In January 1958, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Peter Thorneycroft, resigned over increased government spending. The two junior Treasury ministers, Enoch Powell and Nigel Birch, resigned with him. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, about to leave on a tour of the Commonwealth, brushed the resignations aside as “a little local difficulty.”
The words are also quoted as “little local difficulties.” Time magazine reported that as he boarded his plane, he said: “I thought the best thing to do was to settle up these little local difficulties.”