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Lloyd has a fine brain, and is devastating in debate. Lloyd is very much of a latecomer, but all the insiders speak of him with respect. And he is liked by his elders, which helps. He typifies the millions of middle-class young Britons who went through the war, understand the element of Christian generosity in the Labor movement which saves it from tawdriness, and desperately want to build an improving life for themselves and contribute to the progress of their countrymen. Selwyn Lloyd may advance slowly, but he will advance surely.
The Flannel Group This trio by no means exhausts the list of impressive Tory backbenchers. Indeed, the one thing which is more striking than their quality is their quantity. Within their party, the young Tories have to fight not so much active opposition as passive resistance, the exponents of which they have irreverently called "the flannel group" (because flannel, unlike a brick wall, resists while giving way).
Tory flannelism can still be met in small swatches everywhere.
It exists on the Tory backbenches, where there are still men who see every Laborite as a bolshevik and every reform as a snare of Satan. Most importantly, it exists among the Tory bosses.
Churchill himself is a problem. He usually runs the Tory Party rather like a British public school, where boys do not advance much out of their turn, and juniors do not supplant prefects.
Moreover, Churchill is passionately loyal, and when a man in his 77th year returns to power after being loyal all his political life, he is liable to bring with him a certain amount of dead or dying weight. Over a late drink in a West End club, young Tories have confided that they wish "someone would mow the front bench down with a machine gun," or that "the old man, God bless him, would throw in the towel." They feel that some senior Tories have no communion with the new Britain.
The Seniors
In fact, several of the most important Tories after Churchill are sympathetic with the new Toryism.
Anthony Eden — "my trusted deputy," as Churchill has pointedly called him— is now the designated dauphin of the party. There is a view widely held among Tories that Churchill, whose health is uncertain and who needs rest, might not stay more than a year or so in office if elected. Then, having given the impulsion of his prestige and authority to the re-establishment of the British international position, he might hand over the reins to Eden.
At 54, Eden retains much of the glamour of the handsome, Homburg-hatted Foreign Secretary of the '30s. He is the party's only big drawing card apart from Churchill, and is a much better House of Commons man than his leader, who is growing deaf and is often querulous or outpaced in debate. Eden knows just how much M.P.s will take. He never makes the mistake of seeming virulent or spiteful—and is a past master at the British art of making a speech which seems to be above party politics.
Eden encourages the young Tories. He is nice to them—but then, he is nice to everyone, and that is perhaps why many sense a streak of weakness in his character.