Westminster Corridors
It is my custom to take opportunities of inquiring from time to time what success my Corridors meet with in the Town. There is no false modesty therefore when I tell you that I am informed of many fair fellows as well as gay and well received persons of the opposite sex who have taken kindly to my thoughts about the improbable timing of General Elections.
Last February, my readers will recall, I took the view that a confused and hapless electorate had said "a plague on both your parties" and shown by their votes that they wanted some form of coalition. Now my friend, Captain. Freepen, protests that the electorate is incapable of so subtle or organised thought. It does not know what it wants, he declares, and even if it did would not be able to divine how to go about getting it.
Fie on it, Freepen. There is in your sentiments a certain arrogance of thought-which ill becomes a scholar of Oxenford. This arrogance is altogether too much in eyidence at the Club these days. Take Mr Mellish, the Patronage Secretary. (Well, to be fair, I can hardly accuse him of intellectual arrogance, for his brow is low even by Ruffian standards.) However, this Mr Mellish, when the Government was defeated in the Lobbies the other night, ranted and raved about how the Nation would pay back "the silly Whigs and the moronic Nationalists" for voting with the Tories. Let it not be forgotten at this point that Mr Mellish protests that he is the archdefender of freedom of conscience and, the right to vote as conscience will dictate.
Perhaps Mr Mellish has overlooked the fact that on February 28 very nearly seven million citizens voted for the MPs who engineered the . recent defeats of the Government at the Club. Presumably Mr Mellish would have these silly and moronic voters disenfranchised. For we all know that Mellish's First Law of Freedom of Conscience implies that all consciences other than fully paid up (preferably Roman Catholic) Ruffian consciences are not consciences at all.
But I am being too harsh on the Patronage Secretary. It is hardly surprising that he has been taken queer. Since the Prime Minister's satellites abandoned him, the chief burden of humouring Mr Wilson has fallen on the shoulders of Mr Mellish. This is why he was recently officially brought into the Cabinet and given an increased salary.
Part of his new duties involve supporting (literally) the Prime Minister at the Dispatch Box. Poor Mr Wilson gets tired very easily these days — but then can you blame him with all the travelling he has to do? Before the now famous defeat at the Club on the CIO million refund clause, the Ruffian Leader had been to Germany to watch a football match ("I know more about soccer than I do about politics," he said; and "Amen" say I), from whence he moved to Brighton where he starred in a speech entitled "Oh what a lovely phoney war," before returning to the Club for the vote.
Phew, I hear you cry. No wonder he had to be carried into the division lobby by the faithful Mr Mellish and put gently to bed immediately thereafter. Those unkind souls who observed that Mr Wilson was not on the Front Bench when the result of the vote was announced should bear in mind the wear and tear on a jet-set, soccer-loving Prime Minister.
In fact, I can now tell my readers, Mr Wilson was not in the Chamber at the Club after the vote because he did not wish to hear the result or the jeers of the vulgarians on the Tory and Whig benches. He retired instead to something called an easy chair where he was tended by Mr Joe "SS" Haines, his press secretary.
When, finally, Mr Mellish tiptoed in with the voting figures, Mr Wilson said: "Will no one rid me of this turbulent Heath?" "I will, Sir," answered Mr Secretary Benn waving his Dr Who Instant Immobiliser Ray Gun. Mr Wilson told him to go away and play and asked out loud if he should go visit the Queen. "Here I am," replied the Duchess of Faulkender, momentarily forgetting herself.
'Tom Puzzle
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