BRITISH POLITICAL DRAMA

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 99, 22 January 1924, Page 7

BRITISH POLITICAL DRAMA

CLIMAX APPROACHING DEFEAT OF GOVERNMENT CONSIDERED CERTAIN FORECASTS OF LABOUR MINISTRY The climax of the British political drama is approaching. It is considered in London that the division on the noconfidence motion is jjractically certain to result in the defeat of the Government. By Telegraph—Press Association. —Ooptmokt. London, January 20. The climax of the political drama is approaching. It is anticipated that the fateful division, which is practically certain to result in the defeat of the Government, will occur on Monday night. Meanwhile, it is understood that Mr. MacDonald will take the Foreign Office in addition to the Premiership, and, according to the newspapers, make several provisional Cabinet appointments, including Mr.' Philip Snowden, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Viscount Haldane, Lord Chancellor; Mr. J. R. Clynes, Lord Privy Seal and Deputy-Leader in the House of Commons; Mr. Sidney Webb, Minister of Labour; ahd Mr. Patrick Hastings, K.C., Attorney-General. It is stated that Miss Margaret Bondfield will be an Under-Secretary,, the first woman to hold office in Britain.—Reuter. London, January 20. Thb “Sunday Times” forecasts the following Ministerial appointments Mr. C. C. Ammon, Air; Mr. Vernon Hartshorn, Post Office; Viscount Haldane, Admiralty; Mr. Sidney Webb, Labour; Mr. Patrick Hastings, K. 0., Attorney-General; Mr. Slesser, Solici-tor-General.—Sydney “Sun” Cable. CHARACTER SKETCH OF LABOUR LEADER “MAY BE A PALER CROMWELL” London, January 20. Viscount Birkenhead, in a character sketch of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, in the “Sunday Times”, says-“Labour and Socialism as a sound political force of Great Britain have come to stay, and we have to try to be interested in their leaders. I read the mind of Mr. MacDonald as possessing all tho rigidity of the school of Sidney Webb, with a slightly artificial reecho of passion that seems bred on the Clyde, and, if the forces which are opposed to Socialism do not forget their other differences, he may be a new, if a paler, Cromwell, who will yet give modern Engand a taste of what the kingdom of Latter-day Sa,ints means to life, property, and happiness.’ —Aus.N.Z. Cable Assn. MR. MACDONALD ON CAPITAL LEVY EXPEDIENT FOR REDUCING NATIONAL DEBT London, January 20. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, in an article in “The Socialist Review,” says: —“We have nevler believed that a capital levy would cure unemployment. It is nothing more than an expedient for reducing the National Debt and thereby lowering unproductive taxation.’ Referring to Mr. Baldwin’s verbally informing Mr. Asquith after the election that the Government intended to meet Parliament instead of immediately resigning and sending Mr. MacDonald a similar written instead of a verbal intimation, Mr. MacDonald, writes “Labour is an offence to their sense of the proprieties. They regard us as belonging to the hobnail breed. Reuter, MR. CHURCHILL’S POSITION AT THE PARTING OF THE WAYS London, January 20. Thfe political correspondent of “The Sunday Times” says that Mr. Winston Churchill’s letter has failed to exercise a material influence, but it has a personal significance. There is a growing impression that Mr. Churchill is once more at the parting of the ways. He is as genuinely Conservative as his father was before him, but whether the Conservatives, will welcome him back is problematical.—Aus.N.Z. Cable Assn