The Guardian And Evening Star, with which inincorporated the West Coast Times. THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 1929.

Hokitika Guardian, 20 June 1929, Page 4

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which inincorporated the West Coast Times. THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 1929.

TH E. Hu USE OF COMMONS. Tun Mouse oi commons, Us composi--1011 now completed by tlie deferred election ol Luo member tor Rugby, presents, says ilic •Otago Times, a curious illustration of the prat-tical operation of the three-parly system. Lite Labour Government is representative of a party of 290 (including Sir William Jowiti, the Attorney-General, who was returned as a Liberal), m a Mouse of which the total membership is (SJo. 'J’he other parties and the independent members total 32b. Upon any issue, therefore, up.m which there miglit be a combination of all the antiijiuiour forces against it, the Government would lie in a minority of 3b. The Daily Telegraph, which is a Conservative paper, says that the country has confidence in tne Government. The actual veiling last month did not suggest this. The votes that were recorded for the Conservatives and Liberal dasulidates exceeded those recorded for the Labour candidates by more than live millions. The Labour Party enjoyed the luck of the election system, simply because it was favoured tit,rough the splitting of the antiLabour votes in the great majority of the electorates between the Conservative and Liberal candidates. And having been favoured in this way, it is not likely to be highly sympathetic to the cry which the Liberals are raising for a reform of the electoral system. The views of political parties re-, specting electoral systems are apt to he very considerably influenced by their own experiences of those systems. Though the Labour Government represents only a minority of the electors and a minority of the House of Commons, there would seem, if we correctly interpret the cabled references to the subject, to be every disposition to give it “a fair chance,” as the Daily telegraph puts it, “to make good.” ft may be inferred that this disposition will he all the stronger because me composition of the Government, as. well as its dependence for support upon sections of the House of Commons that are nominally opposed to it, furnishes a guarantee of the moderation of its proposals The extremist element of the Labour Party is, with one exception, excluded from the Government. On the other hand, office has been freely bestowed on former members of the Liberal Party, and at least one ex-Conscrvative is included in the personnel of the Government, ft is a Government of brain-workers as largely as of manual workers, and the manual workers in it have generally been associated with the trade union movement which is not identified with industrial extremism. Wealth and the aristocracy are both represented in the Government. The composition of it provokes, indeed, an interesting speculation, whether the prominent part that is taken by the “intelligentsia” and the well-to-do in the direction of the policy of file Labour Party at Home may not tend, sooner or later, to the disintegration of the party. In the meantime, however, the Government seems assured of a fair trial, unless there should he any unforeseen developments, the likelihood of a general election being precipitated early in tlie course of the Parliament is not very great. None of the parties can desire to incur the heavy expense of a fresh appeal to> the country in the near future, and the Government will probably he very careful to refrain from introducing proposals that might nave the effect of consolidating the anti-Labour vote in Parliament against it.