LABOUR'S TROUBLES

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 40, 17 February 1932, Page 7

LABOUR'S TROUBLES

¥ATE HOME GOVERN- "';. . MENT '■• -

SOME REVELATIONS

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, sth January. Lord 'Passfield (who was Secretary for the Dominions in the last Labour Government) has compiled a record for the ''Political Quarterly," and describes the difficulties of the Labour Government at tho ; beginning 'of last year. ' - x • . - : - ' •-■•■ ; ' -: ' ■ He says that the Labour Party grew more and more restive at, its impotence and the meagre achievements of an overworked Cabinet. "The Prime Minister was not in the mood to find time or energy for that friendly social intercourse with the members of 'his own party, or even "with his Ministerial colleagues, which goes so: far to avert friction and produce the team, spirit. More ai:d more Jie tended to spend his scanty leisures in less dishgreeable society." ' The •writer1 adds that the session opened with the Parliamentary Labour Party seriously discontented with itself, the Ministers out of touch with one another, struggling separately with their departmental difficulties. The .Cabinet was unable to find solutions, and the back- benchers were at loggerheads with themselves and with the front bench. He proceeds: "The Prime Minister—very much aware of the shortcomings of each one of his colleagues and of the party to which he belonged, as well as (may it be said?) perhaps incessantly rather too conscious of his own superiority—was not in a condition to withstand the temp-I tation of flattering suggestions that began to be made from more than one ■quarter. Why not cut the Gordian knot by getting rid of the perpetual nuisance of Parliamentary Opposition; especially if such a surgical operation involved also the elimination, or at least the - reduction to impotence, of those troublesome sections of the Labour Party whom the Prime Minister had come to loathe with a bitterness that could not be concealed?" Lord Passfield adds that already in June it was said privately that September, 1931, would see a National Government. ~ Pointing out that Government finances were getting into a bad way, Lord Passfield says that the Budget in April was an extremely faulty one, "excusable only by the grave state of health of ,the Chancellor, who, with indomitable courage, had framed it from a sick bed while suffering acutely from an internal disorder. The apprehended deficit very . quickly became a certainty."-