Word: callaghans
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Employment Secretary Michael Foot is usually seen in public wearing the kind of clothes that produce sighs of despair along Savile Row. Last week, however, he had taken to wearing jackets and trousers that actually matched. Foreign Secretary James Callaghan, who is normally neat but not resplendent, took his front-bench seat in the House of Commons in an impeccable double-breasted suit and rich gray silk tie suitable for an audience with the Queen. There was good reason for the sartorial preening: after the second ballot of Labor Party members was counted, Callaghan and Foot were the remaining contenders...
...winner was to have been decided by a third ballot scheduled for Monday this week. "Big Jim" Callaghan was the odds-on choice to take it; he won 141 votes on the second ballot, to Foot's 133. Thereafter, the two vied for the 38 votes that went to Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey, who as low man in that vote automatically dropped out of the race; most of his backers were expected to side with Callaghan, who needs at most 17 additional votes...
...surprise in the leadership fight has been not the strength of Callaghan but the drawing power of Party Left-Winger Michael Foot, who led the first ballot with 90 votes, to 84 for the Foreign Secretary. Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, a favorite of Labor intellectuals, polled only a disappointing 56 votes on that ballot. Along with two other contenders-Energy Secretary Anthony Wedgwood Benn, a leftist, and middle-roading Environment Secretary Anthony Crosland-Jenkins dropped...
...background for No. 10. Beyond that, Foot was thought to be especially vulnerable in a general election campaign against Tory Leader Margaret Thatcher. In one Sunday Times poll, only 7% of the Labor voters named Foot as their first choice to be Prime Minister; 33% found him "not acceptable." Callaghan, on the other hand, was the first choice...
...Callaghan's plan is most logical. Logic, however, will mean nothing if Smith's backers decide-as some fear they might-that acceptance of reality is much less glorious than a shooting struggle against ultimate defeat...