Man Bites Scoop Why, I ask rhetorically (don't write to
tell me), does a no-news story suddenly become news?
At Glasgow on Monday a girl student asked me if I would serve under Sir Alec, and I gave the same sort of answer as I gave at Watford Town Hall on May 3, in the Reigate constituency a few weeks earlier and in all, I would guess, on about twenty occasions since last October. And I would also guess that the press were there for at least fifteen of the meetings. At Watford if I remember rightly the question was: 'Should Sir Alec lead at the next election?' and my reply, 'I'm sure he will lead us all to victory,' and when the questioner persisted, 'Yes, but should he?,' I said, 'Of course.' And that was the day before the very first of the local elections. The Reigate questions and answers were the same as the Glasgow ones on the point of serv- ing under Sir Alec. At all these three meetings the press were present. But this time suddenly it was news. And I wonder why. Leaders were written : I was interviewed three times on TV in Glasgow and it came into them all. Why should this one be linked with the local election successes, and the Reigate replica not be linked with the Rox- burgh failure a few days earlier? All the answers of course (as indeed the Daily Tele- graph pointed out) are implicit both in the offer by Sir Alec and the acceptance by myself last October of a place in the Shadow Cabinet.
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