AT WESTMINSTER
THE Commons :polished off the Finance Bill on Tasday. As the late, lamented Mrs. Mopp might have said it had "a doing." And that was as it should be. If the Executive ought to meet the House in full discussion on any measure it is the Finance Bill. On the testimony of two Ministers there has been no obstruction ; on that of Mr. Gaitskell the debates have kept a high level ; and they have led to some Government con- cessions which, though they have not altered the Bill in any cardinal way, have—again on the witness of the Chancellor— improved it.
* * * Now the board has been swept clean of essential legislation. In three weeks Parliament will be up for the Long Recess, and the question of questions at Westminster is, will it meet again, or, if it does meet, will it be only to dissolve ? According to one who should know something of Mr. Attlee's mind, the Prime Minister sees no practical or constitutional obstacle to carrying on for another year or even two years if it suits the party's interest. Some of his counsellors have advocated an autumn election and they will multiply if we get peace in Korea. In that event Mr. Attlee himself might think the moment had come to go to the country. It would, no doubt, be a strong temptation. But would there be such great electoral advantage for Labour in a Korean peace ? Experience teaches there is no gratitude in polities. Some may think it was proved to demonstration in the country's rejection of Mr. Churchill in 1945. Peace in Korea would bring great relief, but would the relief necessarily translate itself into votes for the Labour party to the extent necessary to convert the present Conservative lead (as attested by the Gallup Poll) into a Labour majority-? It is by no means certain it would. * * * * Meanwhile, the Labour Party is in the hushed state of expec- tancy proper on the eve of a revelation. The new Socialist gospel according to St. Aneurin is to be promulgated next week. The event has been excellently stage-managed, and nothing is wanting now but a few heavenly portents. Here is certainly something of the Lloyd George touch to which Mr. Bevan is supposed to aspire. One was struck this week by the resignation with which a respected member of the Labour party who has held junior office was accepting Mr. Bevan's eventual replacement of Mr. Attlee as next Labour Prime Minister. He is not enamoured of the change, but he thinks it inevitable. Taking it for granted that Labour Will be defeated at the election, he believes the period of opposition is the one opportunity needed by the 'destructive critic and word-spinner to run away with the leadership. * * * * Neither Mr. Attlee nor Mr. Morrison, it is reckoned, can hold his own against this fiery rival in opposition, while at the end of the five years, if the Conservative Government survived its full term, age would have removed them as serious contestants for the crown. But this reading of the future is surely too simple. At the end of five years Mr. Attlee will be 73 and Mr. Morrison 68, not necessarily years of senility. At the moment both men are remarkably full of go. They command, as Mr. Bevan does not, the trust of the great bulk of the party, but, more important, they represent, again as Mr. Bevan does not, the predominant central mind of the party. Why should Mr. Bevan inevitably dislodge Mr. Attlee or, alternatively, Mr. Morrison ? Mr. Bevan may, of course, change his spots, but at the moment he is the greatest class-warrior outside the ranks of the Marxists, the man who believes all political virtue and wisdom come out of the bottom- most drawer. This Bevan, one would say, could never become the leader of the Labour party whatever else happened to him.
* * * * There is another consideration. It is almost fatal to be con- fidently tipped for the Premiership. Think of the ex-future Prime Ministers there are at this moment at Westminster. Aspirants should pray to be ignored by the tipsters as Campbell-Bannerman was and Baldwin and Mr. Attlee himself. H. B.
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