THE SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

I had already scribbled down in my mental notebook something like this: "Ted Heath has now reached the peak of his form. He is turning out to be a first-class horse. The only pity is that he is running in the wrong race." That was after his distinctly impressive showing at Monday's Lancaster House Press Conference.

I have not seen the like of this in England before — and to tell the truth I don't think anybody else has either. As the Prime Minister himself remarked, British Prime Ministers usually only give formal international press ,conferences when they are abroad. It is not at all the done thing in London.

The obvious parallel is with the press conferences held roughly every six months in the Elysee Palace by President de Gaulle and now continued by M. Pompidou. The same lush gilt decorations, the same heat of the room and the television lights, the same theatricality of great doors swung open, similar stage management of the questioning, the same artificiality, the same guilty sense afterwards that the press has allowed itself to be used as a propaganda tool of the Government. Nevertheless, I thought after the Prime Minister's performance that here, whatever I might think about his European policies, was a very formidable figure indeed.

Another triumph ?

Then, a couple of days later, I went to the Central Hall, Westminster, to see what I imagined would be another Prime-Ministerial triumph. This time, after all, he had an easier task: he had simply to put his European policy across the delegates of the Central Council of the Conservative and Unionist Associations — which is to say, the annual conference of the Tory party specially summoned for the occasion. Tory party conferences are notoriously easy audiences for Tory leaders to handle. They usually provide such public love-ins that one wonders whether Mrs Mary Whitehouse, or Lord Longford's committee on pornography ought not to consider them as possibly corrupt exhibitions.

But somehow the event misfired, or, rather, it did not fire at all. The Prime Minister's speech itself was humdrum; possibly the White Paper has exhausted him. — or his speech writer, Mr Michael Wolff's rhetoric. And there was not the slightest tension in the atmosphere. No Tory of consequence, except Mr Heath himself, spoke. A motley collection of representatives of local constituency parties came to one of seven microphones to ask their particular questions. There was no debate. There was no drama whatsoever.

Even the one " dramatic " incident fell like a deflated balloon. A woman cried from the balcony "You're a traitor, Mr Heath. You're a traitor to Britain" and scattered down a few leaflets. But Mr Heath was quite entitled to reply to her in the unperturbed way he chose : "You've picked a very badly chosen moment. I don't think even the cameras can see you."

Anything, only support us

Mr Heath, like all politicians, thrives on heckling. There was none—or none loud enough to reach his platform. When he said that the result of the negotiations was "highly satisfactory" from the point of view of the Commonwealth interest, someone behind me whispered "nonsense ": but what's the use of whispering "nonsense "? Mr Heath repeatedly declared to the satisfaction of his loyal audience that he was fully determined that the Government would require its supporters in the House to support it on Europe, i.e. that that there would be no free vote, but instead a three-line whip. He was pertinently asked "in view of this, what purpose is served by members of parliament con sulting their constituents during the forthcoming months, and what purpose is there in having the Great Debate ? " At this the Prime Minister produced what I judge to be the best remark of his career thus far: "We will say to the Tory MPs 'the Government does not mind what you do, but the Government asks you to support us,'" he declared.

Bob in the jungle

Although there are plenty of people who can't stand the fellow, I have always liked

Bob Maxwell, and I am sorry that Mr Owen Stable, QC, and Sir Ronald Leach of the the accountants firm of Peat, Marwick

and Mitchell, should have found it necessary to report, and the Department of

Trade and Industry to publish, that "notwithstanding Mr Maxwell's acknowledged abilities and energy, he is not, in out opinion, a person who can be relied on to exercise proper stewardship of a publicly quoted company." I don't know many people who can be relied on — presumably any chairman or managing director of a publicly quoted company who allows his company to become insolvent or unprofitable or who otherwise exercises stewardship ' over a publicly quoted company whose share value drops should not have been relied on. Should the shareholders of Rolls Royce have relied on the stewards of that company? Obviously not.

The trouble with Bob is that he is too many people's idea of a cad, a bounder, an outsider. What businesss has a Czech Jew winning the Military Cross, calling himself Maxwell, becoming a Member of Parliament, making a fortune, turning himself into an Englishman with no trace of a foreign accent? Of course he can't be relied on, the knockers say.

By the familiar test — which is as good as any I know — of asking youself whether or not you'd choose to be stranded in the jungle with him, Bob Maxwell would come out very high on my list. Mind you, on the other test — whether you'd buy a second-hand car from him — he'd not score so well.

Buying a second-hand car

I do not know Mr Owen Stable, QC, or Sir Ronald Leach, but I don't think either would be much use in the jungle, and certainly I'd think twice before buying a second-hand car from a lawyer or an accountant. Although come to think of it, I have bought a car from an accountant — it was an old Volkswagen, and I gave him £10 for it. It subsequently turned out that he had sold me his wife's car — and hadn't even given her the ten quid.

David Wood, the distinguished lobby correspondent of the Times told 'me a characteristic story of Bob Maxwell. One night during a party conference or some similar occasion the two happened to be drinking and talking with others, and Wood mentioned that a daughter of his was lsuffering from a particular difficult ailment. The following morning, when he was still in bed, Wood was telephoned by Maxwell who said "I got in touch with the chairman of the Medical Research Council last night and asked him for the name of the best man in England for your daughter's complaint." Bob Maxwell then rattled off the name and telephone number of the appropriate specialist and added "Phone him at precisely 9.30 this morning. He will just have arrived but will not have started seeing his patients. You may tell him that the chairman of the Medical Research 'Council said that you could use his name."