Political commentary
From Sir Graham Sutton Sir: I imagine thal.-I am not alone among your regular readers in finding a certain puzzling inconsistency, not to say a lowering of standards, in your recent political commentaries. In last week's number the leading article speaks of a sustained campaign against Mr Wilson. Has it not occurred to you that something similar might be said about your recent references to Mr Roy Jenkins, some of which are rather cheap?
For example, in 'A Spectator's Blackpool Notebook' you jeer at Mr Jenkins's lisp. I am not a supporter of the Labour Party, and / can understand that you do not agree with many of Mr Jenkins' views, but what interests me is not Mr Jenkins's pronunciation (personally, I find the slight lisp not unattractive) but what he hals to say concerning the political scene. Mr Jenkins is a courteous and :ricere man and always worth
listening to even if one does not agree with everything that he says. Then on the matter of inconsistency. We had last week a trivial story about Mr Lever and a hamper. This week it has been promptly denied by another contributor, but with a side-swipe at Mr Jenkins who is alleged to have invented the story. What is one to believe?
But perhaps the most important matter is that although you say emphatically that "The Labour Party has emerged from its Blackpool conference very much stronger" and that "it has achieved a unity," the impression left on me after reading your detailed commentaries is that its leaders are more concerned with political assassination among themselves than with a future programme. And why print silly tittletattle like the story about Mrs Wilson and Mrs Castle (which, if it is true, I imagine to be no more than a joke that both ladies enjoyed at the expense of autograph hunters) as a deliberate attempt by Mrs Wilson to score over Mrs Castle? Can you not leave this kind of thing to the more trivial weeklies?
I am disappointed with The Spectator.
G. S. Sutton 4 The Bryn, Swansea
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