Humpty Dumpty

Jo Grimond, Liberal leader, sums up the situation as follows: "The Tory colossus, which has dominated the country for so long, has finally had its feet cut from under it.

"The Labour Humpty Dumpty clings terrified to the top of the fence, knowing full well that, if it made a move either on the Common Market or industrial relations, it would be shattered into pieces which could never be put together again.

"We must not forget the aim of victory in the excitement of fighting the battle. It was on the way to the summit of their ideals that the Labour Party got lost".

Apart from the Liberals, Gaitskell is having troubles with the Left Wing of his party. The rebels are worried at the rightward drift of the Labour leadership. Already six M.P's have been expelled. Another 41 voted against Gaitskell's instructions when the Commons voted on the Christmas Island tests.

The left has a point. According to Frank Alluan, M.P., the Liberals stood at Orpington on a more radical policy than Labour. Liberal candidate Lubbock backed: no independent nuclear deterrent, no more H-tests, no nuclear arms for . West Germany, no American bases in England. The Liberals stood themselves as "left of Labour".

A recent Gallup Poll discovered that 48 per cent of the British public wanted a neutral Britain. Only 34 per cent wanted the U.K. aligned with the U.S. So it would seem that as long as Gaitskell, Wilson and others press Labour to the right, the Liberals will continue to pick up the Socialist as well as the dissatisfied Tory votes. The Liberals have managed to retain a capitalist economic policy that is attractive to the right. Nobody quite knows what this policy is yet, but from speeches by Grimond it seems not far different from the Conservative Party.