way in which the country ought to be governed". Powell said the Lords derived their authority not from a strict hereditary system but from its prescriptive nature: "It has long been so, and it works". He then added that there was not any widespread desire for reform: he indicated a recent survey of working-class voters that showed that only one-third of them wanted to reform or abolish the House of Lords, with another third believing the Lords were an "intrinsic part of the national traditions of Britain". Powell deduced from this, "As so often, the ordinary rank and file of the electorate have seen a truth, an important fact, which has escaped so many more clever people—the underlying value of that which is traditional, that which is prescriptive". Following more speeches against the Bill during early 1969, and faced with the fact a bloc of left-wing Labour members were also against reforming the House of Lords as they desired its abolition altogether, Harold Wilson announced on 17 April that the Bill was being withdrawn. Wilson's statement was brief, with Powell intervening: "Don't eat them too quickly", which provoked much laughter in the House. Later that day Powell said in a speech to the Primrose League: Powell's biographer, Simon Heffer, described the defeat of Lords reform as "perhaps the greatest triumph of Powell's political career". In 1969, when it was first suggested that the United Kingdom should join the European Economic Community, Powell spoke openly of his opposition to such a move. Departure from the Conservative Party A Gallup poll in February 1969 showed Powell to be the "most admired person" in British public opinion. In a defence debate in March 1970, Powell said that "the whole theory of the tactical nuclear weapon, or the tactical use of nuclear weapons, is an unmitigated absurdity" and that it was "remotely improbable" that any group of nations engaged in war would "decide upon general and mutual suicide", and advocated enlargement of the UK's conventional forces. However, when fellow Conservative Julian Amery later in the debate criticised Powell for his antinuclear pronouncements, Powell responded: "I have always regarded the possession of the nuclear capability as a protection against nuclear blackmail. It is a protection against being threatened with nuclear weapons. What it is not a protection against is war". The 1970 general election took place on 18 June and was unexpectedly won by the