Spectator's Notebook
T WILL neither shout at the man at the wheel I nor spit on the deck, said Baldwin when he gave up the Premiership. Lord Avon would have done well to recall Baldwin's promise, do like- wise, and spare the young Conservatives at Leamington on Saturday his ill-considered obser- vations both on the Prime Minister's reshuffle and on the European negotiations. Times have changed. What looked like a bombshell in the Sunday papers has dwindled to its true penny- cracker dimensions. Lord Avon is a relic of the old guard. So, I regretfully begin to think, is Mr. Gaitskell. Whom Suez put asunder, Europe brings together. Mr. Gaitskell's performance in Brussels would have been interchangeable with Lord Avon's at Leamington. It's not what he said, M. Spaak has been telling everyone, it's the way that he said it; and the hard-pressed Mr. Heath must have found even less love in his heart for Mr. Gaitskell than Mr. Macmillan for his predecessor. But all this is mere froth on the surface of. the stream. Lord Avon's intervention was no more than a ghostly, remote moaning in the wind of the world; and Mr. Gaitskell's noises are no more impressive.
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