The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1928. BRITISH POLITICAL PROSPECTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 230, 28 September 1928, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1928. BRITISH POLITICAL PROSPECTS.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the tcrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

Though the next general election at Home is still many months away, the political parties are already organising their forces tor the coming campaign. The Conservatives are now holding a great conference at Yarmouth, and the Liberals are to follow suit with a similar convention at the same place next week. Meantime the Labour Party is to open its annual conference on Sunday at Birmingham; so that within a few days the electors of Britain will be able to examine the party programmes at length and to decide within certain limits what course they will take individually when polling day comes round.

Naturally a great deal of interest attaches to the main features of the various "platforms." Apparently the Conservatives intend to lay more stress than before on the defence of the British producer against foreign competition. But it is still improbable that this enthusiasm for ''the safeguarding of industries" will develop' anything even remotely resembling Protection on a national scale. Liberalism does not appear to have manifested any new characteristic of late, but the menace of Protection, however carefully disguised, has evoked renewed Liberal professions of faith in Laissez Faire. As to Labour, while still laying stress on its Socialist programme, it is now chiefly occupied with the task of purging itself of the Communist heresy; and though the party has now declared definitely against Bolshevism and all its works, the division in its ranks must have the effect of weakening it in the struggle against better organised and more closely united antagonists.

More especially, in view of the so-callcd "flapper" vote and the impossibility of predicting its effects, it would be rash to prophesy the results of the next election. But in spite of the "deplorable bungling'' in foreign policy which the leading newspapers have condemned so frankly and in spite of the failure of Mr. Baldwin and his colleagues to satisfy the masses by their domestic administration, the Conservatives are numerically strong, and they have the advantage not only of holding office, but of presenting a united front to their divided opponents. So difficult is it under present conditions to imagine either Labour or the Liberals defeating the Conservatives singlehanded that a proposal for an alliance between tho two parties is now under serious consideration. In all probability such a compact would cover only the expulsion of the Conservatives from power; but though there are many obvious difficulties in the way, the scheme is by no means outside the range of practical politics.