Parallel of the Day

The long wait, the initial press honeymoon, the delays and indecision, the overwhelming media hostility, the growing volume of calls to go ....it's all there isn't it?

After his years waiting for the press tycoons' favourite leader, Winston Churchill, to die, Eden enjoyed only the briefest of press honeymoons. It was the Tory-supporting papers which treated him the most harshly. Within months, as 1956 began, Eden was overwhelmed by hostile criticism. He was characterised as weak and indecisive. 'Few prime ministers,' observed one historian, 'have encountered such a barrage of hostile press criticism as assailed him in January 1956.' The Times's complaint, that his government had lost its grip was echoed by the Daily Mail accusing it of 'delay and indecisiveness'. Most hurtful of all was a broadside from the Tory Party's greatest supporter, the Daily Telegraph, headlined 'Waiting for the smack of firm government' and written by the deputy editor, Donald McLachlan. The Daily Mirror and Daily Herald joined in, while the Observer reported that the 'Eden must go' camp was growing.

Roy Greenslade, p.130 "Press Gang".

It has to begin somewhere, sometime

..it might as well be here and now.