Miniature General Election?
The determination to treat the recent local elections simply and solely as an indicator of possibilities at next year's General Election will not be denied. Perhaps in a reasonable world the hundreds of Conservative gains and the ending of Labour control in such large and important areas as Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne, Leicester, Wolverhampton and St. Pancras, might be regarded as important in their own right. But in practice the excitements of the coming struggle, and possibly the increase in central power at the expense of the localities, have reduced the elections in boroughs, urban districts and rural districts to so many barometers, and as barometers they are imperfect. Relying no doubt on the old (and untrue) saying, that statistics can be made to prove anything, Mr. Phillips at one point attempted to argue that there had been no Labour defeat at all, and later confined himself to the contention that the defeat was smaller than it looked. All that can be said about this is that the figures, strained beyond endurance, have turned round and bitten him. There were some six hundred Conservative gains in the boroughs outside London, nearly three hundred in London, and several hundreds more in the urban and rural districts. Presumably Mr. Phillips recognises in private that these figures represent a heavy Labour defeat. It would do him no harm if he recognised it in public. But that does not mean that he, or anyone else, need subscribe to Lord Woolton's personal opinion that the elections can be regarded "as a miniature General Election." A good miniature portrays, on a small scale, all the features of a larger original. But last week's elections can only be said to have demonstrated one feature really thoroughly—the power of the new and formidable Conservative machine to get Conservative electors to the polls. But only about two-fifths of those qualified actually voted. At the General Election the proportion will be much higher. And many people who abstained last week were Socialists who will not abstain next year.
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