Sure & Easy Hand

"He has succeeded to a somber estate," said London's Tory Daily Mail last January when Harold Macmillan became Britain's Prime Minister. The government left by the ailing Anthony Eden was in disarray, and almost everybody seemed to have reservations about the ability of the 63-year-old publisher with the too-elegant Edwardian manners. He was decried as "a gay amateur," "a political dilettante," "a foppish phrasemaker," or, if praised, praised with fingers crossed. The Tories, seeing their popularity drop in poll after poll, in by-election after by-election, were close to demoralization.

In less than four months in office, Macmillan has wrought a transformation. From the first, he refused to act like a man with his back to the wall. He put the disaster of Suez firmly behind him, and exuded confidence--in himself and in Britain.

Mind of Its Own. Where Sir Anthony Eden was addicted to late-night phone calls checking up on busy ministers, Macmillan made a practice of telling his ministers what he wanted done and leaving them to do it. Relaxed and leisured, he spent a few minutes each day in the Commons smoking room, chatting with backbenchers and listening attentively to their views. What was at first taken to be attitudinizing came to be accepted as a natural buoyancy.

At his Bermuda meeting with President Eisenhower, Macmillan got Britain back on speaking terms with the U.S., while simultaneously making clear that if Britain accepted the role of junior partner, it was a junior partner with a mind of its own. The bold new defense policy outlined by Defense Minister Duncan Sandys was realistically geared to Britain's economic capabilities and imaginatively adjusted to 20th century weapons and technology. It had the added political merit of promising to end conscription in 1960, the year the Tories must face the voters in a general election.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Peter Thorneycroft's budget was an unashamed "opportunity" budget, which created new incentives for talented men and enterprising businesses, but Labor's attempt to denounce it as unfair to the "little man" proved a dud. Along with a rise in Macmillan's reputation has come a decline in opposition Leader Hugh Gaitskell's.

"Dashing, Decisive." By late March, when Lord Salisbury resigned from the Cabinet in protest over the release of Archbishop Makarios, Macmillan could treat Salisbury's departure as an unfortunate but far from calamitous incident. That is what it proved to be.

Last week, as Parliament returned from its Easter recess, the commentators' phrases about the Prime Minister had changed to "jaunty, nonchalant, a sure and easy hand." "One of those astonishing reversals of political form that so often confound the pundits," said the Manchester Guardian. Even Laborites accorded him grudging admiration. In the Daily Mirror Richard Grossman, the usually captious Laborite M.P., admitted that Macmillan was giving the Tories "just the kind of dashing, decisive leadership they expected but never got from poor Sir Anthony Eden."

Macmillan's new stature in Parliament may not yet be fully reflected in the country, where polls still show Labor out front. But Laborites, who three months ago were confidently counting the days till the government fell through sheer demoralization and internal dissent, now nervously concede that Macmillan will probably be able to last out his term until 1960.

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