A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK N 0 one could charge Mr. Churchill with
a deficiency of audacity, and there was a certain entertainment in those passages of his broadcast last Saturday in which he deplored with the utmost gravity the party animosities that have of late been manifesting themselves in the House of Commons. I have no doubt that Mr. Churchill quite genuinely deplores the spectacle the House of Commons has of late been presenting to the public, but he is sufficient of a tactician to know that the best defence is attack. Hence his tactics on Saturday. It was undeniably a good broadcast, with no echo of the old " Gestapo " method. though hearers were left to put their own construction on the closing words of the declaration that the Conservative Party have decided to do their utmost to bring about an appeal to the nation at the earliest moment, " and to use to the full our Parliamentary and constitutional rights for that purpose." You can do a great deal in the way of obstruction and nuisance-making in the House of Commons without going beyond your Parliamentary and constitutional rights if you know your Erskine May well enough ; and no doubt some Conservative Members have studied that classic volume exhaustively. Whether that strategy is really going to pay the party at the polls might be wORh considering.
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