POLITICAL COMMENTARY

After it's all over

PETER PATERSON

Cabinet making (in the non-craft sense, that is) remains as the great Lord Salisbury described it: 'Feeding time at the zoo.' And unless the polls are entirely wrong in their general consensus—of which more later—the role of keeper will again be played this weekend by the Rt Hon Harold Wilson,

On. MP.

This must be the exquisite high point in the life of any Prime Minister, the moment of real power, the opportunity to reward friends and punish enemies, to make and to break. Yet, in practice, there are limitations and constraints which greatly narrow the real choices confronting him, and whatever daydreams Mr Wilson may have had time for during the election campaign are bound to evaporate in the face of reality. We know that Harold—strangely enough for one of nature's conservatives—finds a good deal of the custom and tradition surrounding his office irksome in the extreme. He longs to change things round, to shock and amaze, to diVert and amuse—hence his playful notion the other day that he might even reshuffle his Cabinet during the election and announce who is to get what even before the people had gone to the polls. For sheer outrageous cheek, this idea is equalled only by the Soviet Ambassador's visit to No 10 last Saturday morning to invite Mr Wilson—as Prime Minister—to visit Russia in July.

The fact of the matter is that you cannot campaign on the slogan of 'Labour's win- ning team' and immediately change the en- tire forward line. There are a number of fixed points which limit the Prime Minister's freedom of manoeuvre : people whose part in the election campaign has seemed minimal—Anthony Crosland, for example, or Robert Mellish, Fred Peart, Edward Short, George Thomson, Roy Mason, John Diamond and Harold Lever, to name but a few—are still immensely important in the claustrophobic world of the House of Com- mons, Cabinet ministers in charge of great departments of state, not to be lightly discarded in an orgy of post-election prize giving.

Yet to retain the existing Cabinet un- changed would not only rob the Prime Minister of a great deal of fun, but would also blight the hopes of those back bench MPS, junior ministers and members of the Cabinet who look forward to promotion, or even merely change from their present bor- ing round. Some people might even entertain the notion that Mr Wilson owes them a political debt and the time has come to repay it. Would Mr George Brown care to swear, with or without his hand on his heart, that he has tramped up and down the country in the past three weeks solely fulfilling his duty as deputy chairman of the Labour party? Of course not. Mr Brown is trying to work his passage back into the Government, his prrvious mood of disenchantment with Mr Wilson and his way of conducting the na- tion's affairs dissipated by the realisation that Mr Wilson seems likely ip be around for a long time yet. Nor does this expose Mr Brown to the charge of cynicism : he is a professional politician and he wishes to pursue his profession. He has given generously of his political skills on the hustings, and is, in effect, saying to the Prime lvlJnister, in the words of the old song, 'Let bygones be bygones ...'

Anyone with an ounce of sentiment who has been watching this performance would probably hope that Mr Wils6n would relent. But even Mr Wilson, known throughout the civilised world for his soft-hearted sen- timentality, particularly towards his old comrades, is unlikely to gather up Mr Brown into the seemingly everlasting arms of the Labour government. He could hardly raise Mr Brown to his former glory, and he has quite enough trouble juggling the top posts at his disposal as it is.

First and foremost there is the problem of the future of Mr Roy Jenkins, who, as Chan- cellor of the Exchequer when the famous surplus came along, was electorally much, much more indispensable than George. It is no secret that Mr Jenkins rather fancies himself as Foreign Secretary. Creating the necessary vacancy by elevating Mr Michael Stewart to the peerage—perhaps as Lord Stewart of Owerri?—is no problem. But as Mr Wilson ponders such a move, the thought must occur to him that to do so will make Mr Jenkins a much more formidably qualified politician than his own ap- prenticeship under Mr Clement Attlee ever allowed him (on paper) to become. Mr Jenkins will have earned himself a con- siderable reputation as Home Secretary and Chancellor, and would then set out to com- plete a trio of achievement. No one could really blame the Prime Minister for won- dering whether he was not, in fact, preparing a successor—and there is nothing Mr Wilson is less inclined to do.

Besides, there is another candidate for the Foreign Office. Mr Denis Healey is just as ambitious as Mr Jenkins, and probably just as able, but he has uncomplainingly (in public, at any rate) soldiered on at the Ministry of Defence since 1964 and is en- titled to a change of scene. Having teased all those foreigners in NATO for so long over whether they control our nuclear deterrent or we do, he is presumably sufficiently qualified now to become a suitably perfidious Foreign Secretary.

And what about Jim and Barbara? If law and order and the relationship they have to cricket proved the damp Tory squibs of this campaign, the credit is due to Mr Callaghan. I don't suppose for a moment that Mr Wilson would want to promote him, so—with Northern Ireland as an excuse—he is likely to .leave him at the Home Office. This—apart from the difficulty of persuading the police to have a left-wing lady in charge of their destiny—would have been an ideal move for Mrs Castle, worn out by her union- bashing activities and with one of her main statutory functions, industrial peacemaker, transferred to that new government depart- ment, the Trades Union Congress, with its efficient and enthusiastic Minister, Mr Victor Feather. Unless Mrs Castle is to be un- ceremoniously dropped, and Mr Wilson can find another dynamic woman to replace her (which, again, would be uncharacteristic), another post will have to be found for her. The options are few : Mr Richard Crossman, as the only man in the world believed to understand the Government's new pensions scheme, cannot be retired just yet, but Mr Crosland, who has yet to prove his staying power over the full mile and a half, could be put into Mrs Castle's hot seat at Employ- ment and Productivity, handing over the en- vironment to her.

All this, of course, apart from Mr Callaghan's continued tenure at the Home Office, is speculation. One could go on with the guessing game for the purpose of amuse- ment as much as for enlightenment, all the while falling into the same trap that snared Mr Smirkovsky and impelled him to rush from his embassy to DowningStreet with his sycophantic invitation. The Ambassador, like every political.writer in the country, had been hypnotised by the message of the public opinion polls.

Now, I am not of the opinion that the polls should be banished during elections, although I would certainly like to see fewer of them—and if there were fewer, it would be to the advantage of their own reputations. The polls have become a political menace because of the wide disparity of the results they produce. Last weekend we even had the spectacle of one of the most respected polls, Gallup, apparently contradicting itself, with an overall 2.5 per cent lead to Labour reported in the Sunday Telegraph, and a 7 per cent swing to Labour in the key marginals in the Daily Telegraph the next morning. And meanwhile the difference in the findings between Gallup and NOP, NOP and Marplan, and any one of this com- bination with ORC can only leave everyone in politics utterly bewildered. Maybe one of them will prove to be right on Thursday night, but after their gyrations during the campaign, such a triumph will be put down to pure luck.

The chief fault, however, lies not with the polling organisations, but with the newspapers which publish their results as if they were the major political news of the day, no matter what else has happened in the election campaign, and with the predatory radio and television services which take their lead from the newspapers. Time and again throughout this election, poll results, however capricious and unlikely,-have been allowed to dominate everything—or everything except an Enoch Powell speech.

For all I know, for I confess I have been as influenced in my opinion that this election is a cakewalk for Labour by the polls as much as by my own observations and soundings, they- have got it utterly wrong, and the sorely-tried Mr Heath—who must surely qualify for whatever annual award is given for sheer dignity—is about to become a se- cond Harry Truman.

It is arguable that for the polls to zigzag so wildly is a good thing: as the Conservatives, rather desperately, have been saying to each other, the poll on 18 June is the one that matters, and no one would imagine on the performance of the opinion polls that they have made the ballot redundant. Even so, I can think of more peaceful jobs from Friday onwards than running an opinion poll, for if the Tories win, they'll be out of business, and if they lose, they will share with Mr Powell the top place on the loyal Conserva- tives' hate list.