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The present leadership of the Conservative Party—Harold Macmillan, Lord Salisbury, R.A. Butler, and a number of the younger ministers—is well to the left of the economic position assumed by the party in the 1945 election. Indeed, the complaint of the party's middle-class rank and file that the Conservatives are carrying out a pseudo-socialist program rather than a truly Tory one is an important factor in estimating the party's ability to retain power.

A word is needed here about "left" and "right" as applied to British parties. Although the Conservative Party is frequently compared with the Republican Party in the United States and has many similarities of outlook, the Conservatives are, on the whole, well to the left of the Republicans. Thinking in the Labor Party, moreover, is well to the left of both Democratic and Republican parties in the United States.

After the Conservative victory in the election of 1955 it was generally expected that the party would move toward the right. Critics will seize upon British intervention in Egypt as evidence of such a movement. But it can be asked whether a policy designed to bring down a dictator—in this case President Nasser of Egypt—when it was evident that the United Nations was unable or unwilling to do so can be classified as a right-wing, reactionary policy. Similarly, the movement of the British government under the leadership of Sir Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan toward entry into the European common market can scarcely be considered an example of right-wing extremism. The attacks on this policy by the newspapers controlled by Lord Beaverbrook, the most imperialist of the press lords, testify to the anger aroused by the progressive internationalism of the Conservatives.