DIFFICULT WORK

Taranaki Daily News, 27 July 1935, Page 5 (Supplement)

DIFFICULT WORK

REMAKING A MINISTRY TASK OF MR. STANLEY BALDWIN. PERSONAL FACTOR INTRUDES. For some time there will be no more talk of Cabinet reconstruction. The job has been done thoroughly and effectively, within the ' limitations imposed—happily imposed—by the principle of national union and the maintenance of the balance of parties within it. writes J. B. Firth in the Daily Telegraph. When, as in the present instance, a new Administration is formed under a new Prime Minister, the operation automatically becomes a major one. A minor reconstruction should be as natural an operation as spring-cleaning. Cabinets were much more static before the tide of democracy began to run so strongly. They were much smaller in size and admission to the charmed circle was jealously guarded against even wellattested candidates.

Then, as now, no Cabinet Minister considered himself too old, easily persuading himself that exceptional content of experience would atone for any waning of vigour. Deliberate self-ab-negation was as rare as the refusal of a mitre. Ministers hung on till they dropped off or were shouldered to the dOOr ' . • , XV Even Mr. Gladstone maintained the exclusive tradition. He strongly resented having to admit “the man from Birmingham” in 1886, and he was reluctant to give Mr. Asquith a place in 1892. To the end he preferred a Whig peer to a Radical commoner, as being less assertive in Cabinet and less likely to challenge his autocracy or contest his pace. Democracy on the other hand, adores the audacious gate-crasher. Cabinet secrets—“revelations from the dark interior,” as Lord Salisbury called them—are now dished up before they have lost their power to create a sensation or sting an old friend to fury.

Frequent Ministerial reshuffling or reconstruction suits the altered conditions, and meets to some extent the insistent demand for a more rapid circulation of political rewards. Rarely is the public interest vitally affected by the selection of Mr. A. instead of Mr. B. as Undersecretary for this or that Department. The supply of respectable talent is abundant. That of genuine “Cabinet-pieces” 'is as rare as it has always been. It is most desirable, therefore, that there should be no obstructions in the channels of promotion, even to the highest Cabinet posts. Whitehall needs continual oxygenisation. In no other way, moreover, can hope be kept alive among the disappointed. There is never enough Ministerial soup to go round. “Egotism and vanity,” wrote Lord Morley, “are the two great pests of public as of private life.” He wrote with.feeling though never apparently aware that he himself was singularly subject to these common foibles of high intellectual equipment. The difficulties of the art of government are' greatly magnified when the intensity of intrigue in a Cabinet is in exact proportion to the cleverness of its personnel. > WRONG IDEA. K is a popular idea that a collection of brilliant personalities is indispensable to a strong Cabinet. Quite the reverse. The strength of a Cabinet depends, first and foremost, on its Head. Ils primary need is the stimulus and direction of *a masterful will. “A galaxy of ability in a Cabinet,” wrote Buckle, commenting on Disraeli’s choice of a Cabinet in 1874, “does not always promote efficiency. Unless Ministers are deeply imbued with loyalty to a cause or a chief, their individual cleverness may tend to resolve them into a chaos of jarring atoms.” When, in 1878, Lord Carnarvon and Lord Derby began first to question and then to thwart their chief’s Eastern policy, Queen Victoria intervened with a word of sharp counsel from' Osborne: “Let Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon go, and be very firm. A divided Cabinet is of no use.” The Royal instinct was sound, even if the Royal manner of expression was brusque. But Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon chose their own manner arid moment of going. They were magnates of the first quality. Even to-day a Prime Minister cannot peremptorily call for a Cabinet Minister’s resignation. Sir William Harcourt’s views on the paramount need of a master in the Cabinet are the more valuable because he was one of the most intractable colleagues that ever Prime Minister had. “On a question of policy,” he wrote in 1889, “there can be no doubt that the most successful administrations are those where there is a strong Prime Minister and a subordinate Cabinet. Where the individual 'members of the Cabinet are too strong there are perpetual elements of discord and disunion. One man’s opinion is as good as another’s —and better.” LIFE A BURDEN. Sir William, a few years later, underlined this argument by making the life of his chief, Lord Rosebery, a burden. “Fancy,” he remarked to a friend who was careful to place the blistering sarcasm on record, “our foreign affairs being in the hands of two men (Lord Rosebery and Lord Kimberley) who are unfit to manage a public-house.”

Yet Lord Rosebery dared not try to force Harcourt’s resignation. It is one of the standing embarrassments of Cabinet construction or reconstruction that certain people have to be put in if only because they would make themselves too disagreeable if they were left out. They subordinate every interest to that of their individual ego. Ministries of “All the Talents” have almost always proved ghastly failures and for the same reason. It has been well said:— “There is seldom elbow-room in a smooth-working Government for more than one will. The worst of having very brilliant colleagues is that thf!y have too many brilliant ideas and are too original and self-opinionated. Even when they are not deliberately set on mischief they often produce mischief, simply because their talents are often fretting want of exercisef Moreover, brilliancy is no guarantee that a man will make a good administrator or head of a department; the presumption is rather the other way. It is the workaday qualities that a Prime Minister most values in his subordinates. He can do ‘the big bow-wow’ himself.” Those shrewd comments of the late F. S. Oliver are packed tight with political wisdom. The first impression of Mr. Hughes (of Australia) after a rapid glance at the Coalition War Cabinet of 1923, was: “I thought the members all looked very clever men. That is your trouble. You have got too many clever men.” Yet what would be said to a Prime Minister if he deliberately manned bis Cabinet with mediocrites when he had first-class men to choose from?”

If, indeed, he were a Chatham and could produce Chatham’s results, he might be as dictatorial to his colleagues as he liked. For though they winced and protested, the public would not heed their cries of outraged dignity. But Chathams are all too rare.

Again, if a Prime Minister cannot do “the big bow-wow,” or does it so indifferently that even little “Dog Tray” grins impudently instead of slinking away rebuked—what then? Or if there is a Portland or a Newcastle or even a Liverpool in command, with two such mortal antipathies as Canning and Castlereagh at his elbow in the same Cabinet, how can the King’s Government be carried on with striking success? I forbear to quote later examples. It was officially announced last year that the three parties to the National Government had resolved to maintain their individual entities and would fight the next general election as National Conservatives, National Liberals, and National Socialists. That is to say, there is to be no fusion into a single National Party. Mr. Baldwin recently said there was no thought of the “old Tory Party” amalgamating with any other or losing its name or identity. That for the present, but no one can forecast the future. The old Liberal Unionists maintained their separate organisation many years after they were quite indistinguishable from the main body of Conservatives either in theory or in practice. Yet the two fused eventually, 'and a similar solution may commend itself at some future day to the National Liberals. They have kept step with the predominant partner remarkably well and have proved “brilliant seconds” on the political duelling ground. Those who, for whatever reason, belittle the National Liberals are either ■strangely forgetful or they are too young to remember what formidable feemen Sir John Simon and Mr. Runclman once were on the Free Trade side.

What body of opinion the National Socialists stand for in the country is not to be measured by the stale torrent of malicious abuse poured out against Mr. Ramsay MacDonald. It comes from those who once proclaimed ‘him “the greatest asset of the Socialist Party.” But all the time, as Lord Snowden has bluntly revealed, they sickened him by their invincible incompetence.