For sufficient reason I have said nothing during this election
about university representation. Nor, I think, has the Spectator. That is as it should be, for no one could claim that the restoration of the university seats, desirable as that may be, is among the major issues. But the question is likely enough to become immediate, and one proposal I have come across has at any rate a superficial interest. That is that the twelve University members should sit and speak, but not vote. On the face of it there is something to be said for that. It would remove the objection, which Labour Members feel so strongly, that uni- versity representatives went more often into the Conservative than into the Labour lobby. And if speeches in the House are of any value (and if not, why any speeches at all ?) they should count just as much without a vote appended to them as with. It was to give counsel rather than to cast votes that King James I summoned representatives • from Oxford and Cambridge to Westminster. But on the whole there is more to be said against the suggestion than for it. The election of non-voting Members would be a constitutional innovation which no party in the House would be likely to favour. And even if the experiment were made the voteless Members would almost inevitably be regarded as anomalies—M.P.s in name but not in full reality. Still, the idea is interesting.
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