A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK
THE Labour Government has now been in office for eight months. Mr. Attlee had no easy task in choosing his Front Bench, but in the main his selection has been well justified. Many of the new Ministers have done extremely well and there have been few bad disappointments. But there have been some, and Mr. Attlee's quality as a leader will be gauged by his readiness to make changes where changes are necessary. It is remarkable that in eight months there should have been no more than two minor replacements—in the Parliamentary Secretaryships of the Ministry of Education and the Board of Trade, the result in each case of voluntary resignation. To indicate the posts in which a change might be beneficial would be invidious, but one case, that of the Ministry of Food, is so much before the public eye anyhow that to omit reference to it would be almost pointed. Sir Ben Smith is entitled to claim that he has a harder row to hoe than any other Minister. That is true, and all allowance must be made for it. Even so, the fact must be recog- nised that the Food Minister stands well neither with the country nor with the House of Commons. Last week's muddle about the general food situation and the necessity of further cuts was not Sir Ben's doing personally, but his attempted defence of it in the House on Monday made a bad impression, and the retractation on Tuesday was so terse and comprehensive that no one was quite ready with the appropriate supplementary. In answering questions generally the Minister has much to learn from his Parliamentary Secretary, Dr. Edith Summerskill, whose quiet reasonableness, coupled with a fund of information which never fails her, impressed the House greatly during Sir Ben's absence in America.
Previous page
