Spectator's Notebook
THAT admirable and infuriating paper the Daily Express knows very well that I neither . write nor direct the political column of the Spectator, but when it suits its grave purposes it will so pretend. I suppose because it knows it teases.
All the same, it was certainly true tht the Tory party was waiting anxiously for Mr. Heath's speech to the traditional mass rally on Saturday. It twined out to be the best speech he has ever . made, and the four-minute-plus ovation owed no more than a few seconds of its length either to relief or to the mystique which the Conserva- tive party has always accorded to its leader. The speech was relaxed and admirably witty, at least to Tory ears—poor Mr. (Fred, of course) Willey will for ever now be known as the 'Minister landed without any Natural Resources.'
But the true significance of the speech was the one pointed out by Harry Boyne, the Daily Telegraph's political correspondent—that the speech owed nothing to the earlier repeated tributes to Sir Alec, Mr. Maudling and Mr. Heath's other principal lieutenants. The press wrote of the speech as a personal triumph. Both words were right.
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