Tory tweed, grouse shooting and the Bomb, or Labour brass bands, flashing the cash and red tape? In the Observer’s 1964 election dossier, that was how the choice the electorate faced was represented photographically, complete with lookalikes of Alec Douglas-Home and Harold Wilson.
Along with analysis of voting patterns, the cost of elections and fluctuating party popularity, there was more lighthearted stuff. In honour of what was being described as a ‘television election’, that included an exhaustive and entertaining appraisal of how frontbenchers performed on the box. A ‘much-improved’ Douglas-Home had stopped licking his lips (‘which made him look like a lizard’), but was ‘not flattered by the cameras, which make him look unnaturally old and dry’. Wilson was a star performer (‘listens patiently… no side, no self-consciousness’), but ‘handicapped by hardly ever smiling… the shape of his teeth makes it difficult for him to smile attractively’. James Callaghan had a ‘slower mind than some of the others, but in some ways, this is an asset on television,’ and Denis Healey was ‘very clear and often strikingly concrete’, but best served by black and white. ‘Colour television might show those tell-tale red temper patches… when he starts feeling cross.’
David Walder MP provided advice on winning a marginal (having won his own for the Tories by 1,868 votes). No candidate, he explained, was worth more than 500 votes, but those 500 could be the difference between success and disaster. Ways to win them included ‘a promise of constant attention to drains and zebra crossings’, curbing any weird enthusiasms (‘puffins do not have votes’) and appearing ‘slightly more capable and better informed than his constituents, but only slightly’. Wives attending fêtes should wear ‘an attractive but not outrageous hat; at all costs it must not outshine the other hats present’. Most importantly of all, ‘The candidate must not kiss babies: either he will give them a cold and the mother will canvass for his opponent or they will give him one.’
