THE POLITICAL SITUATION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13543, 16 March 1906, Page 5

THE POLITICAL SITUATION.

LABOUR v. LIBERALISM.

QTsost Our Own Correspondent.)

LONDON, February 3. Now that we have happily got rid of the general election, wo might have hoped for a little respite from political boredom. But such bliss is not for us.

In tha first place the leaders of the Labour party havo already begun to assert themselves in a vigorous and implacable manner which cannot be very comforting to tho Liberal party, notwithstanding its present nominal voting power. For Mr Koir Hardio announces, without mincing his words, that tho great keynote of tho Labour party's policy is irreconcilable antagonism to the Liberal party. The Labour members have taken deeply to heart the experiences furnished by the Irish Nationalists, nor havo they ignored what has been done, by their brethren in New Zealand and Australia. They mean to work persistently in the direction of Socialism, and meanwhile to force from the new Government every feasible concession favourable to the cause of Labour as they regard it that can by hook or by crook be extracted. Evidently it is with the new Labour party in Parliament, numbering as it does over'so members safe to vote "solid." that the Liberal side has now to deal. Practically the Home Rulers, through the overwhelming preponderance held by the Liberals, are for the time •utterly out of it, the principal and most indispensable members of tho new Ministry —in which, list I do not include the Prime Minister—have emphatically pledged themselves to support no Home Rule Bill brought in during the currency of the present Parliament. "Wo realise that we are powerless to coerce," said an Irish Nationalist member to mo tho other day. "but it is satisfactory to know that we have the goodwill, at anyratc, of the present, dominant party." That is only one way of saying that the Homo Rule' question is dead for the life of this Parliament, and has been killed, paradoxical as it may seem, by tho enormous majority with which its erstwhile advocates, the Liberals, havo como back to power. What would Mr Gladstone say could he revive and sec this dav?