NO CHANGE SEEN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26413, 18 March 1947, Page 5

NO CHANGE SEEN

PAST DEBATE POLICY FUTURE ECONOMIC PLANNING GOVERNMENT ATTITUDE ATTACKED Special Correspondent Rec. 9, p.m. LONDON, Mar. 17. “ Where do we stand after this grand economic inquest? ” says the Economist discussing the economic debate. “ The Government prescription it is plain, is treatment as before, only more so. They propose to go on as they have been doing only with a frown upon their brows instead of a song in their hearts. Indeed, they have learned in these last few months that they are politically incapable of doing anything else.” “ Every avenue to positive policy is blocked to them,” the Economist continues. “They can not accept a realistic financial policy because that would involve abandoning Mr Hugh Dalton’s policy of overcheap money, and partly because they could not face the odium of deliberately setting out to reduce the money and incomes of the wage-earners. They can not pursue a positive labour policy because the trades unions will not have it. They cannot call industry to their aid because that would mean abandoning the nationalisation programme. They cannot embark upon a great campaign of moral leadership because Mr Attlee is Mr Attlee.” “All they can do is to stand pat upon a series of administrative experiments inherited from the Coalition as modified by the pressure of events in the past 18 months and excuse themselves by newly-discovered limitations of democratic planning,” the paper concludes. “They are, in fact, taking up exactly the same attitude towards economic problems that Mr Chamberlain took up towards war in the winter of 1939-40. Now, as then, the sticking point has not yet been reached, and until it has there is little chance of a change in policy. Now, as then, there will be no prospect of radical escape from things as they are until politicians are similarly willing to forget their party programmes and their personal ambitions. The sticking point may come this autumn, or it may wait till 1948. But it is surely coming."