Home to Heath, 1964–1966

Abstract

The move from Government into Opposition is always hard, but especially for Conservatives, who consider themselves to be the natural party of Government. Moreover, after thirteen years in office the senior figures of the party found themselves cut off from the machinery of government with all its resources of advice and information. They had, too, been so bound up with their departmental duties that many of them had all but lost the capacity for that inventive and opportunistic political thinking that is essential for success in Opposition. Again, the narrowness of the result meant that the new Government was clearly not going to run its full course. Another election could be sprung on them at any time by Wilson, who had, in his small majority, a cast-iron excuse for a dissolution whenever he decided that the time was right from his point of view. The Conservative Opposition, therefore, did not look very impressive during the opening months of the new Parliament, and the processes of rethinking policy and of reforming the party organisation had to be conducted in what was still an electioneering atmosphere.