A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
"THE country," said the retiring President of the League of Young Liberals on Monday (Easter having perhaps got into his blood), " is ripe for a complete political landslide that will drive the National Government out of office, and may put Liberals back in power for a generation." Is this sheer moonshine ? Or what does it mean ? Conceivably, I suppose, that if the country knew where its true interest lay it would send Liberal candidates back to Westminster by the hundred. With that interpretation I should certainly not quarrel ; nothing could be better for the country than another Liberal Government like that of r906. But the words will hardly be twisted into that meaning. On the face of it they signify not merely what is desirable but what is probable. And Liberals in this context, it must be remembered, pre- sumably mean Liberals of the Opposition section, for it is to that that the League of Young Liberals belongs. What conceivable basis is there for such a prediction ? At the last General Election about a score of Opposition Liberals were returned to the House, and hardly one of them with an English seat can count with any certainty on getting back next time. At by-election after by-election the Liberals have let the contest go without putting up a candidate at all, and of the few that did put up none except Mr. Isaac Foot came anywhere within sight of success. Electoral prospects are singularly difficult to assess, but my reading of all the signs available is —in spite of Ipswich and West Fulham—that the country as a whole feels that the Government, with all its faults, has kept Great Britain out of war, and it cares so much more about that than about anything else that it is in no mood to hand over power to another party which may land us in trouble.
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