AT WESTMINSTER
* * * It was astonishing• to discover what a flagitious affair the Budget had turned into between Mr. Attlee's stumbling doubts and Mr. Douglas Jay's appearance at the box on Monday. Physically, Mr. Jay is very tall and very thin. In private he is a most agreeable person. He is an economist of a rather melancholy cast and the dismal science is a serious business with him. During the week-end he had said in the Country that the Budget was the most reactionary of the twentieth century. On Monday when, as you might say, he was airborne on Labour cheers—an experience which can make the strongest heads giddy—Mr. Jay felt he owed it to those cheers to bang the drum still harder. Now it had become the most reactionary Budget in the history of Parliament. Boomps-a-daisy ! At last the party was really off the mark. Even Mr. Gaitskell's criticisms of last week were drowned in this cloud-burst of inconsequence. And how gratefully the Labour ranks cheered the frail-looking fury from North Battersea.
* * * * There was a difference on the question of facts between Mr. Jay and Mr. Butler about the proportion of people who will be worse off, which, if one might follow Mr. Jay, has no parallel in Parliamentary history. Mr. Jay said 75 per cent. of the industrial population will be worse off; Mr. Butler said the number will be very few. This estimate of Mr. Jay greatly provoked Mr. Lyttelton. He said it was " phoney " and took no account of the increased family allowances. Mr. Jay retorted that it did while Mr. Lyttelton's estimate, he argued, omitted the increase in the national insurance contribution and the increase in purchase-tax. It was all very bewildering. Mr. Butler was as cool and assured in replying to the debate as he had been in introducing the Budget. He has become a considerable force in the House. He is also something of a law to himself. His speeches are like no others. They are not traditional. Oratory he seems to scorn and he exposes his mind in ways that appear to the cautious Parliamentarian almost artless at times. He obviously has great confidence in that mind. No mere Tory politician would have conceded to the Opposition that the balance of payments problem is fifty years old.
* * * * Mr. Bevan has not been seen during the debates. Strange absence, remembering the Budget is the great act of Govern- ment of the Parliamentary year ! This and other casual ways with which he has treated the House suggest he has not the staying-power of the all-conquering rebel. The great rebels of the past have not neglected the House like this. Besides, the leadership of the Parliamentary Labour Party has to be won in the House of Commons. It is not in the. bestowal of the party conference or outside juntas. Mr. George Ward, only a fortnight old as Under-Secretary for Air, made a good showing in introducing the air estimates, but he had an uncomfortable story to tell of our unpreparedness that troubled the House as, on his own confession, it has Mr. Churchill.
H. B.
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