The Press Wednesday July 1, 1925. The Strength of Parties.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18422, 1 July 1925, Page 8

The Press Wednesday July 1, 1925. The Strength of Parties.

A correspondent has written to us expressing surprise at our estimate that 75 per cent, of the moderate voters are supporters of the Government and asking upon what the estimate is based. Since the point is obviously one of much more than statistical interest, and is one which has been very generally overlooked, we cannot do better than give the reasons for our statement, and we must begin with a short and simple table showing how the electors voted in 1911, the year before Reform took office, and in 1922. Per cent. Per cent. Year of Year of J 0)1. Total. 1922. Total. Reform .. 3 65,021 35.8 257,016 43.5 Libnral . . 11H.047 41.3 125,Gd0 i! 1.2 Labour & Indcpcndcnl 103,510 22.4 208,547 35.3 Tho shrinkage in the Liberals' percentage of the people's vote was continuous, and wc do not suppose that anybody even the diehard Liberals who may deny—that since 1922 the drift Left and Right from the Liberal body has been accelerated. It could hardly be otherwise, for the Liberal Party has had no distinctive character or policy to arrest the flight of its supporters. Everyone knows that the Liberal voters in 1922, in earlier years, comprised both moderates and Socialists —tho moderates being in the main creatures of habit, believing that the Liberal Party might still have a future, while the ethers were Socialists "who expected from the Liberal Party as large a measure of radical change as the Labour Party could bring about. Sonio of the Labour members have lately been claiming that 85 per cent, of those who have been voting Liberal in the past are really Labourites. It would strengthen our claim very greatly if this were true, but we do not at all believe that it is true. A much more reasonable suggestion would be that the Liberal voters were made up equally of moderates and Socialists. This would give us about 320,000 moderates and over 60,000 Socialists. Of the 208,547 Labour and Independent voters about 170,000 were Labourites, and about 40,000 were moderates, of whom half may be reckoned as Reformers and half as Liberals. Of the 360,000 moderates, therefore, over 270,000 were on the Reform side. This was the actual basis of our estimate, and it obviously does not err in favour of the Reform Party; and it must also be remembered that since 1922 the electorate has become increasingly aAvarc of the real political issue, and that moderate men of progressive outlook everywhere have been realising, in increasing numbers, that the challenge of the revolutionary Labour Party cannot be effectively met except under the flag of the Government!

These arc considerations which are unlikely to weigh with the leading members of the Liberal Party, but they will weigh with the electors. Amongst the large public for which "' The Press " can claim to speak there are not many who do not desire a real fusion of the moderate electors and a fusion, also, of the Parties if that can be arranged without any sacrifice of Reform principles and interests. Pew. of them, however, share that feeling which has found expression in certain quarters, that the Reformers must facilitate fusion at any cost; and still less do they share the opinion that the country .will blame the Reform Party if the negotiations for fusion come to nothing. For if tho Liberal Party should persist, as a Party, in fighting Reform at the polls, tho electors will recognise that it is a minority seeking to prevent the consolidation of the moderate forces and, as a result, to strengthen the position of the Reds. But this is a situation which one may hope the common-sense of a sufficient number of Liberal members will make it unnecessary to contemplate, and we should not have considered it had not the representatives of the small " die--hard*' section of the Liberal Party been using the language of menace.