed by Lord Home. The Government's behaviour over Katanga has been dingy to say the least. It has shown much worse judgment of what was likely to happen than the Americans. It has demon- strated an almost total unwillingness to make any sacrifice of what it conceives to be an immediate interest in order to build up the authority of the United Nations. (Lord Home's Berwick speech surely provides strong evidence for Dr. O'Brien's view abOut the British Government's underlying altitude towards UN decisions.) And it has allowed Right-wing back-bench pressure to achieve the notable victory of the rapid reversal of the decision on the bombs. The Government, to use Churchill's famous devaluation phrase, was forced to turn around 'like a squirrel in a cage.' The lessons of that episode are certainly not likely to be lost on those who wish to or- ganise Conservative back-bench pressure.
All round, therefore, the past two months have been a period of unexpected and almost unex- ampled failure for the Government. No doubt in the coming months one or two things will go a little better. But any major recovery of gov- ernment performance seems unlikely. First, be- cause one of the major causes of recent weakness is long-term political exhaustion. The Govern- ment has now been in office far longer than any government ought to be. And all the rather easy talk of a year ago about the Conservative Party learning to live with a new electoral situation by providing an opposition from within its own ranks has done nothing to provide a remedy. Partly, perhaps, because the situation has been confused by the revival of the Labour Party, at least as a parliamentary force. Partly, also, because opposition by infra-party pressure groups tends to make government policy less and not more coherent, and because it can never lead to an outright change of government.
The second reason why full-scale recovery is now unlikely is the sheer dearth of Cabinet talent. One of the major counts against Mr. Macmillan is the way in which he has sought to increase his own stature by keeping.figures of real note at a good distance from the throne of Downing Street. Compare his treatment of Lord Hailsham and Mr. Butler, both in their different ways men of unusual ability and per- sonality, with that of Mr. Selwyn Lloyd or even Mr. Henry Brooke. The result is that we have a weak Chancellor of the Exchequer, a foolish Foreign Secretary and a general Cabinet in- tellectual level which is such that it seems per- fectly natural to have Dr. Charles Hill in charge of all land use planning, of housing and of local government reform'.
Until recently Mr. Macleod seemed to be the outstanding exception. He was thrusting his way up through the hierarchy with a speed which seemed fully matched by his ability. But during the three months of his leadership of the House of Commons his reputation has fallen at least as sharply as the Government as a whole. Of course, as is always the case when reputations take a sudden bump, he is probably under- written now, just as he was overwritten before. He still has the recipe by which he has pros- pered-. -That of offering to the public a skilfully (and individually) planned mixture of moderate policies and partisan phrases. He remains a tough, competent and forward-looking Minister, and one who is certainly not going to be de- stroyed by three months of setback. But it looks increasingly likely that his previous eminence owed more to the flatness of the surrounding countryside than to his own great stature.
On the ground of both performance and pros- pect, therefore, there is little to hope for from the present Government, except that at the next general election it should at least get itself de- feated. The country has not often been more in need of a change at the top—and most of the way down, too. But what is the hope of the Labour Party being able to fulfil the essential of an opposition role and provide an alternative government? The straight answer would appear to be some hope, but not a great deal, and not nearly as much as would have been expected six months ago, when it became known that Mr. Gaitskell was going to win at Blackpool. The recovery from the sudden fever of uni- lateralism has been quick and fairly complete. but the disappearance of this disease did not take with it the underlying and independent debility which was there before Scarborough and is still present today. As a result, the decline in the Government's support reflects itself in almost everything other than an increase in those who say they will vote Labour. Neither the best efforts of Mr. Gaitskell nor the .worst efforts of Mr. Macmillan appear capable of pushing the Labour percentage of the vote much above the middle thirties. This is the central gloom of the present political situation. So long as the Labour figure remains stuck at about that level the Government enjoys something very near immunity from the electoral consequences of its failures. Few things could he worse for the whole tone of British politics.
Yet the immunity is not quite complete. First, if the Government is much less successful in timing the next election than it was with the last and has to go to the country with its own support at a very low ebb, it would be possible for the Labour Party to secure a House of Commons majority with not much more than its present percentage of the votes. It might not be a very inspiring victory, but it could hap- pen. And a parliamentary majority is a par- liamentary majority. Furthermore, such a de- velopment offers the best chance of securing a change of government within, say, six years. Every practical politician knowS that tall talk of a re-alignment of forces on the Left is now quite out of the question, at least until after the next election. If the Conservatives are not to go an in office for three or four years after 1963 they must be defeated by the Labour Party. That is the only possibility. How can this hope best be nurtured and, if possible. streng- thened by a significant increase in Labour sup- port? The first necessity is for the Labour Party to avoid the temptation of swinging into oppo- sition to Britain's entry into the Common Market. The dangers of this, electoral and other, as I have argued before, would be immense. Severe upheaval within the party would inevit- ably be created. There are a substantial number of people, particularly but not exclusively on the moderate wing of the party, who are deeply committed in favour of British entry and who would not change. In addition, such a move would greatly strengthen the fears of those who think the Labour Party is now more at home defending a conservative position than mount- ing a radical attack. This will be particularly so if the nostalgic Commonwealth approach is allowed to gain momentum within the party. An extreme example of this was presented in the last week before Christmas, when two back-benchers --ex-Ministers, but not particularly influential ones----recoiled with indignation from the pro- posal for a decimal coinage on the ground that this was a Commonwealth betrayal. Typically, they ignored the fact that about two-thirds of the Commonwealth have already made such a move.
The plain truth is that in any tight political or economic sense the Commonwealth is in- evitably a declining interest. And the Labour Party already has enough declining causes to support without gratuitously adding another one to the list.
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