‘Home Has Standing In Cabinet Circles9

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29270, 30 July 1960, Page 13

‘Home Has Standing In Cabinet Circles 9

(Special Correspondent N.ZPA.)

LONDON, July 28. The key to Mr Macmillan’s deliberate choice of Lord Home as Foreign Secretary is to be found not in Lord Home’s popular reputation in Britain and the world but in the name and standing he has won for himself in the comparatively small Cabinet and Commonwealth circle, says the political correspondent of “The Times.”

How do Lord Home’s Cabinet colleagues assess him? To answer this question is to* come to a clearer understanding of Mr Macmillan’s decision. Lord Home, the fourteenth Earl, is both at first sight and on longer acquaintance unmistakably a patrician and it is his patrician Qualities that go far to explain the special position he has come to hold inside CabinetHe is not politically ambitious except to serve and he .is habitually disinclined to make concessions of principle or essence to win good surface opinions. He has the aristocrat’s assurance about where he stands and about what really matters and his Cabinet colleagues say that he is unassertive for this reason. They add that he is gentle—in both senses—but that behind the quiet exterior is a strength of character of which everybody soon becomes aware. Painting a portrait of the man on whose impartial judgment they have come increasingly to rely in the last few years. Lord Home’s Cabinet colleagues say that he combines Lord Salisbury’s ebhfidence in his background and insistence upon principle with Mr Heathcoat Amory’s mild firmness. In Ministerial discussions he has a habit of speaking more quietly

than anybody else but nevertheless constantly brings back the discussion to the heart of the matter

He is not physically robust (he inclines to take -a great interest in his own health) but he is wiry and he still looks a lean cricketer who distinguished himself as a batsman at Eton and in later years.

Like many another Scot, he has no robust sense .of humour either; he has a gleam in his eye when other Ministers are laughing from the pit of the stomach. But If. he does not allow laughter to disturb his even mood he equally does not allow graver emotions to take control. Like Mr Macmillan himself, he keeps his worries in proportion. It has been suggested here and there that Lord Home may be under Mr Macmillan’s thumb as Foreign Secretary. These are the best of reasons to believe that Mr Macmillan has singled him out for the Foreign Office for quite different reasons.

Lord Home's closest colleagues reckon him tough, persistent and sometimes immovable in argument and negotiation and it could be ' argued that Mr Macmillan wants him where he has been placed because he does not give readily under pressure from anybody. - _