GREAT BRITAIN: Really Up Against It

Great Britain is perilously close to bankruptcy, and Chancellor of the Exchequer Richard Austen Butler minced no words about. "We are really up against it," he said last week. "Our lifeblood is draining away, and we have got to stop it." In contemporary Britain, the job that wealthy "Rab" Butler holds might well be called Chancellor of Gloom. His two predecessors, schoolmasterish Sir Stafford Cripps and perky Hugh Gaitskell won admiration for telling people the worst. Last week Butler did the same, frankly and specifically, and added to his reputation as one of the fastest rising Tories. No orator,...

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