Macmillan Expects

By HENRY FAIRLIE

IF the Conservative Party were not in its I eleventh year of office, and if the Government were not in electoral difficulties, the new Cabinet would be acknowledged to be one of the strongest of this century and, more pertinently, almost the strongest which could be recruited from the present House of Commons. Even if Mr. Macmillan had had both front benches at his disposal, he could hardly have brought to- gether a more intelligent or more powerful team. It is pointless not to recognise this:

Politically, it is immensely powerful. The Conservative MPs who have publicly com- Plained about its composition—Mr. Nigel Birch, Mr. Gerald Nabarro, Lord Lambton and Sir Harry Legge-Bourke—may be likeable and even Popular, but none of them are of obvious political Weight. It should be noted, too, that many of the critics of the changes at Tuesday night's meeting Of the Conservative back benches finance com- mittee. with Mr. Birch in the chair, were habitual rigid Right-wingers in financial and economic Policy. Of course, many of the ordinary loyal centre of the party are disturbed: a new Govern- ment (for such it is) is likely to cause electric storms. But on the whole the voluble Conserva- tive critics are the eccentrics and the marginally

loyal.

It is this that points to the real source of the Cabinet's strength. It need not fear opposition from inside the party, however disturbed it may be at the moment, because there is nowhere the °Pposition can come from. Its composition, in fact, perfectly reflects the most important element in the composition of the Parliamentary Party, the dominant influence of the party's central organs: the professionals at Central Office; the °fficers of the National Union (who inhabit the same building); and the peripheral organisations --whether established like the still influential Re- search Department, semi-detached like the Con- servative Political Centre, or merely_free-lancing, like the One Nation Group.

At the top of the new Cabinet stand the representatives of these bodies: Mr. Butler, Mr. Macleod and Mr. Maudling; Mr. Powell, Sir Keith Joseph and, of course, Mr. Edward Heath, who will, I suppose, return one day from the Continent, crying with appropriate ecstasy:

my new-found-land,

They form a powerful, united combination, and they can be as sure as any Cabinet that they represent the real power in their party: the most reassuring thought which a band of Ministers can ever take to bed each night.

For the same reason, they have not only strength but coherence. There are precise and real differences of attitude and opinion between tchem, and each has the intellectual capacity to "Mow, his own line. But they all think in broadly the same categories: they all represent what Mr. h iggs-Davison meant recently when he accused the Government of being a combination of Tory rilen and Whig measures. My Myne of precious stones, My Emperie, How blest I am in this discovering thee! To enter into these bonds is to be free.

Since 1945, their combined influence has killed the Right within the party: it is now hardly possible to discern it. Smoke comes from the chimney-stacks at Hatfield, and one must assume that Lord Salisbury is there, nursing old sores by his fireside. The Monday Club presumably meets, but without making any Minister fear Tuesday. In the Cabinet, in formidable array, stand their opponents, like a line of policemen, their arms linked to hold back the boobies.

Lastly, the Cabinet is strong by its sheer in- telligence. I am the last person to confuse in- tellectual with political capacity. But what Mr. Macmillan's Government has lacked from the beginning is a streak of intellectual severity. Mr. Butler, Mr. Macleod and Mr. Maudling, Mr. Powell, Sir Keith Joseph and Sir Edward Boyle, their minds fascinatingly different and acting on each other, are capable of supplying this. It is as if Mr. Macmillan had at last found out what it was that Trollope missed—and not a century too soon.

It is, then, a strong Cabinet: where, and how, will that strength tell? First, and above all, in the House of Commons. By next January, barring a complete failure of capacity or nerve, the new Front Bench should have established a formidable ascendancy in the House: given time, this should be of crucial importance. Gradually, the opinion of the House seeps through and becomes the opinion of the coun- try. How it happens, no one can be sure, but it always does. The reputations of men, measures and administrations are still made in one place only, in the chamber, lobbies and corridors of the House of Commons.

No one knows this better than Mr. Mac- millan: his strength has always been that he has rested his position on the support of the party at Westminster. 'The country,' as he has said, 'can still be led only from the House of Commons.' It is foolish to ignore this funda- mental assumption in all his political strategy. Again, especially in the junior appointments, he has worked, as always, with and through the Chief Whip: Mr. Redmayne's hand can be seen in most of the later and more junior appoint- ments, so carefully are the claims of the 1955, the 1955-59 and the 1959 entrants to the House balanced. If there is disappointment this week, it can only be the disappointment of individuals, and not of 'generations.'

What is almost as important is that Conser- vative MPs will soon have something to talk about in their constituencies, especially to their executives and associations. It has been depress- ing, each Monday in the past few months, to read the weekend speeches of Conservative members. They have been reduced, like Ramsay MacDonald, to bleating 'on, on and on up, up and up': but without even MacDonald's High- land capacity for self-deception. Whatever else may be wrong with Mr. Macmillan's team, it will supply, especially on the home front, some intellectual grit. Perhaps even Mr. Macmillan himself will no longer reserve his more thought- ful utterances for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the American newspaper pub- lishers.

Of the key appointment, it seems to me too early to say anything relevant. Mr. Maudling 7:ould be a commanding Chancellor, he could be a disastrous one. But he has recently shown his ability to move with political precision. His

address to his constituents a month ago was not only a remarkably cogent document: it was superbly timed, and superbly placed. He has given the impression until recently of holding himself back, as if he was waiting to judge the right moment to make his bid for the highest office. When he decided that the moment had come last month, he did not make a speech or give an interview: with a cunning worthy of Peel, he addressed his constituency association in its news-letter, and secured for it the maximum pub- licity. This political alertness is not to be despised.

But there is, of course, one man's mind which one would like to be able to read more than any other. Mr. Macmillan may have determined the timing of his changes abruptly: indeed, it seems clear that he did. (I was with one of the dismissed Ministers on Thursday evening: he clearly had no idea of the fate that awaited him.) But the coherence and shape of the changes equally suggest that he had been contemplating them for some time. I cannot see—given the year, the month and the by-elections—that he could have done anything else but try to re- create the policy and image of his Government by reconstructing it from top to bottom. From the top? That is precisely what one would like to know. What has convinced him that he should remain in office and risk obliterating defeat?

Will the electors ever be persuaded to vote for Mr. Macmillan again? That is the 630-seat question. No one can know the answer. On the surface, it would seem unlikely. It seems highly improbable that the walrus can again convince the poor, oppressed and disheartened oysters to trust him. But how often one has questioned Mr. Macmillan's judgment on big political issues before, and been worsted. He must have cal- culated that there is a role—a changed role— for him still to play, and the development of it is going to be the most intriguing—and possibly the most important—factor in politics in the coming year.

The Government has, of course, to prove itself by its actions. One may yet, a few months from now, be lamenting its lack of ability, energy and nerve. But, for the moment, it seems to me ab- surd, if one wishes the Conservative Party well, not to welcome it. It looks no more tired than the Labour Front Bench: Mr. Wilson, Mr. Callaghan and Miss Alice Bacon are scarcely sprightly new frontiersmen.

It has, as I have said, enormous intellectual potential, and it seems cynical to think that this no longer counts. Lord Altrincham, no mean critic of the Government from time to time, said recently that 'at no time since Suez have I felt less ashamed—more proud, indeed—of belong- ing to the Tory Party.' After the Government changes, it is easier than before to agree with him, and there is at least an even chance that more and more people will gradually come to agree as well.