POLITICAL COMMENTARY
The Off-key Election
By _ALAN WATKINS
SOME years ago Mr. Wilson—Mr. Angus Wilson, that is—wrote a short story wherein one of the characters looks into a mirror in which he is supposed to see the future. He sees nothing, a blank; whereupon he bursts into tears. The present election is a bit like this. The -meetings are crowded, the television broadcasts flow on and on, the press conferences are well-attended, the canvass returns of both parties are predictably excellent; and yet in the end the entire election seems devoid of meaning and unfit for serious consideration. Why is this?
On the face of it, the picture of what is happening is fairly easy to piece together. Mr. Harold Wilson, as Prime Minister, is under- playing the whole affair, regarding it as a tedious Interruption of the awesome process of govern- ment. Mr. Edward Heath, on the other hand, is snaking as much as he possibly can of such Issues as present themselves—the trade union Iriali and Mr. Anthony Crosland's circular to the local authorities and whether sterling should or should not be mentioned during the campaign. But however hard Mr. Heath tries, and he is currently trying very hard indeed, it does not man to make any difference. From the Tory point of view, the opinion polls are in a condition et distressing unanimity. They indicate a Labour landslide on March 31.
Is it this Calvinistic inevitability which is the cause of the aura of depression that hangs over political observers and politicians, Labour and Conservative alike; that hangs also, one suspects, over the voters? Or is it something more subtle— that after the basic situation has been delineated, there is nothing more to be said? Or is it, again, that after the election we may confidently look forward to a year of hardship and self-sacrifice under the inspiring economic leadership of Mr. James Callaghan? We shall return to these questions later. For the moment, however, let us have a quick look at what has actually been happening.
First, Mr. Wilson. It has been pointed out before—and it is worth repeating—that a sharp distinction must be drawn between the estimate of Mr. Wilson current in Westminster, Whitehall and Fleet Street, and the estimate of him in the country as a whole. In the country Mr. Wilson is seen not only as a national leader but as some- thing of a folk-hero. Not that being a folk-hero is necessarily an admirable state to be in. Horatio Bottomley and Mr. John Profumo and Lord Beeching were in their different ways folk-heroes also; and the first two, at least, came to sticky cods. Still, in the present situation the slightly grudging, slightly humorous attitude towards Mr. Wilson (he's clever all right,' helsa card,' 'he knows what he's doing') cannot be other than an enormous advantage to the Government.
One could see this attitude displayed clearly enough at York on Sunday evening. Well before Mr. Wilson entered the normally disused cinema
in which the meeting was to be held, silent but admiring crowds lined the pavements.4When he emerged an hour and a half later, the crowds were there again. And in the meantime Mr. Wilson had delivered a comparatively indifferent 'Fetch which nevertheless evoked loud applause.
As it happened, the York speech, though it con- tamed nothing of note, marked a break in the Prime Minister's style of speaking in this cam- paign. Previously, at Glasgow, Edinburgh, New- castle and Middlesbrough, Mr. Wilson had played the part of the world statesman. At York, how- ever, he was back as the entertainer, the Archie Rice of the political scene. It was almost like the old times of 1964; almost, but not quite. A cer-: tain sparkle, a certain zest, seemed to have gone: The old comic was going through the old routines.
Perhaps this was understandable. In the last election Mr. Wilson wrote his speeches with extreme cam. When he prepares his material, he is a superlatively funny speaker. When he does not prepare, he can be less amusing. He tends to ramble, to be over-long in telling his stories: unlike, say, Aneurin Bevan, he is not a naturally impromptu speaker. And in this election Mr. Wilson is coming to rely more and more on the inspiration of the moment. Moreover, the York speech was the culmination of a week in which Mr. Wilson looked and felt exceptionally tired. Indeed he told a colleague that he had never been so tired in his whole life (though he hastily added , that, having caught up with his sleep, he was now perfectly all right, thank you very much).
It would be a mistake, however, to attribute Mr. Wilson's slightly disappointing performance so far wholly to physical tiredness or to lack of. preparation of his speeches—or even to his desire to keep the campaign ticking over quietly. As I suggested in a previous column, Mr. Wilson, unlike most of his colleagues, does not really want this election at all; he is a reluctant campaigner; and this emerged very clearly in his party political broadcast on television last Saturday.
There is another possibility, from a Labour viewpoint more threatening in the long term. Mr. - Wilson, as we have all been able to observe in the past week or so, carefully refrains from offering beguiling promises for the future, except those of a general and innocuous kind. He offers instead 'firm government' and other variations on this theme. The worldly explanation for this is that Mr. Wilson considers it would be bad politics to offer promises to the electorate and, simultaneously, ammunition to the Conser- vatives. I do not discount this explanation. It is probably the right one. And yet, is there not another possibility? Is it not possible that Mr. Wilson has run out of ideas, rather as Lord Attlee did in 1950-51?
In a sense, however, the depressing suspicion about this election is that even if it were proved to the satisfaction of the entire country that Mr. Wilson had run out of ideas, morals, clean shirts and socks, and much else besides, he would still win convincingly; and that whatever poor Mr. Heath did he would still lose. Looking back over the past week, it is difficult to say that Mr. Heath has made any real mistake. True, it is possible to level the pedantic, somewhat unrealistic criticism that he has opened his campaign with too loud a bang. Again, he has produced his famous ratio 9 :5 :I rather too frequently for comfort. (To most people, ratios are a branch of higher mathematics. And in any case, what is wrong with a ratio of 9 for wage increases to 5 for prices? In combination with a low rate of unemployment, this is the stuff of which election victories are made, whatever the economic con- sequences may be later.)
But on the whole Mr. Heath has not made any major mistake. He has taken all his chances. (Some ministers complain that the BBC has been over- helpful to Mr. Heath in consistently headlining the union court case.) Yet at the same time he shows no sign of being able to make a dent in the Prime Minister's reputation in the country. To those few surviving subscribers to the nine- teenth century theory of representative govern- ment, the spectacle has been a gloomy one. But I do not believe that the seeming inevitability of the result is the main cause of the depression in the air. Nor do I believe the cause is to be found in the feeling that the country is not being told 'the truth' as adumbrated in The Times's tedious and embarrassingly Buchmanite leading article. There is certainly a feeling that harsh measures are due later this year, and this contributes to the prevailing atmosphere of gloom : but that is another matter entirely.
Instead the real cause may well lie in a feeling of uncertainty and insecurity about the future not only of a new Wilson government but also of the entire political system. Mr. Wilson has changed Labour from a well-meaning party which was suspicious of power to a party which actively relishes power. Power . . . and what else? Do the voters know, do the MPs, does Mr. Wilson? Matters progressed smoothly enough in the last Parliament, mainly owing to Labour's small majority. Mr. Wilson was able to accomplish most of the changes he desired. With a majority of 70 or (if we are to believe the polls) 170, the story may be different. Oddly enough, or perhaps not so oddly, the strongest criticisms of Mr. Wilson come not from ministers or voters or even civil servants but from the parliamentary Labour party. The danger, in short, is not one of too much socialism but of too little, if any at all; of a new Whig period, with sleeping dogs being allowed to lie; of Mr. Harold Wilson appearing in yet another famous historical role, this time that of Sir _ Robert Walpole.
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