FUSION OF PARTIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20730, 25 November 1930, Page 8

FUSION OF PARTIES.

The suggestion of a fusion between the Reform and United Parties, recently revived by unofficial voices, has been brought completely into line with the realities by the Leader of the Opposition. Mr. Coates has made all the necessary points in his statement. The chief of these are that the offer of cooperation he made when the present Government first gained office has been systematically disregarded, support having been openly sought in another direction, and that no gesture favourable to fusion has ever been made by anybody on the United Party side. These certainly arc realities. Again, Mr. Coates is on absolutely sound ground when he says if the United Party desires fusion it should say so. It is not for him or his associates to go as suppliants asking that they be taken into a fold where they do not belong. in which they have been given no reason to expect a welcome. He is quite right when he says the Reform Party has nothing to gain by fusion. He might go further and suggest that all the gain would accrue to the Labour Party. It is not for nothing that Mr. Holland is one of the most fervent public advocates of a Reform-United fusion. There is no reason why he should not advocate it, but equally there is no reason why he should be presented with the prize he most desires, the right to say the Labour Party is the only possible alternative to the Government in office. That is the position the advocates of fusion are trying to bring about, whether they realise it or not. Tho inevitable sequel would be Labour in office, nor would it bo long delayed if an obviously artificial amalgamation, based on the desire to "save political skins"—a happy phrase Mr. Coates used once before —were engineered under present conditions. There is no reason why the Labour Party should not hold office if it can win it, but there is less reason why it should be helped on the way by people who regard that prospect with dismay. For the rest, Mr. Coates' statement of unalterable policy substitutes a further reality for the vague generalities talked by the fusionists.