Chancellor's Comeback

In Britain's House of Commons, it is often good politics to make a show of courting unpopularity: members are inclined to suspect any attempt to be popular as evidence of bad taste. Last week Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer Richard A. ("Rab") Butler remembered good politics as he rose, white-faced and grim, to defend himself against a Labor censure motion condemning him for "incompetence and neglect." The week before, Butler had been scourged by Labor's ambitious Hugh Gaitskell, a former Chancellor himself, who demanded that Butler resign (TIME, Nov. 7). Now Butler set out to defend his emergency tax-raising budget to combat British inflation. He not only admitted that his tax increases would hurt but made a virtue of it ("I do not expect them to be popular"). Then Butler turned sarcastically to the charge of incompetence. "Socialists," he said, "are connoisseurs of incompetence. Let us look at some of the vintage years--1947, 1949 and 1951." With that, he neatly skewered the Labor Chancellors of those years: Hugh Dalton, Stafford Cripps and Hugh Gaitskell. "Each Labor Vintage Chancellor," Butler charged, "produced his own distinctive crisis with his own particular brand of incompetence."

For Mr. Gaitskell, his onetime friend, Butler added, "I reserve neglect." Recalling that Britain's reserves had poured out during Gaitskell's tenure, Butler reminded the House that "all the records show is that cheese imports were reduced to save $40 million." Butler gestured scornfully towards Gaitskell, sitting opposite. "This marvelous roaring lion," he said, "is a little mouse who could only gnaw at a piece of cheese."

All told, it was one of the most effective performances in Rab Butler's 26 years in Parliament, and topped Gaitskell's Philippic of the week before. The House rejected the censure motion (329-261). Yet a forensic victory in the Commons was only a beginning, and Rab Butler knew it. He still has to prove that his new dose of austerity will work in practice. The first signs were not encouraging: at week's end, British workers filed demands for pay increases which, if granted, would give the inflationary spiral another upward twist. The one hopeful sign was that the drain of British dollar reserves in October was less than half what it was in September. The pound last week, for the first time in a year, was selling at a fraction higher than its official rate, $2.80.

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