Spectator's Notebook
HOW freely do ideas flow inside a Govern- ment? Once Ministers are appointed they often seem to become so compartmentalised that it is difficult to believe that many ideas ever get over or through the partitions around them. The question came to my mind the other day during a talk with a Minister who now occupies one of the most important home departments and who, until his appointment, was one of the most deeply interested and active pro-Europeans inside the Conservative Party. He was saying what we all increasingly fear to be true, that the European question is in some danger of going stale and sour, both in the negotiations at Brussels and among the electors here at home, and that some- thing must be done urgently if Britain is ever to enter on satisfactory terms. The issue, he com- plained, has become thoroughly bogged down in the technicalities, and Mr. Heath is in danger of looking like a fonctionnaire, another technocrat, rather than a politician. The time has come to lift the debate back on to a political level, and he suggested that Britain should now ask whether her entry into Europe is accepted en principe by all of the Six. The answer to this fundamental question should be publicly given and diplomatically confirmed, and then the tech- nocrats should get down to technical arguments.
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