Critics both in Parliament and in the press depicted a prime minister fawningly servile to Eisenhower, and a British government far too ignorant of America’s nuclear program—and her foreign policy generally. Inevitably, Indochina came into the picture, as Labourites said they would seek to quash any thought of joining a U.S.-led intervention to defeat Ho Chi Minh. Such an intervention, they said, could lead swiftly to a dangerous and uncontrollable escalation of the conflict, drawing in China and the Soviet Union and culminating in World War III.
