BRITAIN’S POLITICAL COALITION.

Evening Star, Issue 21637, 5 February 1934, Page 8

BRITAIN’S POLITICAL COALITION.

Last week it was stated in a cable message from London that, notwithstanding suggestions to the contrary in the Labour lobby of the House of Commons, no General Election was likely to be held before 1936. This is followed by a declaration by a leading London daily journal that Cabinet has reached an agreement whereby the National Government will be continued until after the delivery of the Budget two years hence. It seems likely enough. Broadly speaking, there is not only an Opposition party in every Parliament, but provided the Government majority is large enough a discontented and aggressive element within its ranks. That is the case in England at the moment. Some of the younger members of the Conservative Party are showing a restless spirit, with suggestions from time to time that Mr Ramsay MacDonald and Mr Stanley Baldwin may be deposed. But it would appear that such a happening is not probable in the immediate future. When all the circumstances are considered the National Government has justified itself, and there can be no doubt that the financial and economic conditions are much stronger than when the present Ministers took up their task. Mr Baldwin, m an address at the end of the year, pointed to the steady expansion of the export trade and the increase in employment. What he clearly intended to emphasise was that though the indications were encouraging it would be folly to imagine that the work of the National Government was yet completed. Its industrial, economic, and agricultural policies are only launched, and his plea was that to return now to party strife would be little short of a national calamity. Mr Baldwin has come in for his share of criticism, and has been charged with irresolution and passivity. Whether that be so or not, there are none to challenge his motives or to accuse him of maintaining the National Government for his own personal ends. Mr Ramsay MacDonald, at a stormy meeting in his constituency at Seaham Harbour, took much the same line as Mr Baldwin. He said that two years ago he pledged himself to be untiring in his efforts to reduce unemployment, increase trade, balance the Budget, make the country’s finances sound, and spread security and confidence among the people. He claimed that this had been done, and that the first stage of the Government’s work had been accomplished. There is justification for the claims of these two leaders. Stern economies and relentless taxation have been justified in the result. The most potent argument for the continuance of the National Government is that its members and the majority of the electorate believe it to be the best instrument for adapting the country economically to the new conditions of the world. The various issues that have had to be faced in the reorganisation of industry and in the imposition of tariffs- and quotas have often been against the cherished beliefs of those who supported them, but a national emergency overshadowed fiscal and other theories. As Mr Hugh Molson, M.P., said in an article in the ‘ Spectator ’: “ Thus do Liberals and Conservatives and Socialists in the National Government agree upon a policy for dealing with the problems of 1933 which cuts right across old party lines. Ten years ago marketing boards would have been anathema to Conservatives, tariffs .to Liberals, and the preservation of private enterprise to Socialists.” In considering the question of an alternative Government the recent pronouncements on the policy of the Socialist Party in Britain are not such as to inspire confidence, and it would certainly seem that the present combination of Conservatives, Liberals, and moderate Labourites is the best arrangement that can be made in the meantime.