No Parliamentary vote?
Senior shadow Cabinet ministers, some of whom are now merely emotionally attached to the Market because of political and personal friendships and have lost their earlier intellectual convictions in its favour, are saying pretty freely that they do not believe the European issue will ever come to a Parliamentary decision. The balance of Parliamentary opinion they believe to be moving against the Market: and it is now generally taken for granted in the highest reaches of the Labour party that Harold Wilson will come out against. Likewise. it is assumed that Roy Jenkins will he cast in the heroic but unrewarding role of the Last of the Marketeers. • Ted Heath, it is argued, will certainly not Permit a vote to be taken if there is any risk of a majority of about forty or less in favour. He will not under any circumstances rely on the votes of Labour pro-Marketeers. I hope this line 'of reasoning proves correct. And if so. then the sooner the crunch comes, the better. The country and • the Conservative Party will experience a huge sense of tieliverance the moment the Prime Minister rises to say, 'It is the considered view of the Government that on the terms we have been able to negotiate, we are unable to recom- mend to Parliament and to the country that we should persist with our application'. Geoffrey Rippon's Brussels negotiations— doubtless ably enough conducted—are one set of brakes holding the country back, one set of causes of what it is fashionable to call the British disease.
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