Parliamentary Notes
NOTHING like the present House of Commons has been seen since the Coalition Parliament of 1918. Those who looked down upon it during the opening day of the debate on the Address on Tuesday saw the same seething flood of Government supporters, and the same tiny island of an Opposition ; and detected at least the beginnings of similar cross-currents in the flood and of earthquakes in the island. The resemblance is, however, more 'superficial than real, as was at once evident when Mr. Lansbury tried to labour it. The Coalition of 1918 set out confidently towards the speedy creation of a new Heaven and a new Earth. The Coalition of 1931 is setting out resolutely towards the much more practical and realistic object of saving the fragments of an old Earth, which is at least preferable to the chaos of which all its members have had a shuddering glimpse. Mr. Lansbury's contention—and he put very little else into the Opposition case—was that a Government had only to call itself National in order to be damnable. If the Opposition is really to play any effective part in this Parliament it must produce more than the conventional whines of the defeated.
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