THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1924. POLITICAL PARTITION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18838, 13 October 1924, Page 6

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1924. POLITICAL PARTITION.

Amid the worldwide comment which the downfall of the Labour Government was bound to provoke, nothing is more deeply suggestive than the expectation that it will affect the party system in politics. In France, opinion inclines to the belief that it may lead to an attempt on Britain's part to return to the two-party arrangement, Labour being opposed to a union of Liberal and Conservative forces. This opinion is apparently prompted by the hope that, with a British Government capable of standing on its own feet, France may more securely negotiate in matters of European policy. From the United States comes a forecast | that the British elections will react upon American politics in such a way as to influence parties there, particularly the anticipated effort to form "a permanent third party." Should Labour succeed in Britain, the implication ruri3, that third party in America will become a bigger factor; should it fail to emerge from the coming test with a great accession of strength, the third-party proposal will receive a check. The British Labour Party's manifesto throws a sidelight upon the position by charging the Liberals and the Conservatives with combining to force an election. Supporting this view, the editor of the Daily Herald, a Labour organ, has specifically declared that the chief factor in the party's defeat has been an alliance designed to resuscitate a "coalition scheme" on which prominent Liberals and Conservatives had set their hearts unavailinglv prior to last general election. All this is significant of the fluid state of parties that exists more or less wherever party government obtains. It raises, indeed, the fundamental question as to whether a three-party system can ever be more than a very transitory stage between more normal and enduring divisions of political parties into two opposing camps.

Were voters not human, any number of parties would be theoretically possible. Since they are human, their conduct is influenced by an innate psychological imperative to favour or oppose any particular issue raised. There is no word midway between '"Yes" and "No." Doubt is possible on any subject, of course ; bui it is, in practice, a refusal to affirm, and so is a virtual negative. One cannot go through life riding on a note of interrogation. If one cannot, or does not, cast his ballot for a proposal, he does not merely disfranchise himself on the question up for settlement. He positively robs ita affirmation of possible support. His attempt to be neutral results in influence against the proposal. Tho effect of his refraining from an expression of opinion is indistinguishable, practically, from denial, and so amounts to negation. Only while he is making up his mind whether he will vote "Aye" or "No" is there any sort of poise, and that has such unstable equilibrium that decision is inevitable ere long. A country with a three-party system has an unusually large number of people who have not made up their minds, that is all; circumstances must eventually compel them to take an alignment on a two-party arrangement. There are continental countries, it is true, where government by a number of groups has had a vogue; but even in these the inevitable division for and against some leading political programme in home or foreign affairs has been witnessed. Parliament cannot have three or more lobbies. Political procedure is incapable of such a reductio ad absurdum; there could be no government at all under such a condition. A majority is essential to any government determined on functioning with' honesty and success. As Britain has exemplified in the last twelve months, a government in office without a, majority can do little more than mark time. For everything it may seek to do it is dependent on the support lent by another party, and for all practical purposes it sinks its individuality in a coalition making up one side of a practically two-sided House. How precarious and tentative is such an abnormal arrangement has been dramatically proved in Labour's quietus at the hands of the Liberals in the British House of Commons. It would seem from this that any American attempt to form "a permanent third party" is fore-doomed to failure. There may be a third party, but it cannot be permanent.

In Britain, as at last general election, three parties are marshalling their forces for the poll. They will have separate programmes. In most electorates, apparently, they will each have candidates, and so far as the electors are concerned they will each be recipients of support. It is impossible to forecast the result with any certainty; but, whatever tho decisions in the separate electorates, the real test of the three-party system will come in Parliament, not in the country. Should any one of the parties be returned with a clear Parliamentary majority over the other two, the House will present a twoparty arrangement. On the broad lines of its policy, that party will legislate, an opposition numerically ineffective being further weakened by its division into two sections. Should no one of the three parties have a clear majority, there will be a repetition of the recent political inertia, and of that the country will so speedily tire that a new alignment into two parties, either as a working expedient in the House or as a basis of another sudden appeal to the electorate, is inevitable. How alien to the Anglo-Saxon temperament

especially is a multiplicity of parties is impressed by a striking fact. In recent years the streets surrounding the Houses of Parliament have be- | come more and more thickly occupied with the offices of various societies bent on their particular political aims. These societies have each their professional secretaries, their publications, and their nation-wide organisations. How active they are can be seen from the fact that at the gene'ral election in 1922 each candidate received over a hundred and fifty written questions from these different societies, beside tlje questions put to them orally. Yet, in spite of this multiple propaganda, there has arisen no multiplicity of parties in Parliament, and the presence of even three there in varying degrees of minority has brought legislation to a standstill. The final alternative lies, it would appear from the lesson to be read in Britain's recent experience, not between a two-party and a three-party system, but between no party and two parties; and of this alternative the two-party system is the only psychological, and therefore logical, outcome within the sphere of practical politics.