The Sun THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1928 UNITED THEY FALL!

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 274, 9 February 1928, Page 10

The Sun THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1928 UNITED THEY FALL!

NOTHING political could be more futile than the initial speech made in Auckland last evening hy Mr. George W. Forbes, M.P. for Hurunui, on behalf of the new United Party. The present leader of the past Nationalist Party—nobody really knows where all the Liberal and Nationalist leaders are, or what they want to be—came all the way from Canterbury merely to reiterate the party criticism which became tedious repetition in the House of Representatives last session and now litters almost every page of Hansard as a dull record of political loquacity. He not only failed to convince his expectant audience as to the pith and prospects of the “Uppos,” but appeared unable to convince himself about it. The address was rather less than “cauld kail het again”; it was no more than the tepid rinsing of a political broth pot.

It had been announced that Mr. Forbes’s mission in this lively centre of politics was to explain the platform of the United Party’s Political Organisation and to justify its battle-cry that “Reform must go!” This naturally gave the occasion a piquancy of promise. In the event, however, this prospect, like the United Party itself and particularly its leadership, became a phantom, elusive, baffling, and only imaginatively substantial. After long suspense, the keen anticipation of a vivid picture of great happenings in our narrow political sphere was smothered by a bland explanation that the new party’s policy was to be reserved till election time. It is, like Canterbury lamb, to be kept in cold storage for an electoral banquet. Those of the audience who left early deserved to he excused for their impolite display of boredom and disappointment. It was by no means a new message to he told that the Reform Government had gone so far off the rails as to require a special effort at restoring it to the rails again. For the purpose of its restoration, however, only a feeble lever was offered. With something akin to the simplicity of a Johnny Raw in politics Mr. Forbes assured his audience and the country that the Nationalist Party, though not desiring to take any party advantage of the situation, meaning the so-called derailment of the Reform Party, intended to make things right hy joining “a party which is to represent the earnest men and women of this country who are taking an interest in politics.” That naive explanation prompts two pertinent questions. (1) Has the Nationalist Party surrendered its identity? and (2) Who is the Leader of the new United Party which presumably includes the former Liberals and the former Nationalists? As things are the position is ridiculous. If the Liberals and Nationalists have again turned their coats they should appear in the habit of Unionists or “Uppos.” They cannot go on running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Most people now shrewdly suspect that the real trouble of the mysterious new party is its inability to obtain a magnetic leader. It has been said, perhaps unkindly, that the party has pestered Sir Joseph Ward for a month or so to assume leadership, but, so far, without success. Then the whisperers of inner wisdom say fatefully that General Sir Andrew Russell is to he the man. It is past time for the appointment of a stalwart standard-bearer. There may be pleasure for party politicians in sneering at the Prime Minister as a superman, hut he is at least a real Leader of the Reform Party and still the only man in sight for Dominion leadership. Without a leader the United Party must continue wandering like sheep without a shepherd. And thus united in leaderless movement the United Party must fail and fall.