Word: profumo
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...just out in England. With Snow's consent. Publisher and former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan delayed publication until after the election because the leading character, an ambitious young Tory minister named Roger Quaife, is speeded to ruin over an adulterous affair that voters could have taken for the Profumo scandal. Quaife's adviser is none other than Lewis Eliot, and Snow will similarly be chief counselor to a Cabinet member (where the parallel ends: Union Leader Cousins is not known to be involved in any scandal). "Fantastic," says Snow, "that I should step so nearly into the shoes...
...American version of the Profumo scandal comes from the White House, the future of this nation requires some truthful and objective answers. If the 1959 morals arrest that is now revealed indicates Jenkins' vulnerability to Soviet blackmail during these years, and if this dangerous fact has been concealed by President Johnson, then the fitness of this Administration not only to govern but to defend this nation from its enemies must be examined...
...balance, Tory Leader Sir Alec Douglas-Home fought a remarkable fight. A year ago, as an aristocratic amateur, he had inherited a party shattered by the Profumo scandal and enervated by a dozen years in power. They laughed when he sat down on the government front bench-but when he started to play politics, he very nearly led his party to victory. To a large extent, of course, it was a contest of personalities...
This conjured up shades of the hapless former Cabinet Minister, memories of that high-echelon prostitute, Christine Keeler, echoes of the whole scandal that had so sorely embarrassed the Tories a year ago. "Profumo!" Hogg replied angrily. "If you can tell me there are no adulterers on the front bench of the Labor Party, you can talk about Profumo. If you can't tell me that, you had better keep your mouth shut...
...Adulterers. Since the Labor front bench is generally occupied by members of Labor's "shadow cabinet," all of them well known to each other, to their colleagues and the country, the statement was uncomfortably close to a specific accusation. Labor Chief Harold Wilson, who had ordered that the Profumo scandal not be raised by party leaders on the assumption that it might boomerang, gleefully picked up his cue and called on Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home to repudiate Hogg. Next day Hogg made a partial and grudging retraction. But he thought it was all most unfair, since...