LIBERALISM

Evening Star, Issue 19760, 10 January 1928, Page 12

LIBERALISM

IS THERE A REVIVAL? THREE-CORNERED CONTESTS A POLITICAL PUZZLE. Even three swallows in succession do not make a .summer of Liberal content. But undoubtedly a few more Bosworths would place the Liberal Party in a very different position from that to which it seemed doomed (says the ‘ Evening Standard,’ in reviewing the existing political position in England). The great weakness of the Liberal Party during the last nine years is that it has never been able to offer itself as an alternative Government, The British people, romantic in their games, incline to realism in their politics. They have little use for underdogs and lost causes. They like to back the wanning side. This, of course, is not baseness, but simply common sense. The first need is a Government strong enough to govern, and the party which at best can only hope to be a balancing force cannot appeal to that decisive section of tho electorate which wants, above all, something like stability In its governing body, A great change would come over the spirit of the scene if Liberalism were once again in the position to offer an effective alternative to Conservatism on the one band and to Socialism on the other. That this would be a good thing for the country we have no doubt. Sooner or later, in tho nature of things, tho swing of the pendulum must declare against a Conservative Administration, however excellent. When that time comes it will be to the advantage of the nation to have a Liberal Party strong enough to take full control or, at lowest, to determine the character of the new Government.

Dealing with the same subject, Mr J. L, Garvin, in the ‘ Observer,’ says that the people can only reason on present evidence, and that is very strong. It is a delusion to anticipate any reduction in the voting strength of Labor in the constituencies, though its former violent rate of progress has been definitely checked. On the Trade Unions Bill and on the whole handling of the coal question by the Government since the subsidy, Labor, like Liberalism, is gaining votes just now as certainly as Conservatism is losing them. None the less, the powerful revival of Liberalism is the new factor most likely to change the whole political outlook. On the form of the last few months, the reunited Liberal Party has an excellent chance to win well over a hundred seats, and has every prospect of holding the balance of power in flip next House of Commons. In that event, circumstances might compel the Conservatives to put Mr Lloyd George into office. That statesman, with Lord Reading, Sir Herbert Samuel, and many other ex Ministers and now men, could form without question a conspicuously competent and even brilliant administration. PORTENT OF DISASTER. Whether a great Unionist rally may yet be possible is an inquiry we must pursue at another time, continues Mr Garyin. We have shown that for the Ministerialists, in spite of their recent flushed and ; wassail mood—like the Saxons before the Battle of Hastings —the electoral results of the last six months have been a steady, continuous portent of disaster. Commenting oh Bosworth, the ‘ Morning Post ’ maintains that the cure lor the troubles of Conservatism is more and more Conservatism.

“ General Spears, we are assured, polled weakly because be used to be a Liberal. Does the same jolly reasoning apply to Mr Churchill and to Sir Alfred Mend? This is a delightful text for Mr Lloyd George’s next speech. The fact is that Conservatism ■since the general strike has been dwelling in a fool’s paradise, certain to fall about its ears. What it chiefly will have to light for is its life. The rude awakening may do it any amount of good. Better recognise the proved truth of warnings like ours than emulate the angry farmer who tried to cure the bad weather by breaking the barometer on the doorstop.” ELECTORAL REFORM.

Mr J. A. Spender, in the ‘Westminster Gazette,’ hopes that the situation which is rapidly coming to a head will induce the Government to proceed with electoral reform. He writes: “Once more we put it to the Government, and this time in their own interests as well as those of the country, that they should seriously face the question of electoral reform while there is yet time. They must by now be aware of the precariousness of their own situation. From the beginning they had behind them only a minority of the voters, but in reliance on their enormous parliamentary majority they have been tempted to propose legislation which runs counter to a great body of opinion in the country. Persistence in this means inevitably electoral disaster, whenever the time of reckoning comes; and it is high time they began to remember that their triumph in 1924 was an accident of three-cornered electioneering which is not likely to bo repeated. Indeed, so far from its being repeated, there is more than a possibility that at another election they will be the principal victims of the three-cornered system. “They have, it is true, so far been able to rely on certain sheltered areas which have saved them from complete disaster -when the tide ran against them, but even these begin to dwindle, and outside of these their Whips today would be hard put to it to guarantee a safe seat to any candidate contesting a by-election. _ At the best, a General Election begins to look as blind a hazard for them as for any of the parties, and at the worst it may easily reduce them from their present commanding position to a small minority of the House of Commons. “These are the circumstances in which they are bound by their pledge to add many millions new women voters to the register, and they have so far proposed to do it without taking any stop to clear up the electoral confusion. This is both folly for them and dangerously unwise for the country. The pledge must, of course, he redeemed. . . . We see that the Tories of Bosworth arc complaining that some of their expected supporters transferred their votes to the Liberal candidate, ’as soon as they had made up their minds that General Spears’s prospects were hopeless. Until recently that boot has been on the other leg, and it has been the special grievance of Liberals that voters who in ordinary circumstances would have supported them transferred their votes to Labor or Tory, so soon as they judged the Liberal prospects >to be hopeless. As tilings are, this is what the elector who wishes to make his vote effective must and will do, and it is useless to complain about it.

“ But its effect must be to exaggerate all the results, to swell majorities beyond reason, to extinguish minorities and to reduce the voting of a large number of electors to a mere calculation of the chances of the rival candidates. The Tory Party may he sure that, if the tide continues to run against it in the constituencies, it will be as much the victim of this process as the Liberal Party hitherto, and that its voters have no greater certainty of fair representation in the House of Commons than the Liberal voters. When this thought sinks in we may hope at length to see the Speaker’s Conference assembled and a reasonable attempt made to solve what is perhaps the most urgent prbblein confronting politicians.”

Most of the'Calamities of the world have been due to ignorance and stupidity.—Sir Samuel Hoare.