AN IMPOTENT OPPOSITION
THE session of Parliament which (unless events necessitate an unexpected curtailment of the recess) ends this week gives the Government legitimate ground for satisfaction. It has seen a change of sovereign and a change of Prime Minister, a Coronation and an Imperial Conference. The foreign situation has at every moment caused grave anxiety, and the Govern- ment's handling of the Spanish conflict in its -inter- national bearing has been, the object of perpetual, and often petulant, attack by the Opposition. But in the foreign field a treaty of friendship and alliance with Egypt has been approved and the abolition of the capitulations in that country amicably arranged. A formidable rearmament programme has been launched, a Factories Bill of great importance has been carried into law and a private member has achieved a signal triumph by securing the passage of a Marriage Bill which brings the law on divorce into closer conformity with what is unquestionably the general desire of the country. Neither the substitution of Mr. Chamberlain for Earl Baldwin nor the Cabinet changes which followed as a consequence have in any way weakened the Govern- ment in the House or the country, and no one doubts that the retention of every seat by the Government at the thirteen by-elections recently contested accurately represents the attitude of the electors towards its policy. The vote in most cases was small, and the natural inference is that those abstaining were content with things as they are.
But that is not all the truth. It leaves out of account one outstanding factor in the situation, the lamentable failure of the Opposition as a Parliamentary force. The Government's record is by no means such as to disarm criticism. It has emitted a stream of estimable sentiments on the removal of obstacles to international trade and done nothing visible to translate them into action. It has given little public indication, whatever its private convictions may be, of appreciating the broad grounds for a trade treaty with the United States. And it was able to retreat unscathed from its first failure over the National Defence Contribution only because there was no one in the House of Commons, outside the ranks of the Government's own supporters and one or two independents like Sir Arthur Salter, to drive home criticisms of the measure with intelli- gence and force. That sufficiently explains the apathy of the electors. They had few opportunities of voting for Liberals ; most of the few candidates of that party who did stand secured an increased vote on a smaller poll. And they had little incentive to vote for the strengthening of a Labour Opposition which has proved itself so inept at its prime business of opposing.
This is a matter over which su?porters as well as opponents of the National Government may well feel concern, for it affects the whole working of our Parlia- mentary system. The strength of Parliament in Great Britain has hitherto lain in the fact that there was always on the Front Bench to the Speaker's left a set of men, most of them with Cabinet experience behind them, capable of directing responsible and instructed criticism at the Government's administrative measures and legislative proposals, and capable equally at any moment , of forming an alternative administration if the Government of the day should forfeit public con- fidence. It was on that principle that the recent decision to pay a salary to the Leader of the Opposition out of the Consolidated Fund was based. The lack today of an Opposition capable of discharging those functions is not the Opposition's fault alone. It is the result in part of the system of National Government under which we have lived since 1931. Whatever may be said of that system, there is this to be said against it, that its existence seriously limits the number of possible alternative Ministers. The National Liberal and National Labour sections on the Government side consist of men who normally would be helping to constitute an efficient Opposition. It is obviously more important to have an efficient Government than an efficient Opposition, but our Parliamentary system for full success needs both. In, a world whose instability is its most conspicuous feature the existence in this country of a stable Government is a factor of inestimable value, but that justification of a National Government in present circumstances must not obscure the price we have to pay for it—a price which, when normal conditions return, may well be too high.
But this in no way condones the Opposition's impo- tence. It is impotent partly through lack of experience of the responsibilities of office---Mr. Alexander, Captain Wedgwood Benn, Mr. Lees-Smith and Mr. Clynes (who rarely figures in debate) are the only Labour Front Bench men who have held major office, and the most formidable critics of the Government have to be sought among its own back-benchers, like Mr. Churchill and Mr. Amery, and, till recently, Sir Austen Chamberlain and Sir Robert Home—and partly through its own uncertainties and divisions. The sober and conservative trade unions and the more impetuous intellectuals are widely sundered, and their dissensions are dramatically and deplorably reflected in the House itself Labour has never in this House had a clear and united policy on the all-important question of rearmament, and nothing could be more characteristic than the situation which arose last week, when the desire of the principal 'eaders of the party to vote against the Defence estimates was overruled (very rightly) by the rank-and-file by a narrow vote, with more members abstaining than voted at all. A fortnight earlier a still more unfortunate exhibition was witnessed, -when the Opposition (against the better judgement, rumour had it, of Mr. Attlee) irresponsibly forced still one more debate on non-intervention in Spain at a moment when negotiations initiated by this country were known to be at their most critical point. Almost simultaneously, in a debate in the domestic field, after support of a Government measure had been announced by the official Labour speakers, the heretic Sir Stafford Cripps led an attack on it and orders were hastily given for the party to support him in the lobby. A party thus disintegrated and vacillating can give the Government no anxiety and the electors no hope.
In the weeks that now intervene before the re-assemb- ling of Farliament the need of such vigilant criticism as any Opposition should bring to bear on any Government will inevitably be felt, as it is in any Parliamentary recess. And when the House does meet again the need for an effective Opposition will be as acute as ever. There is not much immediate prospect of improvement. In a more distant future, if the moment ever comes when foreign preoccupations cease to overshadow domestic, it is hard to believe that there will be no room for a party which, while rejecting the wholesale " nationalisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange " sponsored by Labour, will fight resolutely for the freeing of trade from artificial shackles, the rehabilitation of the League of Nations and a vigorous social reform pro- gramme at home. Whether that role can be filled by a resuscitated Liberal Party depends on many things— primarily. on whether disillusionment with the Labour Party as a Parliamentary force is sufficient to drive pro- gressive electors who will never vote Conservative into the Liberal camp, and secondarily on how many present Liberal supporters of the Government who protest that entry into a temporary coalition implies no abandonment of Liberal principles are prepared in other circum- stances to declare themselves Liberals sans phrase. These are obvious and interesting possibilities, but it remains true that the greatest handicap to Liberalism as a political party is the liberal-mindedness of the country as a whole.
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