Vernon Bogdanor

The Spectator book review that brought down Macmillan’s government

Did Harold Macmillan stitch up his succession – or did Iain Macleod’s famous Spectator piece, 50 years old this week, stitch up Macmillan?

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[/audioplayer]Fifty years ago this week, a cover story in The Spectator helped to bring down a Conservative government. It was called ‘The Tory Leadership’ and was written by the editor, Iain Macleod, who had been a senior minister in Harold Macmillan’s government. Purporting to be the review of a book by Randolph Churchill on how Lord Home had ‘emerged’ in October 1963 as Macmillan’s successor, it claimed that Macmillan had fixed the succession so as to scupper the chances of the natural candidate, R.A. Butler, who had been deputy prime minister in all but name.

In those days, the Conservatives did not choose their leader by ballot, but by ‘customary processes of consultation’, soundings conducted both inside and outside Parliament. These soundings were carried out primarily by five grandees, four of whom had been to Eton. So had Macmillan and Home. They constituted what Macleod, in a deadly phrase, christened a ‘magic circle’ that ruled the Tory party. The Spectator had exposed an establishment stitch-up — or so it seemed.

The article succeeded in casting serious doubt on the legitimacy of Home’s succession — and, ergo, his leadership. With a general election due within nine months, and some way behind in the polls, the Conservatives desperately needed to unite around Home. Instead, Macleod used his Spectator article in a way designed to reopen wounds which had been beginning to heal.

Not until 1989 did the truth begin to emerge. Alistair Horne, in the second volume of his authorised life of Macmillan, revealed the real outcome of the soundings in 1963: a strong consensus for Home. So Macmillan was not slipping in a personal recommendation when he advised the Queen to send for him — he was doing precisely what he was supposed to do.

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