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88 Wilson’s scepticism had led him to wonder ‘what is the right sort of Europe? 89 As an Atlanticist whose government was committed to the revival of Commonwealth trade, Wilson saw no reason in spring 1965 to reconsider EEC policies. Nevertheless, Stewart and the FO continued to urge the government to recognise that Britain’s influence in the Atlantic Alliance and Europe and thus in United States was being jeopardised by exclusion from the EEC, difficulties over nuclear sharing in NATO and de Gaulle’s disruption to the stability of both institutions.

51 The Foreign Secretary, R. A. 53 By spring 1965, one year on from Dixon’s attempts to invigorate British policy towards de Gaulle, the Atlantic Alliance and Europe, the head of the Foreign Office Planning Staff who would go on to become Wilson’s foreign policy private secretary in 1966, Michael Palliser, took up the task. In a bleak assessment which spoke of de Gaulle’s successful exploitation of the crisis in leadership of the Atlantic Alliance, Palliser warned of the immediate danger of Britain’s ‘growing irrelevance’ to American and European allies.

Noting the swelling opposition to the MLF at home and abroad, Johnson said that I worked like hell to get to be President and I don’t want to set it off all at once. 37 Not for the first time in their relationship as president and prime minister, Johnson would turn to Wilson to assist him in the dispatch of US foreign policy in Europe. On this occasion, what Wilson offered to the MLF impasse was what Johnson wanted, a way out. 40 During the election campaign, Wilson had managed to sidestep the Nassau renegotiation issue but retreating from the MLF required more than swift political footwork.