Evening post. MONDAY, JUNE 15, 1931. PRINCIPLES—AND TACTICS

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 139, 15 June 1931, Page 8

Evening post. MONDAY, JUNE 15, 1931. PRINCIPLES—AND TACTICS

lii his speech at Edinburgh on Thursday, Mr. Lloyd George threatened the British Government with another crisis, and the endeavour to settle it has doubtless supplied him with congenial employment during the week-end. The. cause of the trouble is a difference of opinion about the new land tax, which received a hearty welcome from the Liberals when Mr. Snowden announced it in his Budget speech. A similar proposal was one of the failures of Mr. Lloyd George's fiercelycontested "People's Budget" of 1909. He made no attempt to retrieve that failure during the four peace years of his Premiership, but he was glad to see the proposal taken tip by a Labour Chancellor oLthe Exchequer. The scope of the new taxation has, however, provoked a clash. Mr. Snowden's Finance Bill proposes to give the principle of a tax on site values a universal application. The terms of the Liberal amendment have not been precisely determined, but its effect is said to be

that the tax should fall exclusively on undeveloped land by conceding to owners the right to deduct from the land tax tho amount paid on the same land as.income tax.

Mr. Snowden declares the amendment to be "entirely unacceptable, as it would upset the whole equilibrium of the Budget," and according to the "Daily Herald" it would reduce the expected addition of £5,000,000 to the revenue by more than half. Important as would be the loss of even £2,000,000 or £3,000,000 of revenue at a time when even the rigid Mr. Snowden has been reduced to all sorts of unprincipled and Churchill-like shifts to make ends meet, the question of principle involved is of still greater importance, and it may be safely assumed that it is so regarded by Mr. Snowden. This point is made by the "Daily Herald" when it urges, as a second objection to the Liberal amendment that it would

nullify all the .provisions for the valuation of improved, built-on land, aiming at a future rating of future laud values. It seems to be quite clear that this is what the Liberals have in view^ for, according to the purport of their amendment, which we have already quoted, they desire to limit the taxation to undeveloped land, and to secure this:6bject by enabling owners to deduct from their land tax the amount Avhich they have already paid as income tax in respect of the same land. • In their objection to double taxation, the Liberals can argue that here also a question of principle is involved; But whether the matter is one of principle or merely of expediency we shall be very much surprised if by the time the most^expert of political wrigglers has' "explored" all the avenues and tested all the "formulae" he has not discovered a way out with no deeper humiliation for himself or his party than he has cheerfully sustained at the call of duty at least a dozen times during the last two years.. More than six months ago Sir John Simon* declared that the Liberal Party was "dying of tactics." It has had nothing to live on ever since, yet there is still life in its feeble body, and its leader seems actually to thrive on the diet. It is highly probable that at Edinburgh he showed himself just as cheerful and just as brilliant as ever, and that some of his surplus oxygen went to the revival of the flagging spirits of his party. It. is, however, also probable that to-day or to-morrow they may be drooping again under the influence of the double dose or tactics for which the week-end has supplied.an exceptionally promising opportunity. To keep pace with a leader who, in his attitude to the Government, -alternates so rapidly between attack and defence, between immortal principles and tactics, is no easy matter for less nimble wits and less mercurial spirits. But there is a very good reason why the Liberals should not have taken too seriously the declaration of immortal j principles %t Edinburgh and the innocent impression of some ot the papers that Mr. Lloyd George had at last got his back to the wall with an outfit of principles which were not only immortal but immutable. Mr. Lloyd George himself had supplied the answer to this diagnosis in an article contributed by him to a Scottish Labour paper during the same week. An election now might, ho said, moan another five years of Tory rule, with reaction, reigning at home and abroad, which, would be a calamity. "Reaction" is one of the most alarming words in the Liberal vocabulary, but even to the most ardent of Liberals a violent reaction from some of the extravagance and demoralisation which the party has aided and abetted during the last two years should be very welcome. Whether the country could stand two years -more of this policy which Mr. Lloyd George appears to contemplate is indeed open to doubt. In his speech at the National Liberal Club just after the General Election he said: —

The Liberals to-day stand between this country and out-and-out Socialism. How well they have discharged their Irusl was proved by the slalejnent made in the House of Com,gMHis hyj Mj§? Boudficida As. Minis- J

lor of Labour, on the very day when Mr. Lloyd George was speaking at Edinburgh.

The amount of Treasury advances to tho Unemployment Insurance Fund to (Into, she said, was £85,620,000, leaving an unexhausted balance of borrowing powers of £4,380,000., That was likely to bo exhausted curly in July, and further provision would bo necessary before that time.

It is, of course, a fallacy to speak of.the bulk of the money spent on unemployment insurance as "dole" money, but the term seems fairly applicable to this overdraft, which will amount to £90,000,000 during the next few we.eks, which is steadily increasing, and which can never be repaid. Some "reaction" might.not be out of place here, but the Liberals under Mr. Lloyd George's leadership dare not check the dangerous process, because to do so would be to risk a General Election, and a General Election would be the end of the party. The by-elections continue to prove this with progressive emphasis. In only one of the three last contests did the Liberals enter the. field, and that was in Stroud, where their candidate, was at the .bottom of the poll with about 20 per cent, of the'aggregate and nearly 4500 short of his predecessor's total at the General Election.■;, In the Gateshead7 by-election which was reported on Thursday, the Liberals, who had polled 10,314 votes in 1929, had no candidate, yet Labour's majority over the Conservative was reduced from 16,749 to 1392. Whether they stand aside or whether they do not the strength of the Liberals is rapidly becoming negligible, and the only alternative to Mr. Lloyd George's policy of keeping the Labour Government in power seems to be annihilation. That is why "more optimistic views" come to hand as we write from some who had previously made the mistake of taking his ultimatum seriously.