AT WESTMINSTER M R. GAITSKELL has sealed his title to be
Labour's Chancellor of the Exchequer. Whatever opinions may be held about the refusal to cut Government expenditure or the increase in income tax and the tax on distributed profits. there is no question that in his exposition of rearmament finance and his general management of the Budget he fully realised the traditional idea of a Chancellor. What is surprising now is that anyone should have had any uncertainty about it. Yet Members did, even some on his own side. The tragic illness of Sir Stafford Cripps had placed Mr. Gaitskell at the Exchequer at the early age of 44 after only five years in Parliament, where he had made no very conspicuous mark. He had given the impression of being just a competent Minister of Fuel and Power. Later, as Sir Stafford Cripps's principal lieutenant at the Treasury, he had not seemed to be more than an echo of his masterful chief. Since he succeeded Sir Stafford last autumn the interval had been only preparation for Tuesday's trial, which must reveal unmistakably whether he was, as some supposed, a secondary political figure who had had a great stroke of luck, or whether he was of true Cabinet timber. * * * * When he sat down at the end of his two and a quarter hours' speech the answer to the question was plain enough. He had proved his adequacy. He had come through the long mental and physical ordeal skilfully and modestly. The rather auda- cious red carnation at his buttonhole bloomed upon a consider- able Parliamentary success. There had not been the longueurs in the speech that even Sir Stafford Cripps could not avoid. He won a warm encomium from Mr. Churchill for his lucidity and comprehensiveness. The Leader of the Opposition, no doubt remembering Mr. Dalton, found additional cause for com- mendation in the absence of any malice or hatred, meaning, of course, of the class-conscious order. It was an auspicious start. That Mr. Gaitskell is going to join the outstanding Chancellors of the Exchequer no one would be so bold as to claim yet, but there is no potential rival who can now pretend that he has been passed over in favour of a less able man.
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Sir Stafford Cripps was as an unseen presence. He is still a power in the House of Commons. The Crippsian inspiration in the Budget is obvious. Mr. Gaitskell firmly presented himself as one who had learned from Sir Stafford to decide objectively and honestly the right answer to the Budget problem and then to stick to it against any pressure, insidious or well-intentioned. A Wykehamist to a Wykehamist succeeds, and Sir Stafford in his Swiss retreat must be feeling pride in his pupil. But other minds, too, would stray to Sir Stafford. Nothing could have been more refreshing in these somewhat embittered days than the manner in which Mr. Churchill took it upon himself to send, on behalf of the House, a message of goodwill to Sir Stafford. The grateful nods that ran along the whole of this hard-pressed Treasury bench in acknowledgment of Mr. Churchill's magnanimity made a very agreeable moment. * * * * The Chancellor's warning that he was not going to be diverted from the course he had set himself even by well-intentioned pressure leaped into bold significance when he announced the new charges for dentures and spectacles. Mr. Bevan's week-end speech, in which he was reported to have said he would remain in no Government which put charges on patients under the National Health Service, looked just like the well-intentioned pressure mentioned by Mr. Gaitskell, and on this assumption the Chancellor, true to his resolve, had successfully withstood the terrible Welshman. The House of Commons has the nicest nose for personal drama, and it was almost comic to hear the whispered or clearly audible cries of " Where's Nye ? " He was not in the Chamber, and it was anguish to his foes to be robbed of the satisfaction of seeing what they expected to be his
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