Mr Macmillan’s Cabinet Changes

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29269, 29 July 1960, Page 12

Mr Macmillan’s Cabinet Changes

The first thought about Mr Macmillan’s Cabinet changes is to regret their immediate cause. Thrust into office as Chancellor of the Exchequer on the resignation in 1957 of Mr Thorneycroft on a question of economic principle, Mr Heathcoat Amory has presented three Budgets for the Conservative Government and is accounted a successful Chancellor. The “ Guardian ” said recently that he had displayed “ a remarkably sure “ touch in managing the econ“omy" and “The Times" said his tenure of office had been “in the main successful and often distinguished ”, Mr Amory leaves his successor some difficult tasks and hard decisions; but he leaves him also a national economy in good shape and more nearly under control than at any time since the war. Mr Selwyn Lloyd will replace Mr Amory; and the chief thing to be said for this appointment is that Mr Lloyd’s long experience in external relations could help him in what may be the most important single question the new Chancellor will have to handle Britain’s economic policy towards Europe. Unfortunately Mr Lloyd is not noted for any burning faith in Britain’s destiny as a “ Euro“pean” nation. He has been accused of blowing hot or cold according to the audience he happens to be addressing.

As has been freely prophesied, Mr Lloyd’s successor at the Foreign Office will be Lord Home. When this appointment was first suggested there, was much head-shaking in Britain, partly because Lord Home has no obvious claims to an

appointment that calls for great knowledge of foreign affairs, but even more because he sits in the House of Lords. Mr Macmillan has sought to mollify the Commons, discontented as they may be over losing direct contact with the holder of a key portfolio, by appointing Mr Heath, formerly Minister of Labour and before that the party’s chief whip/ specially to answer for the Foreign Office in the Commons. Many will wonder what moved Mr Macmillan to make an appointment that demanded such an expedient.

Lord Home is well known to Commonwealth statesmen after five years in the Commonwealth Relations Office, and his replacement by a commoner means

that, for the first time since Mr Attlee’s second Government went out of power in 1951, the chief representative of the Commonwealth Relations Office will be in the House of Commons. Mr Duncan Sandys has been an energetic Minister in “ working ” departments and has discharged successfully such unpopular and controversial

assignments as the denationalisation of steel, the drastic defence re-organisation and arranging aircraft company mergers. He goes to a Ministry which calls for somewhat different qualities. Mr Thorneycroft’s return to the Cabinet as Minister of Aviation demonstrates again that in Britain resignation from high office because of a difference of opinion with one’s colleagues does not necessarily mean the end of a political career. It may, indeed, be a stepping-stone to higher things.