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...
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