Westminster Commentary
WHAT song the sirens sang Is not (we have Sir Thomas Browne's word for it) beyond conjecture, and I am as willing as the next man to conjecture it. Moreover, 1 am as well supplied as that same next man with those oddments of knowledge that we all pick up on the way through what the Earl of Home would call, if he were given half a chance, this vale of tears. But what I cannot tell you, and what I challenge any man to tell you or me, is why Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd has been plucked forth from a well-merited obscurity to be Minister of Education.
The reason for Lord Hailsham's translation is more easily discovered. Some time within the next two years there is going to be a General Elec- tion, and Mr. Macmillan would like to be still Prime Minister when it is over. Seeing little prospect of this happy state of affairs being reached while the Conservative Party remains in its present condition, Mr. Macmillan has decided that it needs gingering up. A close examination of his colleagues for traces of ginger proved in most cases unrewarding; what appeared at first sight to be the all-important spice clinging to Lord Mancroft, for instance, turned out, upon closer examination, to be mould. After some weeks of search the Prime Minister noticed that it was difficult to approach within fifteen feet of Lord Hailsham without sneezing. This proved to be the clue; X-ray photographs of his Lord- ship's head showed it to be crammed with ginger (I always wondered what it was full of), and with a glad cry of Abracadabra! the Prime Minister appointed him lord and master of the Conserva- tive Party machine and sat back to await results.
1 don't want to sound pessimistic, but I think it is time somebody pointed out that if the Con- servatives think they are going to win the election by sending Lord Hailsham round the country to rouse the party workers they have got another think coming. The party workers at Gloucester will have it that their candidate was no good; Mr. Dashwood insists that the party workers were no good. As it happens, both sides in this par- ticular controversy are right, but it was not the inadequacy of the personnel that knocked nearly ten thousand off the Tory vote; it was the fact that Tory electors are sick and tired of a Govern- ment that makes promises and fails to carry them out, combined with the fact that there are num- ben of former Tory voters who have still not got over Suez.
The second problem is insoluble, and from Mr. Macmillan's increasingly inexplicable reluctance to dispose of Mr. Selwyn Lloyd (even the Tories now refer to him as the Portfolio without Minister) it would seem that he does not propose to attempt a solution. The first problem, however, is a different matter. The sizeable Liberal vote at Gloucester cannot, I fear, be regarded simply as an expression of the electors' admiration for Mr. Grimond's beaux yeux, nor even as their recognition of the fact that in Colonel Lort- Phillips the Liberals had a first-rate candidate.
The fact is that several thousand Tories, in voting for a candidate who had no chance of being elected, and whose party has no chance of attain- ing power or even of significantly affecting its distribution, were registering a protest against the Government's failure to do anything about the cost of living. Windy plateautudes, they have decided, are not an effective substitute for action.
But is Lord Hailsham? After the massacre of 1945, it was clear that the Tory Party machine was not merely rusty; it had fallen to pieces. To Mr. Butler and his backroom boys fell the task of reconstruction, and a right good job they made of it. Once again the wheels are jammed, and Mr. Macmillan has decided that to send in Lord Hailsham to bash about with a monkey-wrench is the best way of getting them turning again. But the problem is at once simpler, and more complicated, 'than that. It is true that the machinery is rusty, and for removing rust there is no doubt that Lord Elbowgrease is as good an appointment as could be made. This, however, is a minor problem; what is needed is another Mr. Butler and another backroom. For the Tory machine needs not only a new gearbox and new sprockets; it needs new fuel. And although I yield to nobody (well, practically nobody) in my ad- miration for Lord Hailsham's ability, I do not feel that he is quite the man required for this par- ticular job. His Lordship has been accused of many things, but an excess of political sophisti- cation is not one of them, and it is above all political sophistication that is required in the man who is to sell the Tories to the electors.
It is being said on all sides that electors may huff and puff at by-elections, but come the General Election and they will be very chary of blowing the house down. If Mr. Macmillan wants to go into the General Election with this precept for comfort, it is none of my business; but in that case, it seems to me, he had better try seeing what the House of Commons looks like from the other side of the Despatch Box. The 1951 General Election, when the Labour Party was in much the same position as the Tories are today, was won by what the psephologisti call differen- tial abstention, and the next one is going to be won the same way. The comforters are busy rush- ing about pointing out that the anti-Government swing is not yet a pro-Socialist swing. Friends, it doesn't have to be; a plague on one house and two-and-three-quarter plagues on the other add up to a handsome victory for the singly plagued.
Now where, in all this, do the Liberals stand? From Edinburgh to Gloucester the serried ranks are on the march; and the tune is the 'Battle-Hymn of the Republic' : Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. , North Dorset is forgotten. Mr. Grimond thinks about appointing a second Whip, a third, • a fourth (if you think I am being too fanciful, let me tell you that on Tuesday night he said that the country might have a Liberal Government in ten years), the air becomes thick with flying rumours a of alliances, and please will somebody tell me what the fuss is about?
It may be the action of a cad, but I cannot
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