now who &apos;s tipped for no 10 ? by Walter Terry . with one mighty spurt , Mr Selwyn Lloyd has dashed from his rut and is now in the race for real power within the conservative party . in so intensive a contest the most difficult task of all is to judge one &apos;s timing properly . Mr Lloyd has done this superbly with his budget . once he was a non-starter . today he is running well along the track towards no 10 Downing Street . but wait a minute - Selwyn Lloyd , the little Liverpool lawyer , as he was contemptuously described a few years back , as Prime Minister ? laughable , they used to say . the man could hardly make a decent speech , fluffing and floundering over a dreary brief . dominant . but Mr Lloyd as Prime Minister is ridiculous no more . the very thought , I am sure , has struck Mr R A Butler , home Secretary and apparently the heir to Downing Street . for Mr Lloyd , old nerves gone and seemingly dominant for the first time in his political career , has made a tremendous impact on the tories of Westminster with his budget . maybe they do n&apos;t like some of its detail , specially the payroll tax . but the key significance is that for the first time in ten years of power a tory leader has produced an alternative programme to Butlerism . for years many conservatives , disgruntled but not quite clear what they wanted , have been searching for something to match the liberal , radical-type toryism that Mr Butler has inspired . unafraid . dramatically , Mr Lloyd has emerged - a Chancellor willing to grapple with the economy , unafraid of it . a politician of endurance ( as proved over Suez ) , able also to produce new ideas that can excite . Mr Lloyd &apos;s timing has been miraculously fortunate . his budget has come immediately after a week in which Mr Butler fared badly . Mr Butler , a humanitarian who dislikes corporal punishment , was openly flouted by 69 tories in the biggest conservative revolt since the war . next day another 15 disobeyed his advice over the Wedgwood Benn affair . result at the weekend : Mr Butler &apos;s stock suffered a remarkable drop . then into the limelight stepped Selwyn . it is not only Mr Butler , the deserving candidate for Downing Street , who is in trouble . so are many other prominent contenders for the premiership in the radical sector of the party . Mr Iain Macleod , supremely able but facing frightful dilemmas as colonial Secretary , is set back by the revolt , inspired by Lord Salisbury , against his Africa policies . Mr Reginald Maudling , President of the board of trade , is disappointed . he would like to have been Chancellor . now he is being tempted by Beeching-sized offers to leave politics and go into business . Mr Edward Heath , Lord Privy Seal and deputy foreign Secretary , has not succeeded so far in turning his shadowy role into substance . and Viscount Hailsham , a radical tory even if he would dislike being labelled a left-winger , is down in the dumps of the whimsically named ministry for science . cast a glance along the right wing : it is there that success lies at the moment . Lord Home is wielding immense power at the foreign office . Duncan Sandys works quietly as Secretary of state at the commonwealth office ; and Mr Henry Brooke , the Minister of housing and local government is almost ready to take up the promotion that is his due . over them all is Mr Macmillan , silent about his own future . in about 18 months or so he will have to make it clear to the conservative party whether he intends to fight for another term of office at the next election or make way for a successor . adored . the Prime Minister has never given the slightest indication who he considers should follow him in office . it has always been presumed to be Mr Butler . in everything but title he is deputy Premier . he holds the reins of power over party and domestic policy . but Mr Butler &apos;s everlasting disadvantage has been the undercurrent within the party against him . after Suez it rose to the surface to rob him of the premiership . it still lies waiting ( though Mr Butler has been an able fellow at winning friends over the years ) for a chance to cheat him again . now Mr Selwyn Lloyd , sponsoring a budget that is strictly right wing , adored by tory constituency parties , and an intimate of the Prime Minister , is on the scene with just as much power and authority as Mr Butler ever had . clever . when you think about it , Mr Lloyd owes it all to Mr Macmillan . as foreign Secretary he could have been sacked at any time . hardly anyone would have wept . uphill , against current thinking in the party , he was promoted Chancellor by the Prime Minister . maybe a scheme is coming to fruition . can it be that the Prime Minister has been grooming Selwyn all along for the highest office of all ? there are plenty of tories now who are ready to believe it . the Prime Minister is not only very clever . he has an uncanny habit of thinking years ahead of his colleagues . intimately revealed &amp;hellip; France &apos;s man of the century &amp;hellip; and the hour . yes , his sight is failing but not his vision &amp;hellip; . by Maurice Edelman M P . has de Gaulle lost his grip ? is the old chieftain who has won so many battles and crushed so many revolts now to be eaten by the young warriors of the tribe ? I have known de Gaulle for 17 years . I first met him when he was the young , defiant leader of the free French , in Algiers on the eve of his putsch against General Giraud . since that day I have been fascinated by the paradoxical personality of France &apos;s greatest leader . has he the strength left now in 1961 to pull it off again ? I believe he has . his power lies in his curious contradictions . he is , for instance , a professional soldier . and yet , once again , he is called on to resist the French army . he is a devout Roman catholic . and yet he is drawing on support from the anti-clerical left . he is often accused of being a dictator . and yet he is today fighting a battle against militant dictatorship . his integrity . the greater part of the professional army is ranged against him . but there is no doubt that the concentrated strength of the French people is behind him , because of a respect for his integrity which no French soldier or civilian has commanded in this century . physically , he is a sick man . his sight is failing him ; he suffers from a cataract of both eyes . that is the principal reason why he never speaks with notes ; he could n&apos;t read them if he had them . he memorises all his speeches , and when he was in England in 1959 I congratulated him on his memory . he told me that it had always been good ever since he studied philosophy at the Jesuit College in Paris , before going to St Cyr , the French Sandhurst . spectacles could do something for his eyesight , but he will n&apos;t wear them because of a pardonable vanity which makes him feel that spectacles are unsuitable for a man fulfilling the role of soldier-father of the French people . as the family man , the father who each Sunday visits the grave of his daughter Anne in the medieval church of Colombey-les-deux-Eglises , he is a figure which the ordinary Frenchman and Frenchwoman understand . that is why even the communists , who number millions in France , although officially opposing him during the last referendum which endorsed his Algerian solution , are in very many cases his secret backers . for the first time since 1945 the communist , socialist , and catholic trade unions have rallied in agreement . they will provide the active leadership and civilian resistance to the Algiers mutiny which the inert mass of the French middle classes - the attentistes or fence sitters - are unlikely to offer and which de Gaulle is unlikely to expect them to offer . like most supremely powerful men he believes in his destiny . his nature . he sees himself marked out as the saviour of France . and in the course of his often dangerous and adventurous life he has said many times that he possesses the baraka , an Arab word which means the divine blessing which protects its bearer from evil . but this Joan of Arc mentality does not mean that he is lost in the clouds . it is balanced by an icy , calculating nature , a quality he learned from his father who was a teacher of philosophy at Lille . he has always been predictable , in the sense that once he has made his position clear all his actions flow logically from that position . it is certain that he would never yield to the blackmail of the insubordinate generals . his policy . it is this strange mixture of mysticism and rational logic which makes what is perhaps his most powerful contradiction . as a mystic ( a quality inherited from his mother ) he regards himself as France &apos;s predestined deliverer . as a rationalist ( inherited from his father ) he anticipated the Algiers revolt by rallying the French people behind him , and making the issue of his Algerian policy a straight one between the professional soldiers with their vested interest in war and the French people with their vested interest in peace . the last word may well be with the army - not the clique of Salan , but the army of conscript soldiers , whose hearts must be with their families on the mainland of France . this Clore touch at the post office . by John Hall . I might have been listening to Mr Clore or Mr Cotton . in cities and towns all over the country , grubby Victorian buildings sitting on magnificent central sites , the man at the other side of the desk was saying . sites worth millions , asking for redevelopment , begging for the old buildings to be razed and replaced with new money-spinners . but it was n&apos;t either of the Mr Cs speaking - or any other property tycoon . it was Mr Reginald Bevins , the Postmaster-General , and he was talking about - our post offices , the old ones , the shabby relics of another age , and the plans he has to give them the Clore-Cotton treatment . I &apos;ve had a firm of specialists make a pilot survey and it is most encouraging . in site after site all over the country there &apos;s a lot of money waiting for us to collect , money we can put to good use improving our services . property tycoonery in the G.P.O - what &apos;s happening ? just this : after years of subservience the G.P.O has been liberated from the clutches of the Treasury . it is as free as makes no matter to go it alone as a strictly business concern , and that is Mr Bevins &apos; aim . from here on we can call it the G.P.O , Ltd , and fall in with the unofficial title the G.P.O staff have given Mr Bevins . to them this 52-year-old ex-elementary schoolboy from Liverpool is no longer the P.M.G . he is the Chairman . and with his guardsman &apos;s silhouette and his iron-grey hair , and his quiet , incisive speech he looks the part too - executive director model . I went to see the Chairman to ask him about the new G.P.O . he told me : although we are a state monopoly our aim is to be as competitive as if we had rivals breathing down our necks . he means it . almost before the Treasury ties had been severed he sent down the line a directive which comes pretty close to the customer-is-always-right precept . changing . the odd telephone operator who snaps at us ; the occasional clerk behind the counter in the post office who glares when we fumble or are not quite sure what we want : the Chairman is after them . from June 1 , in all except the biggest post offices , there will be no segregation at the counters : no segregation in the sense that whether we want stamps , postal orders , or both , we will be able to march up to any station on the counter and get them from the same assistant . I asked about television - colour television . 