The Press THURSDAY, JULY 25, 1935 The Lyttelton Result

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21534, 25 July 1935, Page 12

The Press THURSDAY, JULY 25, 1935 The Lyttelton Result

It is to be acknowledged at once, of course, that the electors of Lyttelton have given Mr T. H. McC'ombs a clear-cut. victory, upon which he wili be congratulated as a your man and a political novice v.iio has won immediate success and as the son of his father and mother, whose record of 22 years in the service o. the electorate he continues. It is to be said, further, that few your.: men in the Dominion, perhaps, could have moved from the academic sphere to the political platform, a. 1 he ha:; done, and conducted a campaign with the same confidence anskill. But it is obvious that Mr McCombs's success is by no rr.c-ar to be attributed wholly or ever mostly to himself. He owes mucr to other factors, which there is at the moment r.o need to detail or analyse. It is more interesting to note a second obvious fact, that he owes nothing to any such swing against the Government as the Labour party has attempted to produce and pretended to detect; and absence of any sign of it must be the party's sharp disappointment. Labour will not hesitate to declare, of course, that the Lyttelton result tells in synopsis the story of an unpopular Government's destruction next D' cember. But Labour will have to give the synopsis without the figures which, in a poll approximately the same as in 1932, show that Mr Lyons'., vote was 200 larger than Mr Freeman's, Mr McCombs's more than 600 below Mrs McCombs's, the Labour majority less by more than 900 votes, and the Government vote definitely stronger in Lyttelton itself and in Woolston. If this is the violent reaction against the Government which has been confidently reported by the bustling Labour leaders, it takes a welcome form. But the lesson of Lyttelton is not any inference that the Government may safely draw about the steadiness of the ranks of its friends throughout the country. The lesson is strictly local and it is that, while the Government has made and Labour lost ground in the constituency, a Government majority has tc be made out of the 4000 electors who did not vote. Mr Lyons fought a good, single-handed fight; it is to be hoped that he will fight again with better success. In the meantime, Mr McCombs will have a short experience of Parliamentary politics. Whether it is to end in December or to be extended, there need be no_ grudge in the wish that it may be profitable to him.