25 JANUARY 1952, Page 4

If the Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia is serious in

considering it "absurd that someone elected to look after the interests of Shoreditch, for example, should manage the affairs of Central Africa" he should take advantage of his stay in this country to undergo a short course in constitutional principle and practice7—beginning, it may be suggested, with Burke's classic letter to the electors of Bristol. The Member for Shoreditch does not even " manage the. affairs of Shoreditch." He does not manage the affairs of the United Kingdom. Sir Courtenay Ilbert's dictum "Parliament does not govern ". can- not be too often emphasised. The Cabinet governs, and the Member for Shoreditch either helps to keep it in power and enable it to govern, or alternatively opposes it in the hope of substituting another set of governors. The Cabinet does, through the Colonial Secretary, manage, to a greater or less degree in different cases, the affairs of African dependencies, and for reas'bns familiar enough to every student of Africa it is very necessary that it should, till the Africans attain the capacity to manage their own affairs unaided. The Member for Shoreditch is very far removed from Lusaka or Zomba: Mr. Thurtle, I am sure, realises that, if Sir Godfrey Huggins does not.