Belling the Cat
MR. G A1TSK ELL reels on. His capacity for saying and doing the right thing, to the wrong people, at the wrong time, is so great as to be positively uncanny. It is perfectly true, as he said at Leeds, that Mr. Michael. Foot and Tribune would have attacked him, had he stayed in London for the defence debate, for letting down the comrades gathered in Haifa. But such an attack need not have been taken seriously; the present one must. Not because it comes from Mr. Foot, that engagingly ineffective cross between an Adullarnite and a Luddite, but despite this. If it were only Tribune, Mr. Gaitskell could breathe as relievedly as a Conservative Cabinet -Minister attacked by Lord Beaverbrook; but the muttering at Mr. Gaitskell's latest blunder has spread to, not from, the Left. What is more serious, the mice came out to play with a Ven- geance before the cat got back; it does not much matter if Mr. Shinwell and Mr. Gaitskell speak with two voices on defence, but when Mr. Gaitskell, Mr. Brown, Mr. Harold Wilson and Mr. Woodrow Wyatt speak simultaneously with four it is time to be alarmed.
What is more, it is time to do something about it. Mr. Gaitskell's greatest strength in the Labour of anybody to put in his place, the mere an' of his opponents (or even his supporters) to think nouncement of whose name does not cause laughter. Mr. Robens'.' Sir Frank Soskice? • Wilson, Mr. Strachey, Mr. Foot? Mr. Cousins' And the gulf between Mr. Gaitskell and anY possible successor is not so wide merely becaust- the others are so obviously inferior to him, but because he is so obviously superior to them. M.r: Gaitskell really is a man of outstanding abIln) and intellect and even, though this is affected h) his woefully bad tactical sense, of leadership. The !' last quality, however, usually remains in abeyance until, provoked beyond endurance, he suddeni) lashes out and unhorses, say, Mr. Crossman. 13ti.t it is time for Mr. Gaitskell to start asserting 11'5 leadership rather less intermittently. There is reason why his big speeches in the country Shout be made after the debate in the House to v■inell they refer; if his Leeds speech had been made before he went to Haifa, it would have saved II° a great deal of trouble. Half the time, the 001Y reason for the Labour Party's tendency to gallq, off in all directions at once 'is that it doesil,; know in which direction its leader is going Oil, he rings up from his destination to ask plaintivelY, where everybody else has got to. If he annotince. firmly and unambiguously where he and his party stood on each major issue as soon as !t arose, and then cracked down mercilessly 00 hi.' opponents as soon as they arose, he would find Ins job a good deal easier.
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