SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

J. W. M. THOMPSON

One of Mr Heath's recurrent miseries must be having to explain away publicly his own dismal personal showing in the opinion polls.

The latest Gallup figures, while recording a massive slump in the Government's support.

also reported a quite substantial fall in Mr Heath's own standing: in one month, it was said, those who thought him a good Conser- vative leader had dropped from 37 per cent to 30 per cent. This is one of the striking phenomena of current politics. He put the best possible face on it when he said that any oppo- sition leader who had not been Prime Minister must be something of an unknown quantity to the public. This is reasonable as far as it goes (though not likely to satisfy unhappy Tories) but it does not go the whole way.

Another part of the truth emerged from an article in the Sunday Times describing a

weekend with Mr Heath at his family home at Broadstairs. The author, Denis Pitts, pre- sented a close-up and by no means unsym- pathetic picture of the Tory leader among his family and friends in off-duty hours. It was accurate and fair. Yet in a curious way it con- veyed almost nothing at all about the inner nature and motives of its subject. At the end of it he remained an unexplained enigma. More than any other public man, Mr Heath can be frank but unrevealing, candid but reserved, open and shut, all at the same time. The public, I think, is aware of this hidden centre to the man and quite simply doesn't know what to make of him. Until it does it is unlikely to send him soaring up the popularity charts. When —or if—he does achieve that dizzy ascent, it is almost certain to be on the basis of per- formance rather than empathy.

It was always a mistake for the Tories to try to present him as a sort of gritty enlarge- ment of the Common Man. He is nothing of the sort: He is, in numerous ways, an oddball, a man whose life and tastes mark him out as quite different from the mass of his supporters or opponents. The same, it is fair to say, was true of most successful political leaders in the past. But it is hopeless for the Tories to dream of seeing him transformed suddenly into a magic blend of Anthony Eden and George Brown. Life isn't like that.

Comeback

Lord Robens and the rest of his National Coalition Board can hardly be satisfied with the result of their campaign. Not only has Labour's dire displeasure landed upon his lordship: but in so far as their coalition lark has got on the wing at all it has headed rather divertingly in the direction of Sir Alec Douglas-Home. At least, The Times's columns of letters from anguished suburbia have singled him out hope- fully as the coalitionists' man of the hour. This is rather a joke when one remembers the cam- paign waged by Mr Rees-Mogg for the eviction of Sir Alec from the Tory leadership back in 1965. The despised figure of the aristocrat seems to be making a swifter comeback in political fashion than might then have been pre- dicted, incidentally: observe the praise now being bestowed by the British press upon the gentlemanly. Captain O'Neill. Etonians (for the moment) are 'in' again. The old school tie is no longer the politician's equivalent of a leper's bell. Well, we live in trendy times and perhaps the poor showing of is o non-public school men at the head of the major parties has helped this trend along. Mr Wilson had better hasten his nobbling of the House of Lords or he might find some latter-day Duke of Wellington emerging as the saviour of the nation.

Welsh circus

In the present acrimonious state of party politics, any issue on which government and opposition were agreed might be thought to have an overwhelming case in its favour. I can't see the powerful arguments uniting them on next July's investiture of the Prince of Wales

at Caernarvon Castle, though. When the maverick Labour MP, Mr Emrys Hughes, ob-

jected to this piece of archaic pageantry the other day in the House of Commons he got no support from anybody. Yet, as he pointed out, there is no invincible tradition to impose the necessity for this investiture: in six cen-

turies there have been twenty Princes of Wales

but only one investiture—and that was in 1911,

when the Duke of Windsor underwent the ordeal. He was decidedly embarrassed about the business, as he wrote in his memoirs later. The defence of next year's ceremony—that it will amply justify the cost of £200,000 by its attractions for tourists--may well be true, but it is surely a singularly vulgar view of the monarchy. The Welsh are disgruntled about their lot within the United Kingdom at present: the provision of a royal circus is not likely to end their discontents, which are more con- cerned with bread (and water).

Under the plastic mistletoe

I travelled this week in a railway buffet car which had been amazingly decorated by the attendants with paper-chains and plastic holly and mistletoe. Every year 1 find myself surprised by the sheer strangeness of this season. Some- times it seems just the feast of Saint Consumer, an annual orgy of advertising and marketing, eating and drinking: a seasonal trampling upon the puritan lurking within us. Yet it is all firmly founded on the notion of celebrating the birth of a child nearly 2,000 years ago: how odd, since it's obvious enough that that event means little for many or most of those who strenuously follow the ritual. Far be it from me to under- value oddities and inconsistencies in life: nevertheless I can't help wondering how the Age of Efficiency which we are told lies ahead will deal with this enormous eccentricity. Per- haps the recent suggestion that Christmas should be fixed on a convenient day of the week is the beginning of the process of rationalisa- tion, leading to a logical separation of the Christian observance from the pagan jollifica- tions. I assume the brave new world will permit some form of annual saturnalia : there may even be charming new legends, with a spectral Wedgwood Benn riding the skies on a jingling hovercraft to carry toy computers to tech- nologist's good children; or cheerful new carols about the Three Wise Central Bankers. Until that dread day, however, we will keep to the old way, continuing to wish all and sundry at this time a Happy Christmas: which it is still a **sure to do.