World: THREE TIMES ALMOST PRIME MINISTER

RICHARD AUSTEN BUTLER, a parliamentary pundit once observed, "always looks as if he will be the next Prime Minister—until it seems the throne may actually be vacant." Butler has been deputy to all three postwar Tory Prime Ministers—Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan —and after the 1956 Suez debacle had every expectation of succeeding Eden at 10 Downing Street. When the party picked Macmillan instead, "Rab" Butler, though bitterly humiliated, said bravely: "Well, it is something to have been almost Prime Minister."

Whether or not he actually wins the throne this time,...