Mid-term grumbles
THE Prime Minister fell out with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the electorate fell out with both of them. Behind the scenes the Prime Minister's personal economic adviser, a professor with idiosyncratic views, argued that the Treasury has got it wrong again. Humili- ated in mid-term elections, the Prime Minister grumbled: 'I fear the truth is that after ten years of unparalleled prosperity, the people are bored. We have made it possible for people to justify their ex- asperation at minor difficulties by voting against the Government.' This was, of course, Harold Macmillan, quoted in the new volume of Alistair Home's biography, a storehouse of stories. Macmillan's back- stage advice came from Roy Harrod, who told him that inflation helped the world go round and favoured, so Macmillan noted, `increasing enormously the salaries of dons and professors, whose wages do not enter into costs, since they produce nothing'.
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