LABOUR TAKES OFFICE AT KING’S INVITATION

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 262, 26 January 1928, Page 11

LABOUR TAKES OFFICE AT KING’S INVITATION

POLITICS IN NORWAY By Cable. —Press Association. — Copyright. OSLO, Wednesday. Acting against the advice of M. Ivar Lykke, who has resigned the Prime Ministership, King Haakon has invited the Labour Party, the strongest section in the Storthing, to form a Cabinet. The leaders have consented, and so Norway’s first Labour Government will be, due to the King’s initiative. The Prime Minister, however, will not be the Labour leader, M. Alfred Madsen, who is too deeply compromised with the Soviet sympathisers, but M. Christopher Hornsrud, a farmer, who is the vice-chairman of the party. The Government will not contain any Communists, but only orthodox Labour members, who will be obliged to follow a moderate policy.—A. and N.Z. When the Government of M. Ivar Lykke resigned on January 21, he advised King Haakon to invite M. Mellbye to form a Government, probably a bourgeois coalition. M. Lykke was born in 1872, and from 190 T to 1913 he held the post of Russian Consul at Trondhjem. I n 1916 he was elected to the Storthing, and since 1923 has been president of the Chamber and the Parliamentary leader of the Conservatives, who are opposed to prohibition. In the same year he was a delegate to the . League of Nations. The state of parties in the Storthing, which meets every year, when it met after the elections of 1925, was: Conservatives an(\ Moderate Liberals, 54; Liberals, 34; Communists, 30; Agricultural Party, 22; Socialists, 8; Democrats, 2.