(3 of 3)
Flash of Indignation. The Opposition may yet succeed in showing that Britain's security system was in fact breached, or that warnings from intelligence fell on deaf ears. Whatever the outcome of this week's Commons debate, there is a growing belief that
Macmillan will have to step down eventually—and may in fact have promised his own dissident ministers to do so once the heat is off. Loose factions were already forming around such possible successors to Macmillan as Deputy Prime Minister R. A. ("Rab") Butler, Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald Maudling and Science Minister Lord Hailsham.
No matter how eloquently Macmillan may weather the parliamentary crisis, the Tories simply cannot afford to be tarred by Christine. What they have traditionally offered the nation is men born and raised in the exacting disciplines of leadership. If now, in addition to all the political and economic reverses they have suffered in the past year, Britons should conclude that Etonian and Harrovian leaders are personally no wiser or more upright—and in many cases they have proved flagrantly less so—than those whom they govern, twelve years of Tory government may end in a mighty flash of moral indignation mixed with ridicule.