The Election That Wasn't

...Artificially stimulating the boom until election time, the Tories applied a series of stopgo deflationary measures that stunted Britain's growth rate and led to chronic unemployment...

...He led a brave fight, a better one than anyone could have imagined, yet so long as he holds on to the leadership the party is likely to be torn by dissension...

...Thus, a cynical and largely apathetic British electorate voted against rather than for: against Tory incompetence, against rising prices, against chronic unemployment in the west and the north, against Labor wooliness and unpredictability, and even against the orneriness of a world that will not let Britain alone...

...The unpleasant, and probably painful, economic decisions that are already being made will be tagged on Labor's back—even though the Tories are responsible for the present inflation and payments deficits...

...has demanded that London join NATO's nuclear navy as a symbol of its trans-Atlantic loyalties...

...For the past year the antiGaullist forces in the EEC—led by the Dutch, the Italians, and the Erhard-Schroeder group in Germany—stalled on moves leading to political integration until after the British election...

...Urgent domestic and foreign problems have been piling up over the past year and cannot be delayed any longer...

...Indeed, if Khrushchev (who once said he would vote for the Tories if he were British) had cooperated by going into oblivion 24 hours sooner, enough voters would probably have stuck with the government in power during the moment of international crisis to return Sir Alec to the hearth he came to love at 10 Downing Street...

...Without at least the tacit support of the Liberals—who to everyone's embarrassment now hold the balance of power in the new Parliament—Labor will find it virtually impossible to stave off continual harassing votes of confidence...

...In addition to a showdown in Europe, the new Labor government has inherited a crise de confiance with Washington over the Multilateral Force (MLF), the State Department's plan for a fleet of missile-carrying cargo ships...

...a new election had to be called in 1951 which swept the hapless Clement Atlee government out of office...

...Until Labor has a mandate a bit larger than four votes, it will have to restrain itself from pursuing some of its most cherished dogmas, including the renationalization of steel, the nationalization of road transport, and the abandonment of the Bomb—all of which the Liberals have vetoed and theTories will fight to the last vote of confidence...

...If Labor succumbs to its chronic temptation to crawl into its shell rather than get involved with those nasty doings on the Continent, it might still build a more equitable society at home while surrendering the influence it could have over the future of Europe at a time when all the old power blocs are breaking up...

...Wilson has now replaced the 14th Earl-of Home, the' remarkable thing about the British elections is not that Labor is back in power, but that the Conservatives—after all their scandals, blunders and inadequacies —very nearly managed to hold on to it...

...For all his political courage, Sir Alec is not the man who can revitalize the Conservatives nor recapture Downing Street from the Socialists...

...If the Tories are to have a future, it lies with younger men like Iain MacLeod and Enoch Powell—two powerful Cabinet ministers who refused to serve under Sir Alec after the bitter leadership fight, but who now are on the Tory front bench —and Edward Heath, who valiantly carried on the ill-fated Common Market negotiations at Brussels...

...In an election where the party in power muddled its way through a series of crises with no more inspiring guidepost than the pious hope that things would be better, while the Opposition spoke of modernization and challenge while waving the tattered flag of 19th century economic dogma and emotional "little Englandism," the Liberal vote can only be explained as a protest vote...

...Under the inspiring, but logically mystifying banner of "no European union without Britain," they seemed to assume that the British were yearning to scuttle Commons in favor of a joint European parliament in Strasbourg...

...If Labor fulfills its pledge by taking Britain out of the nuclear club, it will thereby make France the dominant military power in Europe, and relinquish the ability to protect the faithful Commonwealth nations of India and Malaya just at the time that China has become a nuclear power...

...Never particularly interested in foreign affairs, Wilson would like to concentrate his energies on urgently needed reforms at home...

...he has still to show that his heart is not in the 19th...

...The general mood of the election was perfectly captured in a poignant letter to the London Times by a man who wrote: "I wish there was some way of voting against all candidates of all parties...

...But because electoral laws are rigged against third parties, they won only nine seats in Commons— or one-seventieth of the House...

...He could have remained a kingmaker, but he decided to become King...

...While Barry Goldwater prides himself on having offered American voters a choice, the two British parties desperately tried to escape the common ground...

...Ronald Steel, author of The End of Alliance, is The New Leader's, roving European correspondent...

...While this was dubious even under the Tories—despite their willingness to put Europe over the Commonwealth—it is all but unthinkable under the Socialists...

...This well-timed moment of defeat could give the younger and more liberal Tories a chance to shake up the party, turn out the Colonel Blimps, and cast off the Party's grouse-hunting "old boy" image...

...Despite pained protests from both the outgoing Tories and the incoming Laborites, the U.S...

...Having never bothered to conceal their contempt for the Leftish but non-Socialist Liberals, the Laborites may now be forced to faire bonne mine and sit down to tea with Lady Violette BonhamCarter...

...Both parties have tried to outbluff Washington in the belief that the U.S...

...It took Labor 13 years to live down the onus of austerity associated with the Atlee government...

...Although the 14th Mr...

...That would be one way of building Jerusalem, but it is not a course which Britain's friends can be expected to look upon with much enthusiasm...

...In fact, had one of the younger men taken over from Macmillan, the Tories could have posed as the inheritors of the New Frontier the British are so desperately seeking, and might well have swung over enough independent votes to be in power today...

...Already visions of 1950 come to mind, when Labor's paper-thin margin collapsed under Tory onslaught...

...The Tories did little to resolve those stresses, or even to show much awareness that they existed...

...In a campaign whose major issue seemed to be whether Labor had as many adulterers on the front bench as did the Tories, it is not surprising that the voters apparently saw little difference between the rascals who were in and the rascals who were out...

...The violently anti-European sentiments voiced by Hugh Gaitskell at the 1962 Brighton conference of the Labor party have never been repudiated by his successor...

...The resurgence of the Tories from last year's nadir, when the Profumo affair and the spectacle of the back-stabbing fight for leadership on Macmillan's retirement brought the party to a new low of public contempt, is one of the great success stories of British politics...

...The Tories muffed their chance and Harold Wilson is in the hot seat...

...Their hesitant bid to enter the Common Market was an attempt to meet sideways the problem of economic stagnation, caused by subsidized inefficient industries and overpowerful trade unions...

...With a vitality and an iconoclasm that has become depressingly rare in British politics, the Liberals dramatized the failure of either of the two parties to capture public enthusiasm...

...Harold Wilson has shown that his slide rule is firmly rooted in the 20th century...

...The fact that it was not even larger is more of a testament to the British voter's pragmatic loyalty to the two-party system than to his contentment with the choices he was given...

...While Labor is back in power after 13 years in the wilderness, it can hardly call its four-seat margin in Commons very much of a victory—let alone a "mandate," as Harold Wilson has claimed...

...The reason behind the Liberal revival is not so much that the voters liked Jo Grimond more— however engaging and free of cant he may be—but that they apparently liked Harold Wilson and Sir Alec even less...

...PROBLEMS OF THE LABOR GOVERNMENT The Election That Wasn't By Ronald Steel London After having endured the longest and surely the most irrelevant election campaign in memory, the British now find themselves faced with the dreary prospect of doing it all over again...

...a Socialist recession in 1965 could mean another decade of Loyal Opposition...

...would never sign a bilateral nuclear deal with Germany —and that if Britain stays out, the plan will wither away...

...But now that the European door is shut, at least for the time being, it will have to face this problem head-on...

...Capturing three million votes, the Liberals doubled their share over the last General Election in 1959 and racked up one-ninth of the total vote...

...This is a poignant dilemma for Wilson, who has virtually pledged himself to scuttle the British Bomb and to "renegotiate" (whatever that means) the Nassau Pact under which Britain promised to buy Polaris missiles from the U.S...

...Now his reign is over and it would not be surprising if his colleagues decided he could serve the party better behind the front lines...

...The European federalists cannot wait any longer for Britain lest the whole impetus for political union collapse under the assault of revived French and German nationalism...

...Vehemently opposed to any union with Europe, economic or otherwise, the Socialists face an economic dilemma that will pit them against their own trade unions if they apply wage restraints to curb inflation, or an austerity program, perhaps coupled with devaluation of the pound, that would be the kiss of death with the voters...

...Harold Wilson has said he plans to model himself after Lord Atlee, though one assumes he does not wish to retire to private life after the next elections, which he cannot hope to delay more than a year, or two at the most...

...The new Prime Minister hardly needs his ever-present slide rule to discover that his "mandate" could vanish if half a dozen of his MPs should come down with the flu...

...Their narrow defeat—more of a tap on the hand than a repudiation —could be a blessing in disguise if they are willing to use it intelligently...

...Decisions not made tend to make themselves...

...Yet President Johnson seems determined to push on with MLF anyway, even at the price of creating a GermanAmerican nuclear force...

...Even though he has no taste for the Common Market, Wilson faces a political dénouement with Britain's Continental allies over the question of European political union...

...Despite the scorn both Laborites and Tories heaped on Jo Grimond's faithful band, the Liberals seized two more seats, and even managed to hold on to suburban Orpington, where they won a stunning upset in last year's by-election...

...If this happens, Labor will be faced with three equally unpleasant alternatives: joining the potentially dangerous MLF in order to balance Germany, staying out of the MLF but keeping the Bomb, or giving up both the Bomb and the MLF in the desperate hope that moral influence will hold more weight than military power...

...It is not much of a choice, and it would not be surprising if Labor ended up by swallowing its scruples and keeping the Bomb as the lesser of various unthinkable evils...

...It was an election marked by the apathy of young people who have come of voting age since the last General Election and who chose not to vote in this one, the cynicism of those who "never had it so good" and cared only to hold on to it, and most disturbingly of all, the ugly traces of racism which swept Labor Foreign Minister Patrick Gordon Walker out of his Commons seat at Smethwick in favor of a young Tory who offered no qualification for office other than opposition to "the blacks.' Beneath the placid surface of British politics lie the open sores of a society torn by stresses it has only begun to admit...

...With the liberal wing in power, the Tories could capture the public image of youthfulness and stand a good chance of winning the general election Harold Wilson will almost certainly have to call...

...The other surprise of the election, whose results were more interesting than a staggeringly tedious campaign gave any right to hope, was the resurrection of the Liberals from the grave to which both parties tried to consign them...

...But the world is not likely to wait while Britain decides whether to play a major role in the new balance of forces that is emerging, or whether it prefers to be a more populous Sweden...

...Free competition with Europe could have forced Britain to make unpopular but essential economic reforms...

...By tenaciously refusing to hold an election last spring against the advice of his counselors, by sustaining the economic boom at the price of a balance of payments crisis, by sheer guts and ingenuous simplicity, Sir Alec Douglas-Home astounded everyone and led the Tories from disgrace to the very brink of victory...

...By a handsome irony, those nine lonely seats in an evenly-split Commons could make all the difference between action and paralysis for Labor...

...The result could well be the resurgence of Gaullist influence and the gradual diminishment of Britain's importance in the affairs of Europe...

...At home Britain's gold reserves are being drained, threatening her price competitiveness on world markets...

...And the British appear to have done precisely that in the biggest negative election of modern times, which nobody really won and which both major parties can consider a defeat...

...Unless Wilson does an about-face and pushes a kicking and screaming Labor party into a political union with the Continent, Europe will have no choice but to go ahead without Britain...

...As far as the MLF is concerned, Laborites, like the Tories before them, have never concealed their opinion that it is a military monstrosity which is likely to make Germany an independent nuclear power...