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discussion with the President. It ranged over a wide field: from nuclear disarmament negotiations to the state of the American economy and the protectionist leanings of the US Congress — something which was giving us increasing concern. Later I had a short but important talk with Prime Minister Nakasone of Japan. I had met him when I visited his country as Leader of the Opposition. He was perhaps the most articulate and ‘western’ of Japan’s leaders in the period when I was Prime Minister, raising his country’s international profile and fostering close links with the United States. On this occasion, my main interest was to press for Nissan to finalize its decision to invest in Britain, which I hoped would create thousands of jobs. Understandably, Mr Nakasone’s line was that this was a decision for the company. I should add here that it had been reported in the British press that Nissan would not have gone ahead with their investment had Labour been elected. This was publicly denied by the company, but it was probably true.

The two main objectives which President Reagan and I shared for the summit were the reaffirmation of sound economic policies and a public demonstration of our unity behind NATO’s position on arms control, especially as regards the deployment of Cruise and Pershing II missiles. I introduced the discussion on arms control at dinner on Saturday. In fact, by that morning we had what most of us considered a satisfactory draft communiqué. France’s position — as a country outside the NATO command structure — required to be taken into account. But President Mitterrand said that he had no dispute with the substance of our proposal. In fact, he came up with an amendment that we were able to accept, because it strengthened it in the direction we wanted. It seems improbable that President Mitterrand realized this.

Pierre Trudeau of Canada did have a problem with a strong line on deterrence. He urged us all to ‘speak more softly’ to the Soviet Union. There followed some exchanges between the two of us which I later described in a letter to him as ‘on the lively side’. In the end, a thoroughly satisfactory text on arms control emerged.

The text on the economy was pretty satisfactory as well, except for a little misty language on exchange rate co-ordination. President Mitterrand had been tempted at one stage by grand talk of a ‘new Bretton Woods’, shorthand for the system of fixed exchange rates which had operated from 1944 to 1973. But he did not press this view at Williamsburg.

I came home by the overnight British Airways flight, confident that the outcome of the summit vindicated my approach to the crucial election issues of defence and the economy. This summit also marked a change in the relationship between President Reagan and the other heads of government. They might previously have admired his eloquence and devotion to principle: but they had sometimes been dismissive of his grasp of detail. I, myself, had felt some concern about this earlier. Not so on this occasion. He had plainly done his homework. He had all the facts and figures at his fingertips. He steered the discussions with great skill and aplomb. He managed to get all he wanted from the summit, while allowing everyone to feel that they had got at least some of what they wanted, and he did all this with an immense geniality. What President Reagan demonstrated at Williamsburg was that in international as in domestic affairs he was a master politician.

Monday 30 May was a Bank Holiday. That day Denis Healey released what the Labour Party claimed was the ‘real’ Conservative manifesto, a fantastical affair, full of lies, half-truths and scares culled from reports of leaked documents, especially the CPRS long-term public expenditure document, the whole thing imaginatively embellished. I was not surprised. Labour had tried this tactic in 1979: it had not worked then either. Once again, Labour was catering not to the interests of the voter but to its own obsessions. They failed to realize that propaganda can never persuade people of the incredible. Apparently,