Word: heaths
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...great electoral upsets in modern British history, Ted Heath's underdog Conservatives had won a 43-seat margin over the greatly favored Labor Party. The outcome confounded bookmaker, poll taker and political pundit alike. A few days before the election, London's bookies, who are among the world's biggest odds makers, had been giving bets at 6 to 1 on Wilson's triumph. The Gallup and Marplan polls predicted that Labor would win a popular majority of as much as 8.7%, which would have resulted in a 150-seat majority in Commons. One opinion sampling showed that...
They were all wrong. When the very first election results trickled into London last week, the computers at once flashed the prediction of a Tory triumph. As the night wore on, district after district reported an average 5% swing to the Conservatives. The next day, as Heath drove to Buckingham Palace, kissed the hand of Queen Elizabeth II and accepted her commission to form a government, the British nation appeared stunned by what it had wrought. "Heath has done a Truman," declared the Guardian, recalling the former President's 1948 upset of Thomas E. Dewey...
...austere Ted Heath, nothing seemed to go right. Ill at ease in crowds and bone-dry in manner, he made such an unfavorable impression among reporters who followed him that they began referring to him as "poor Ted Heath" while calculating the size of Wilson's victory. Late in the campaign, Heath made a painful effort to unbend a little, but even that sometimes backfired. When TV cameramen swarmed out of a campaign bus to snap Heath in the extraordinary act of kissing a child, a sudden downpour sent everyone running for cover. "If I had any doubts before," muttered...
...When Heath tried to generate some favorable publicity by going sailing in his yacht, he ran it aground. When reporters asked about the attractive woman he had taken along, Heath, who is Britain's first bachelor Prime Minister since Arthur Balfour in 1902, archly dismissed questions of a possible romance. "Absolute nonsense," said Heath. "She's a friend of the navigator's." When photographers asked him to pose drinking beer with the boys in the pub, Heath replied: "No, thanks. I've got whisky in the plane." Journalists found his electioneering style dreary compared with Wilson. "Covering Heath," complained...
...unspectacular ways, however, Ted Heath had shrewdly anticipated an early election. Last January he called his Shadow Cabinet into a closed session at suburban Croydon's Selsdon Park Hotel, where he and his colleagues batted out a new party platform. At that time Heath, who is an excellent administrator, declared that the party organization should be geared up for a possible June election. It was. The Tories are nothing if not good managers and good disciplinarians. In every department of Abbey House, their central office in Westminster's Smith Square, methods and systems were tightened. Throughout the regions, new party...