AT WESTMINSTER
0 NE of the troubles of the Labour Party is its large bump of superiority. Six years of power have gone to its head. It would claim, certainly not a divine right, but a superior capacity to rule. It has behaved towards the present Government as though the saying about the Tories being the " stupid party " was not a jest but an axiom. Ever since the Government took office the Opposition has confronted it as though any fool could see that this was an administration that must soon fall to pieces because of its plain incompetence, whereupon the rule of the saints could begin anew. Is Hubris bringing once again its punishment, for after the meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party in the Grand Committee Room it looks as if the Labour Party is in more danger of falling to pieces than the Tory ? „ * * * * But it is not the Attlee-Bevan schism that has stirred these thoughts. It is the Budget. The party's supreme complacency has been seen on the food subsidies. - Let Mr. Butler touch food subsidies and we have him on the hip and at the same time our own divisions will be conjured away." If ever a party could be said to have metaphorically rubbed its hands it was the Labour Party when Mr. Butler announced he was going to reduce the subsidies by £160 millions and when, with cool imperturbability, he recounted the exact rise in food prices this would entail. During this time the Tories were suffering anguish. " Merciful heaVens," their demeanour seemed to say, " the man has delivered us to the enemy to be spoiled." And the smiles Labour back-benchers exchanged with one another and front-benchers occasionally turned on their followers in the rear announced that Mr. Butler was digging a pit in which the Tories would be buried for ever.
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Gradually, and with a wisp of a smile playing about the corner of his mouth. Mr. Butler performed his transformation act. The business was raised to the plane of high and delicious comedy. As in a flash of revelation the Opposition began to discover that the Butler brain is no myth, but was verily at work under their noses. Calmly, effortlessly, he pro- duced his compensatory measures to offset the rise in food prices and his incentive tax concessions. A perplexed silence fell on the Opposition, and the Tories gave vent to a jubilant roar for a Budget that had started the country on a clean break from a rigid, frustrating economy. Mr. Attlee could not conceal the fix he was in. He spoke for two minutes, saying, in effect, that he wanted to go home to his slide-rule to work out how gains stood to losses before committing himself further. The back-benchers were just as flummoxed. Up to 1945 it was a tradition that the House adjourned after the Budget speech and the Leader of the Opposition's reply. Since 1945 the Labour rank-and-file have given way to their speaking itch and kept the debate going until the last permitted moment —ten o'clock. On Tuesday they, too, decided that the safer part was to consult the slide-rule before saying anything and the Chamber was deserted by 7 p.m. Now we must wait and see what the slide-rule produces.
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The Attlee-Bevan war has been resounding on every hand. There never was such flurry and fluster. Mr. Attlee dived into one room to consult with his " shadow " Cabinet. Mr. Bevan, swept imperiously into another to meet the core of his faithful, known to be beyond possibility of fissile action. Mr. Freeman next whistled up all the fifty-seven mutineers for a palaver, what time Mr. Marquand summoned any and every- body who was for plastering the division over with a formula. Then came Tuesday morning and the full assembly of the party in the Grand Committee Room and we all held our breath. Here—and there is no disguising it—Mr. Attlee met his first reverse at a party meeting. It refused to accept or, if you like, evaded his motion asking that the mutkneers should be censured. The conflict merely sleeps. H. B.
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