Westminster Commentary
THE County Council elections and the Budget debate having finished, and Hoylake UDC having gravely informed us that the behaviour 6f the Soviet Government is beyond his comprehension—thus adding yet another to the long list of subjects of which this could be said, beginning with the intricacies of foreign policy and ending, I have no doubt, with Pythagoras's Theorem—it is possible to take some sort of stock. We may observe in passing that the Terror of Torrington has• been bustling into the House at all hours of the day and night, behaviour which can only suggest that he is what the fancy would call a sucker for punishment. We may spare a moment to wish Mr. Angus Maude, Antipodes-bound at this very moment, the hap- piest of landings (only two of his late colleagues —the Chancellor and Sir Robert Boothby—saw fit publicly to regret the departure of one who, how- ever eccentric his views may have been at times, was a cut above most of them whichever way you look at it) and to reflect that the Suez Indepen- dents are now metaphorically, as well as literally, headless.
Any impartial observer will agree that the Government won the Budget debate hands (not to say purchase tax) down. Marshal Bigmouth, in his very ownest style, described it as 'a pathetic little mouse of a Budget.' Ho, hum. Once upon a time there was a leading member of the Labour Party, whose name I would not dream of disclosing (oh, all right, it was Mr. James Griffiths) who referred to some economy that the Government had an- nounced its intention of making as 'a few paltry millions.' .I advised him to try that one on the taxpayer, and since then he has, doubtless coinci- dentally, kept a tighter rein on his scorn. But 1 did not christen Mr. Harold Wilson Marshal Big- mouth for the fun of the thing. It is one thing to attack the restrictionist economic policy of the Government as fundamentally misconceived, and to declare roundly that the time has come for another good, healthy dose of inflation; there is no doubt much to be said on both sides of the argument, and my long years at the London School of Economics have effectively prevented me from having any opinion of my own on these matters other than a deep conviction that being a professional economist ought to be a capital offence. But it is a very different thing to attack as 'a pathetic little mouse' a Budget which has reduced taxation by a hundred and eight million jimmy o'goblins a year.
Nor was the Marshal the worst. He did, after all, have the advantage of speaking on Wednes- day; Mr. Alfred Robens and Mr. Douglas Jay, neither of them of precisely Gladstonian elo- quence or Einsteinesque intellect, had to wait until the following Monday before they could get a word in edgeways. It is not merely that by then everything possible had been said about the Budget, for that would still have been true if Mr. Heathcoat Amory had doubled the standard rate of income tax and abolished the National Debt; there is no conceivable 'subject on which the House of Commons, as at present constituted, could go on talking for four days without driving those compelled to listen to the place where, in an expressive phrase of my mother's, they don't play billiards. But at the beginning of the whole ludicrous ragamadoglio the Opposition had an- nounced that they would not divide on the main Budget resolution; instead, if you please (or even if you do not), they would put down a motion of censure on the Government's whole economic policy for subsequent debate. I can only say that if they are not mad, then I am, and I certainly am not; not yet, at any rate.
What else is the debate that extends over the four most wearisome days in the Parliamentary calendar but a discussion of the Government's whole economic policy? When has it ever been anything else? What else was it on this occasion, from Mr. G.'s opening words to Mr. Jay's closing ones? I will give my entire collection of empty benzedrine bottles, with the labels autographed, to anyone who can tell me what they are going to talk about when they debate the promised censure motion in a week or two's time.
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And yet the very day after Mr. Heathcoat Amory presented his Budget the voters of London and the voters of Middlesex and other sundry voters here and there sallied out and smote the Tories hip, thigh and muffin-man. And the next Sunday, to the inexpressible delight of thousands, the 'Student of Politics' in the Sunday Times (it really is high time that lad took his finals) was once again saying that 'Government supporters begin to see light, convincing themselves that the Chancellor has laid the foundations of future re- covery, that the climb-back has at last started.' One of these days it is going to be borne in upon 'Government supporters,' to say nothing of students of politics, that the climb-back, as far as votes are concerned, has not started, and shows precious little sign of being about to do so. We are now heading for a situation in which, the more clearly disastrous the Labour Party plans become, the more certain it is that they are going to win the election, if only by having the edge in the most massive demonstration of differential abstention the country has ever known. It is quite possible, in other words, that the voters have decided not to put the Conservatives back whatever they may do or say between now and polling day. And 'Government supporters,' we are assured on all sides, are seeking a scapegoat for this state of affairs and whetting their knives for the muffin- man's throat. This illustrates, one may say in pass- ing, yet another of the fundamental differences between the Labour and Conservative Parties; the Tories cut each other's weazands when things are going badly, whereas the Labour Party commits hara-kiri only when things are going well.
Be this as it may, if they clobber Lord Hailsham they will deserve everything that is coming to them. Did they really imagine, when he was appointed, that he had only to wave his bell for the voters to fall in and march enthusiastically in the general direction of the Promised Land? Did not Mr. Oliver Poole (you know, him what has the vast City interests, and what Sir Leslie Plummer didn't intend to smear, oh no, not half) point out at the Brighton Conference that no amount of organisation will make unpopular policies popular? The trouble with the Tories is that they are so silly, and so scared, and so used to putting up with deadbeats for so long that they cannot recognise a great man when they see one.
There are three prongs to the trident with which the Tories can stage their last-hope battle. The first is their insistence, which is growing stronger and more convincing, that the Labour Party pro- gramme would ruin the nation before you could say 'Consols are now fourpence.' The stupendous programme of State expenditure to which they are now committed is coming under stronger and stronger fire (in the Budget debate it was particu- larly well deployed by Mr. Simon and Herminius Birch) and it is not impossible that the country may be convinced in time that 'Back to galloping inflation' is not the most inviting of slogans.
The second prong of the Tories' last chance is the fact that Mr. Heathcoat Amory's first Budget need not, despite the widespread assumption to the contrary, be the penultimate one before night folds down. Without harming a hair of the Con- stitution's head, the Government could have a Budget in April, 1960, as well as one in April, 1959. Assume that they know this (though it is not safe to assume that they know anything of the kind), and indeed that Mr. Amory planned this Budget on this very assumption. This year, then, we hold the fort; next year we let ourselves go; and the year after we knock the top off the bottle and let the wine go free. A bob off the income tax six weeks before a General Election? One-and three? One-and-six? And the delicious thing Is that the cry of 'Bribes!' would be unjustified. If the Government's economic policy really does work the Chancellor will really be in a position to ladle it out by the bucketful two years from now. And where will the Opposition be then, but crying vainly that what the country needs is a jolly good dose of belt-tightening?
But this demands nerves of hammered tungsten on the part of the Tories, for if it all goes wrong they will be left with no elbow-room whatever This, of course, is where the third prong comes in, in the shape (hardly prong-shaped, now I come to think of it, but you know what I mean) of Lord Hailsham. He is fond of telling us that the Prime Minister is unflappable; it is even more true of him to the sharks he will yet show how faith. and if the party can be persuaded not to toss himself to the sharks he will yet show how faith, provided it is buttressed by hard work, can move mountains of adversity. They lost Torrington? Let them lose Ealing ! The Lord will provide.
TAPER
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