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As for the party's feelings, discontent is deepest among hard-core Tories. By his brusque, humiliating dismissals of leading ministers, Mac the Knife violated the most sacred tenet of Toryism: party loyalty.* Said one former government minister last week: "The Tory Party is a peculiar, organic thing of which you're either wholly a part or else never really of it. Even a Tory leader may not really be of it—he can use and be used by the party for so long as he's required, and then he becomes expendable. That's what happened with Churchill. He never respected the Tory Party's gods. Macmillan's no more of the party than Churchill, and the time is approaching when the party will eject him, too."
Sympathy for Selwyn. The party's reservations were voiced out loud last week by former Prime Minister Anthony Eden, now Lord Avon, and Tory Kingmaker Lord Salisbury, who both protested that sacked Chancellor of the Exchequer Selwyn Lloyd was "harshly treated." Added Eden pointedly: "I have no doubt that Mr. Lloyd will serve the nation again in high office." Macmillan's likeliest successor remains Deputy Prime Minister R. A. ("Rab") Butler, who last week solicitously assured victims of Mac's massacre that he had nothing to do with their demise.
If the party slips still farther in three by-elections scheduled for fall, Macmillan may be forced to resign, though few top Tories are now betting on his early retirement. After Parliament recesses this week, Macmillan will leave for Yorkshire's grouse moors. There, as his foes know well, a few days of nonpolitical bloodletting usually work wonders for Uncle Harold.
* As expressed by Stanley Baldwin's vow, on resigning as Prime Minister in 1937: "I won't spit on the deck, and I shan't shout at the helmsman."