SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
How seriously should we take the personal popularity ratings of the party leaders in the opinion polls? I've been pondering the question ever since the latest Dail• Tele- graph Gallup Poll appeared, showing Mr Heath suddenly zooming ahead to a clear ten points lead over Mr Wilson. 'Suddenly' is the word, because apparently Mr Heath's personal pop rating went up by eleven per- centage points in a single month. One inter- pretation, advanced by Lord Lambton, was that 'a new Mr Heath' had emerged and was being thankfully acclaimed by the electorate. Well—maybe. After one or two good performances in the House, it might look like that from Westminster. But else- where, there hadn't been much sign of this remarkable change until the Gallup figures came along. Another explanation might be that the poll simply indicates, indirectly, a further collapse in the Government's popu- larity. In this case, though, it's rather odd that the Government's own rating showed no significant change; the drop from 24 per cent to 22 per cent of those who 'approve' of the Government's record is too small to mean anything. Evidently the new Mr Heath, if he exists, hasn't brought about any noteworthy shifts in the party strengths. It is a faintly mysterious situation.
But there is an even more mysterious aspect of these ratings. If you look at a graph of the two party leaders' popularity according to Gallup over the past few years, you see that, broadly, the two men rise and fall together. Naturally, when one party gains in strength the other pariy falls: but when Wilson's stock goes up, the odds are Heath's will, too: when Wilson sinks, so usually does Heath. Last year. for example, both men were losing popularity at first; then they both made recoveries; then, still in tandem, they both slipped down again in the closing months. This year, after a little seesawing, they both declined until April and both rose again in June. Now Heath has moved ahead and Wilson has fallen back; but can it last? Are they per- haps fettered ineluctably together, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, or the Walrus and the Carpenter, or other inseparable couples of fact and fiction? Very galling for each of them, if true: I can't think which would be the more put out by the thought.
Chelsea's saint
My taste for the odd propinquities of his- tory was well satisfied, on the day the American astronauts were unveiling some of the moon's secrets, by half an hour spent in Chelsea, where the Speaker of the House of Commons was unveiling a new statue of Sir Thomas More. Needless to say, the traffic along Morc's once tranquil riverside, and the din of aeroplanes over- head, were so loud that one could scarcely hear all the sage words that fell from Mr Speaker, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Heenan, and other dignitaries. Yet even so it was pleasant to see that marvellous man, whose civilised serenity and good spirits never failed him even on the scaffold, being honoured at last on his own ground.
What I thought pleasing also was the accident that the moon was being explored at the very hour when Thomas More was being honoured; for space exploration is truly a fruit, if a strange one, of the specula- tive minds of the Renaissance humanists. One can imagine More contemplating the potentialities. And he was discovering brave new lunar worlds in his imagination long before twentieth century technology enabled men to inspect the arid, airless desert of the real moon. His Utopia. after all, is de- scribed as an island shaped like a new moon, with its own calm 'sea of tranquillity' set within the sheltering horns. I don't know how many people nowadays read for pleasure the book which added that indispensable word 'Utopia' to the language, but it is interesting to trace there the evolution of some modern social ideas among the idealistic communism More con- ceived.
Utopia. for example, had its national health service, every Utopian city had its protected green belt, government was by representative democracy, and so forth; there was even a prevision of Redcliffe- Maud in the division of the land into fifty- four unitary authorities, with the popula- tions carefully equalised. But More was much besides being a Utopian writer and Chelsea has done well to commemorate him.
Out of season
The pressure for a pay increase for MPS seems to be growing. I hope that those poli- ticians who care about the esteem in which public men are held will think carefully before joining in. Most people would prob- ably approve of steps to provide Mrs with better working conditions—including free trunk calls, free po,iage, and similar assist- ance—hut any action to put more money directly into sirs' pockets just now would be—well, shall we say, deplorably tactless.
It's just been disclosed that the cost of living has gone up by nearly one-quarter since October 1964; and while a great many incomes have swollen to keep pace with this colossal depreciation of money, a great many others haven't. For an important part of the population, in fact, Mr Wilson's utopia, unlike Sir Thomas More's, has proved to be a place where they grow poorer, shabbier, and more squeezed and pinched each year. And such people, I fear. would think it outrageous if the House of Commons helped itself to more public money just when the pound in their own pockets was in galloping decline. They would be right, too. One clear-headed back- bencher remarked to me this week, 'We'd be absolutely crazy to put our pay up at the moment. We're unpopular enough already.'
An improvement in working facilities would, of course. most probably amount to a disguised increase in pay and would cer- tainly require public expenditure. But that would not stick in the public gullet in the way that an overt rise in salary would.
Parliamentary report
MR E. S. BISHOP . . . On another page in the magazine there is a fully erected black male sex organ, about nine inches in length, and along its length arc four sketches of women in various states of undress ... No one can say that these particular illustrations are in any way a part of any literary or artistic effort. They are, indeed, quite out of place . . . (Hansard, Col. 1182, 18 July, 1969.)
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