Word: heaths
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Internal Politics. With Edward Heath's fall in Britain, the major decisions on Europe's future should logically now be made by Pompidou and Brandt. Yet both men are largely preoccupied with internal politics. France's President, closeted with a few intimate advisers, spends much of his time brooding about the growing appeal of the left. He fears that a faltering French economy would lead, after election year 1976, to a popular-front government headed by Socialist Francois Mitterrand, with Communist ministers in key posts. He fears above all that West Germany may become a political "neutral...
...Heath's first move was to try to gain the support of Liberal Leader Jeremy Thorpe, who went to London at week's end to confer with Heath. After the election, Thorpe had declared that his party was "going to stand firm." Many experts thought that made good sense. Said one Laborite: "It would be the kiss of death for the Liberals if they were to be seen propping up Ted Heath in power...
Even with Liberal backing, the Tories would still be eight short of a majority in Commons. That means Heath might try to dicker with the eleven Unionists from Northern Ireland.* But all of the Unionists are supporters of Protestant Extremist Ian Paisley, who has rejected the Tory-imposed peace settlement for the troubled province. By contrast, Labor might have better luck in garnering support from the nationalist M.P.s. Wilson himself avoided comment on Heath's decision, but another top Laborite spat out that Heath was "a very, very stubborn bastard, just like Nixon...
Classic Style. A few short weeks ago, Wilson's comeback had looked as improbable as Heath's rebuke. In the first two weeks of the campaign, nothing Wilson touched seemed to go right.On public platforms, the acknowledged maestro of the fast quip and the telling statistic repeated tired jokes and muffed his facts and figures. "He looked and behaved more like an old actor making positively his last appearance than Moses leading us back to the promised land," said a Labor precinct worker...
...campaign entered the final stretch, Wilson found his touch. At a mass meeting in Birmingham, he took on Heath's "Reds under the bed" campaign theme in classic Wilson style. "In three short weeks," he said, "the Conservatives have achieved what Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung and Brezhnev never were able to do-make the British Communist Party look important." As for the Pay Board's belated discovery that the miners were not being paid 3% above the average industrial wage but 8% below, Wilson drew cheers with the Churchillian parody that "never in the history of arithmetic...