A Spectator's Notebook
THE SILLY SEASON, I suppose, will now be with us until the election, but we are unlikely to be given a worse example of political inanity than the row over the survey 'of public opinion in marginal seats about nationalisation. In the buffoonery contest Mr. Morgan Phillips and Mr. Colin Hurry, who commissioned the survey, have been well matched. The amateurish- ness and tendentious character of the questions that have been asked have ensured that the sur- vey is quite useless as a guide to public opinion, While Mr. Phillips's public pride at having forced into the open a survey that has in fact been in the open for three months shows an equal contempt for the intelligence of the electorate. More important than these antics is Mr. Phillips's unconcealed joy at the opportunity of being rude to businessmen. Twice he has erroneously and foolishly called the survey 'a furtive campaign of frightened businessmen,' forgetting that since Industry and Society it is no longer Labour policy to nationalise big business and big businessmen, but to buy shares in their businesses and to co- operate with them. If Mr. Hurry's survey has shown how blurred is the line between politics and business, the proposals in Industry and Society and Mr. Morgan Phillips's atavistic behaviour last week do not suggest that it will be any clearer under a Labour Government.
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