The Press SATURDAY, JULY 24,1965. Conservative Leadership Thrown Open

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30811, 24 July 1965, Page 14

The Press SATURDAY, JULY 24,1965. Conservative Leadership Thrown Open

Sir Alec Douglas-Home’s resignation from the leadership of the Conservative Party will dramatically enliven British politics. It might even precipitate a snap General Election should the struggle for the leadership leave the Conservatives bitter and divided, encouraging Mr Wilson to try to improve his minute majority. However, it must be presumed that Sir Alec Douglas-Home took this risk into account when he decided to resign; he would not wittingly throw his successor into a General Election campaign before he had had time to settle into the leadership and to assert control over a party that is certain to be sharply divided over the leadership. Sir Alec Douglas-Home’s resignation is a surprise. He has at no time shown in public any wish to retract his pledges to lead the Conservatives at the next General Election; and quite recently party officials were insisting that the Conservatives were united and satisfied with his leadership. It is perhaps not unfair to suggest that it was a unity of convenience: two-thirds of the Conservative members of the House of Commons may have been only too thankful to be relieved of the responsibility of thinking about a successor. British political observers have insisted that, among many Conservative members of Parliament and party officials, it has been privately but generally accepted that the quicker Sir Alec Douglas-Home handed over to some acceptable successor, the better for the party. This is a harsh, and in many respects unfair, judgment on Sir Alec Douglas-Home, about whom many share a recent judgment of the historian, Sir Arthur Bryant, that “ he was too honourable a man to be in politics at “ all ”. He has given the party unselfish service, and his achievements have been considerable. He has studiously avoided choosing a top colleague, by implication his preferred successor. For the first time in the Conservative Party’s history the choice will be made not by the “ customary processes ” which brought so much opprobrium on the party in October, 1963, but under a system devised by Sir Alec Douglas-Home, primarily a vote of the members of the House of Commons. There are subsequent processes, but they are expected to be mere formalities.

Mr Edward Heath and Mr Reginald Maudling are the favourites for the succession, with the odds said to favour Mr Heath slightly. The “ Economist ” said recently that both are men of a kind the Conservative Party has never had put up to it before. Both, the “ Economist ” said, “ come from lower down in the “middle class than the people who run the Tory “party quite like. . . Neither of them went to the “ right school. Neither of them to this day carries “ the faintest whiff of gentry. Either of them, once “ elected, would be a better leader than Sir Alec and “ a very different leader from Mr Macmillan.” But if both of them were passed over, either for “ the indestructible Mr Lloyd or the socially O.K. “Mr Soames,” the Conservative Party would, the “ Economist ” believes, “ come suicidally close to “ severing altogether its electoral roots in the lower “ middle class and upper working class. That is the “ the Heath-Maudlihg strength everywhere except in “the class-conscious public corporation of the Tory “ party itself ”.

The Heath-Maudling political strength might be defeated by a deadlock between their supporters encouraging or compelling the party to look beyond them for its final choice. Success on the first ballot would require an over-all majority and 15 per cent more of the votes cast than those for any other candidate. If there is no decisive victor on the first ballot, a second ballot allows the emergence of an acceptable compromise candidate. If even that fails, a third ballot is intended to ensure that at least someone gains an over-all majority. Between the ballots intervals are allowed for Informal consultations from which new candidates might emerge. There will be intensive lobbying between now and next Tuesday, when the first ballot will be held, and even sharper lobbying would follow should Mr Maudling and Mr Heath fail on the first ballot. The sequels might be surprising. According to the political correspondent of the “Financial Times”, Mr Ronald Butt, the big uncertainty is what the newer generation of Tory back-benchers will do. To many in the party itself it appears that the decision of these young men will be crucial. “ Many of “ these younger Tories ”, says Mr Butt, “ defying con- “ ventional labels of * left ’ and * right ’, are progressive, “ forward-looking and anxious to break new ground. “ But they are also impatient with the (to them) “ neutered Conservatism of recent years The onus Sir Alec Douglas-Home has put upon his fellow members of Parliament is not merely to select an acceptable man, but to shape the Conservative Party’s future.