Though as we write on Friday the returns are not
complete, it is evident that the Progressives have suffered very severely in the borough elections in London, and that the Municipal Reformers, the main plank of whose platform 'was retrench- ment, have received a very great deal of popular support. In many boroughs the Municipal Reformers have made a clean sweep, and in what were once the strongholds of the Progressives their gains have been large. Not only in London, but throughout the country, the Labour Party seems to have suffered a severe check. Taking the returns as a whole, they show what we have never doubted for an instant,—that the great majority of the British people are not Socialists and do not desire wasteful municipal expendi- ture, and that any momentary gain by the party whose policy is to dip deep into the public purse will always be followed by a strong reaction. We note with pleasure that Mr. J. S. Nettlefold, the Unionist Free-trader of Birmingham, has been re-elected for Edgbaston, in spite of the fact that the whole of the Chamberlain and Tariff Reform influence was cast against him. It is a long time since the Chamberlain dominance in Birmingham has received such a rebuff.
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