Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit MONDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1950. ELECTION IN BRITAIN

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 114, 27 February 1950, Page 2

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit MONDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1950. ELECTION IN BRITAIN

All sorts of views have been expressed concerning the result of the election in Britain and the course which will be followed by the Government, but it is unlikely that anything definite will be known until Mr Attlee liras had time to confer with his ministers and also with the executive of the Labour Party. The view is held in some quarters that, having secured the backing of 13,000,000 voters, the duty of the Government is to continue in office, but against" that is the fact that 12,000,000 voted for the Conservatives and 2,500,000 for the Liberals. That shows that the electorate is, to all intents and purpbses, evenly split, and so actually the Government lhas no clear mandate to continue in office. On the i basis of the seats obtained,, Labour has a clear majority over the other two parties, but the majority is so slender as to make-Mr Attlee’s position most precarious. In a House of 625 members, and with a majority of only about a dozen to work on, he has to guard against illness and the unavoidable absence of members. In the even of a snap division the Government might well taste of defeat within a few weeks of parliament resuming. But the effect of so small a majority on tlhe working* of the country can be very pronounced. It can be taken for certain that there will be no further nationalisation of industry, for the voting clearly reveals that Mr Attlee has lost the confidence of a large section of the public: The party went to the people on its domestic policy, almost totally excluding foreign policy, with the result anything but a happy one. It is possible, of course, that the Government might seek a working alliance with the Liberals, but this is hardly likely after the experience of 1929-31, when Labour held office with the support of the Liberals. Most comment appears to be based on the possibility of another election in a few months in order to try and secure a Government which, will be sufficiently strong enough to handle all the pressing problems of the moment. Should such a move eventuate, it would be useless for the Liberals to again attempt to win favour. The people showed quite clearly that they did not want this party, and 'in many places where there were three-cornered contests, the Conservatives would probably have won had they been given this non-Labour vote. The Communists, too, were slaughtered, and they can also be left out of future calculations. Summed up, then, the position at the moment seems to be that the Labour Party, while it has an overall majority, is not strong enough to govern efficiently *, it is not likely to try and secure the support of the few elected Liberals; and the most probable outcome is another election. With a straight-out contest between the two parties, it is not improbable that the Government would suffer defeat.