The Press Monday, December 7, 1931. Labour and the Government.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20413, 7 December 1931, Page 8

The Press Monday, December 7, 1931. Labour and the Government.

It is not necessary to take very seriously the Labour Leader's curious speech, reported in a telegram from Westport this morning. Speaking on his adopted heath, in response to his supporters' personal welcome and after a heartening personal success, Mr Holland had some excuse for letting himself go a little; and he needs no excuse at all for- referring to such facts as the Labour Party's gain of four seats and the very strong vote for its candidates throughout the country. These are facts of which the Government and every friend of the Government should take full account, together with one more, of which Mr Holland takes none, that his Party enjoyed a great deal of luck. But when he told his hearers that they now had a Government with two heads and no policy, and that the Coalition had asked for and. received a blank cheque, he said something too dangerously untrue to be allowed to pass. It is not even correct to, say, as the chairman of the Associated Chambers of Commerce was reported to have said on Saturday, that the Government had " practically asked " the electors to give it a free hand," if this means that little was submitted to them but the proposal that the Government should act as it pleased. What was submitted for .their approval, in the first place, was a programme of work already done, and, in the second, the policy on which the programme had been based and which had been • laid down, notably in the Supplementary Budget, and in other Ministerial statements. There was no want of policy here, and no want of definition in the policy. The electors were invited to sign no blank cheque but to accept policy measures and a policy already in force; and they did so, with a conviction which it is the Government's real triumph to have inspired. Only in two respects has the blank cheque " any meaning. The Government did state only in general terms its intentions about economy in education and about the Arbitration Act—though general terms are by no means " blank"; and because much depends on the movement of the price level, and that is uncertain, the Government did ask for a free hand to deal with adverse contingencies. On the first point there is nothing to add to what we have already said, that the Government should lose no time in getting from the general to the particular; on the second, the Government had to choose between saying nothing and saying exactly what it said. Had it said nothing, it would still have had to act in emergency according to its best judgment and without waiting for popular sanction*, but it preferred to warn the electors that such necessities might arise, and this preference, though it may have cost a long price in votes, was honest and right. If the significance of all this is that the* Government has "no policy" and has persuaded the electors to sign a blank cheque, then Mr. Holland must; explain—perhaps in a skating rink i rather thai! a ball-room —what he has been fighting for the last month" and why the electors read so much better than he does.