General Election

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23881, 25 February 1943, Page 4

General Election

In giving notice that he will move a resolution, expressing the opinion of the House of Representatives that the General Election deferred since 1941 should be held this year, the Prime Minister can have surprised very few electors. His notice is, in effect, an announcement that the election will take place. The resolution will commit the House to the view that “ the continued improve- “ ment in the war situation ” supplies the reason why it should. But it supplies, in fact, not “ the ” reason but only one of several. The first and most important is that dissatisfaction with the Government’s administration has steadily increased, and the Government’s want of a mandate has become a heavy embarrassment to itself as well as a public grievance. Second, nothing is clearer, and nothing could be more dangerous, than the Government’s reliance on a large numerical majority without executive strength to correspond. Its few competent Ministers have been under’ too long and too heavy a strain. It has been able neither to relieve and support them effectively nor to maintain, except in Washington, regular and necessary representation oversea. The Government has come to such a pass that it must either find new vigour and talent, with a mandate to use them, or fall into hopeless decrepitude. These, of course, are not reasons that the Government can confess, when it proposes to “ enable the people, in “ accordance with their democratic “rights, to elect their representa- “ tives to Parliament ’’; but they are reasons which are as certainly felt as they are manifest. Third, the Prime Minister’s colleagues and supporters refused him the right to strengthen the Government on a non-party, national basis; and a compromise which did not satisfy him and promised its failure in its confused structure inevitably broke down. This collapse carried away the last but infirm justification for prolonging the life of the present Parliament. So much, again, the Government may not care to acknowledge; but it is acknowledged, nevertheless, in the Prime Minister’s statement of April 17, 1941. Deferring then, as, he was about to go to England, his consideration of Mr Holland’s offer, he said that he would consider it, on his return, in this light: “The question of the postponement of the “ General Election, which might be “ advisable and even inevitable “ owing to war developments, would “ necessarily involve the question “ of the formation of a National “ Government. . . . Neither I nor my “ colleagues would even suggest “ postponement, if its only effect “ was to retain the Government in “office.’’ Belatedly, Mr Fraser is fulfilling that plain engagement. He should not forget that he is now doing, months late, in his own time and as a party leader, merely what he promised to do under a strong sense of his duty as a national leader.