By-Elections
The by-election at Liverpool tells no very definite story. As itt the General Election there was a straight fight between a Labour candidate and a Conservative enjoying the blessing of the Prime Minister. The total poll fell by over 7,000, and Colonel Shute, who won the seat by a majority of 2,786, as against 13,144 at the General Election, polled nearly 9,000 fewer than his Conservative predecessor in 1931. The Labour vote filer-eased by 1,500. The general feeling in the con- stituency evidently was that the National Government -did not need; and the Labour Party did not deserve, support,' though the increase in the Labour vote no 'doubt reflects discontent over unemploynient and the means test: East Tife, Mr. Asquith's old constituency, -pbliS on ThursdaY. The result there is not likely to
be more instructive than at Liverpool, but for different reasons. Five candidates are competing for the scat, which has become vacant through the death of Sir Duncan Millar, a Simonitc Liberal. Besides a Simonite, a Labour candidate, a farmers' candidate backed by Lord Beaverbrook, a Scottish Nationalist, in the person of Mr. Eric Linklater, the novelist, and a Liberal without prefix or affix, who has entered the lists at the eleventh hour, are in the field. In some ways the destinies of the last of the five will he most worth watching, as providing some test of the strength of plain Liberalism. * * * *
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