Evening Post MONDAY, OCTOBER 15, Unknown BRITISH LIBERAL DILEMMA

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 80, 15 October 1928, Page 8

Evening Post MONDAY, OCTOBER 15, Unknown BRITISH LIBERAL DILEMMA

The propriety of selecting Birmingham, the largest of English cities outside of London, as the meeting place of the Labour Party's annual conference is sufficiently obvious, but why the Conservatives should have selected such an oui-of-the-way, somnolent, and unattractive place as Yarmouth for a phrsilsr purpose is not easy to see, and ihat the Liberals should have followed this lead is more puzzling still. A parly of which Mr. Lloyd George is the leader might have been expected to display a little more originality, but as in each case it was not a local constituency but the nation that the party was addressing the point i? of no more than academic interest. The essential thing is that within the past fortnight all the three parties have now held their representative gatherings, and given at any rale a general indication of the grounds on which they will claim the confidence of an immensely enlarged electorate next year. The Liberalsl who were the last to speak, are also the last in importance, and the chief interest of their conference was in the light that it might throw on their attitude to the other two. It is a sheer impossibility that they should obtain a majority at the General Election, bill it is far from impossible, and has sometimes seemed not improbable, that they may return in sufficient strength to hold the balance of power between the other two parties. The most important part of Mr. Lloyd George's address to the Liberal conference,^ as reported on Saturday, was that which dealt with the relations of his party to the others, and especially to Labour, at the General Election and afterwards. The Liberal leader's general forecast of the result is that there will be an overwhelming majority of votes against the Government, that the Liberals will greatly improve their position, and that "whatever party is in the majority it will not be Labour." It was, of course, impossible to admit that a Liberal victory is out of the question, but not even the audacity of Mr. Lloyd George could venture to suggest that they will win, and as he is confident that the Conservatives will be in a minority and Labour cannot possibly , have a majority, it follows that he contemplates a position like that of 1923. No party will have an absolute majority, but the Conservatives will still be on top with a strength below that of the two opposition parties combined. History will repeat itself to that extent, but, says Mr. Lloyd George, no further. The postelection surprise of 1923 will not be repeated. On that occasion Mr. Lloyd George, in co-operation with a leader of much cooler judgment, Mr. Asquith, as he then was, decided that the Conservatives must be ousted, even at the cost of putting die Labour Party into power without conditions. It was a grave responsibility to take, but the country did not suffer the injury that was widely expected, and the Liberal leaders' expectations of party gains were signally disappointed. Embarrassed apparently by the fear of his own Reds, Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald failed to show any consideration to the party that was keeping him in power, and when, Mr. Asquith at last had to give Britain's first Labour Government its coup de grace the relations between the two parties were worse than when the strange experiment began. When Mr. Lloyd George says that "the conditions of co-operation and understanding must be honourable to all and humiliating to none," he implies that humiliation was the Liberals' only reward for their complaisance on that occasion, and his comment is an emphatic "never again!" Let me say once and for all that we shall decidedly and emphatically decline to contemplate the possibility of a repetition of the experiment of 1924 which proved so disastrous. That Mr. Lloyd George's feelings towards the Labour Party are fully reciprocated is proved by the comments of the "Daily Herald" on His speech at Yarmouth. It ridicules his hopes of holding the balance of power in the next Parliament, and declares that the Liberal Party is in ruins. Nobody, the "Daily Herald" proceeds, knows that better than Mr. . Lloyd George, one of the chief authors of the ruin. It may linger a long while on the political stage, but the days of its greatness are gone, never to return. The Liberals, to achieve power, must win 280 seats. The odds are they will lose 280 deposits in the General Election. Mr. Ramsay' Mac Donald had himself spoken of the Liberal Party's chances in much the same way. Referring to Sir Herbert Samuel's statement that the number of Liberal candidates was nearly 500, Mr. Mac Donald lold an interviewer in Quebec that "if they placed 500 candidates in the field he was certain that at least 250 would forfeit their deposits." On the personal side of the matier, Mr. Mac Donald spoke as follows in Ontario on the 15th August:— No one thinks of him (Mr. Lloyd George) now. He is not a power in politics any more. He still holds meetings and makes speeches. People go to hear him, laugh at him, and applaud him, but they go away and forget him. They are talking of making Mm pay amusement tax oh his meetings. On the same occasion Mr. Mac Donald dealt with the other political leader as follows:— Mr. Baldwin has done more witli his silly, stupid tomfooleries to bolster up Communism than any other man. In thus introducing the personalities of British party politics into the neu-

tral territory of a Dominion Mr. Mac Donald did not show his usual good taste, but in substance his criticism of the Liberal leader was not unfair. Mr. Lloyd George still retains his old skill on the platform, and in the House last session he is credited with having regained much, if not all, of the Parliamentary power which he had appeared to be losing. But with all his brilliance there is no evidence that he is making any deep impression on the country. Personalities apart, the rise of Labour has done for the British Liberals very much what it has done for our 'own. The British Parliamentary system does no! accommodate itself readily to more than two parties and as soon as Lobour is strong enough to become the official Opposition it puts the Liberals whom it has displaced in an embarrassing and almost impossible position. The Liberals are unable to discover a middle: policy distinctive -yioygli and strong enough to justify their existence. Mr. Lloyd George's references to the tariff indicate his appreciation r>f the difficulty. The Liberals have, he says, little choice between strangling .prosperity with the tariff rope and drawing and quartering it with .Socialism. . We shall resist any attempt to overthrow the great fiscal system on which our trade was built up, and we shajl resist any attempt to establish Socialism. As a barrier against Socialism the Conservatives are naturally more to be trusted, and if Mr. Baldwin continues to restrain them from a headon collision with Free Trade the Liberals' loyalty to "the great fiscal system on which our trade was built up" will give them no special standing. Neither in policy nor in personnel are they adermatelv equipped.