 The Parliamentary leader of the opposition Labour party , Harold Wilson , attacked the new Prime Minister as " an elegant anachronism " . He asserted that nobody from Douglas @-@ Home 's background knew of the problems of ordinary families . In particular , Wilson demanded to know how " a scion of an effete establishment " could lead the technological revolution that Wilson held to be necessary : " This is the counter @-@ revolution ... After half a century of democratic advance , of social revolution , the whole process has ground to a halt with a fourteenth earl ! " Douglas @-@ Home pooh @-@ poohed this as inverted snobbery , and observed , " I suppose Mr Wilson , when you come to think of it , is the fourteenth Mr Wilson . " He called Wilson " this slick salesman of synthetic science " and the Labour party " the only relic of class consciousness in the country " . The opposition retreated , with a statement in the press that " The Labour Party is not interested in the fact that the new Prime Minister inherited a fourteenth Earldom – he cannot help his antecedents any more than the rest of us . " 
