Letter from London

It was a bleak morning after Britain’s crisis election; bleak physically, with flurries of sleet and snow, and very bleak metaphorically, with the political prospect as uncertain and uncomfortable as anyone could remember. The election had been a strange affair throughout, and it produced the strangest possible result— or lack of result. Edward Heath took a gamble in calling it. He failed. Extraordinarily, the coin landed on edge.

Seeking a larger majority and a renewed mandate to strengthen him in his fight against union militancy and inflationary wage demands, Mr. Heath campaigned on the single issue “Who rules Britain?”: and back came the answer, “Who indeed?”