. AT WESTMINSTER
THERE was a time, and not so very long ago, when, with income tax at a few shillings in the pound, the country treated Budget Day as though it belonged to the light-hearted events of the year like the Derby and the Boat Race. Now it is more like the Day of Judgement. Perhaps our Rhadamanthine Chancellor of the Exchequer ministers as much to this impression as the colossal size of the Budget itself. He was very much his stern, inflexible self on Tuesday. A Budget speech is no joke to Sir Stafford Cripps, and he sees to it that it is no joke to anybody else. A first estimate was that he would speak for ninety minutes. It had grown to two hours by the eve of the Budget. In the event it occupied Iwo hours and twenty minutes. It was a punishing performance. No light moment visited him. There was not a gleam of wit or humour to help the sufferers through the long ordeal. Once he had a drink of a pinkish fluid. He took it swiftly like medicine. Other Chancellors have required liquid sustenance and some have taken it with an air. Did not Mr. Churchill once raise a tawny drink to his lips and roguishly give the game away by announcing that he was about to fortify the revenue ? If only Sir Stafford could unbend once in a while. But he never will. He has not done it in twenty years of Parliamentary life and it is rather late to begin now. * * * * The first hour of his speech was devoted to what many regarded as a largely unnecessary survey of the economic situation. It covered so much familiar ground. Rumour has it that Sir Stafford was advised that he might dispense with a good deal of this matter,1 but he took the view that this was a moment above all others wheal he must restate in all its fullness the aims of the Government's' financial and economic policy. But since it is the old policy which: he formulated when he became Chancellor three years ago there was no such imperative necessity about it. Had he had some imaginative- new approach it would have been different. Wheal he sat down the Labour members appeared almost too exhausted' to raise a substantial cheer. Either that, or they had not found the electioneering comfort in the Budget which they would have liked or which they may have expected. The one notable relief, the concession on the lower rates of income tax, probably does not strike them as holding much party advantage, and in any case Mr. Eden, in the briefest speech of his life, welcomed it as a step advocated by the Opposition during and before the election Mr. Churchill had pronounced a benediction on the proposal almost before Sir Stafford had finished making it. He subscribed a very audible " Hear, hear " from his seat. It was quite otherwise with the purchase tax on commercial vehicles and the increase in the price of petrol. Here the Opposition palpably recoiled, and Ministers will have difficulty in allaying Conservative suspicion that these are not moves to help the debt-saddled nationalised railways. Mr. Butler, on the opening of the general debate, called it " featherbedding " the railways. His speech had other flashes of wit, but it is strange that this able man has not yet mastered a mature Parliamentary style. When he said Sir Stafford Cripps will go down to posterity as the man who devalued the pound and revalued the beer the thrust went right home. Sir Stafford pursed his lips in scorn.
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Mr. Stanley Evans was not present, but should have been to hear the storm of ironic Opposition laughter that greeted Sir Stafford's encomiums on the farmers for the part they are playing in the balance-of-payments struggle. It is the only occasion one can recall when the Chancellor has seemed embarrassed. He actually flushed. That the late Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food rushed so precipitately on destruction has not altogether surprised the House of Commons. Just before the House rose for the Easter holidays he had to answer some questions on sugar imports from the West Indies. He made a debate of it. It was gratuitous, and suggested a perilous assurance in a new-comer to the despatch box. Mr. Attlee and Mr. Morrison were visibly on
the rack during this performance. H. B.
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