Readers of Anthony Lejeune’s piece may be left with the impression that there is some hope of a Conservative victory in the next election. I fear it is too late for that. In England, for some reason, it is always thought that an admission of possible elector failure hastens the defeat. We may be sure that the Conservative candidates will stand by the polling booths with droll smiles on their faces assuring everybody who arrives that their success is certain. I must now state as axiomatic what is abundantly clear to most Englishmen, and to everybody outside England, that nothing short of a direct Act of God will save the Conservatives at the next election. Having said that, I should add that if I were God—a presumption quite common among political commentators and writers in general—I should be most reluctant to intervene.
When the country elected a Conservative Government in October 1951, and again in 1955, and again in 1959, it was expressing a preference for one code of beliefs and method of government against another. The extent to which it has been betrayed by that government would be inconceivable to anyone who did not realize how profoundly unpolitical the great mass of the English electorate is, and how slow to form opinions of any sort.
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