The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND MONDAY, JANUARY 20, 1930 NO “SAVING OF POLITICAL SKINS”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 875, 20 January 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND MONDAY, JANUARY 20, 1930 NO “SAVING OF POLITICAL SKINS ”

A‘S Leader of the Reform Opposition, the Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates lias made a quick end to the plea for a fusion of his party with that of the Ward Government on the nebulous terms suggested by Mr. A. E. Davy, the disgruntled and obviously disillusioned chairman of the United Party. The vague talk about reducing political parties to two distinctly different groups - —anti-Socialists and Socialistic Labour (with presumably Mr. Davy as master organiser for the royal blue group)—has not dimmed Mr. Coates’s perception of the real purpose of the plaintive cry for fusion. It is as clear to the Opposition Leader as it is to everybody else with eyes to see with that a desperate party merely seeks an agreeable way of escape from its early doom. Mr. Coates has no desire to link himself or his party with a scheme which in practice would serve as a method of “savingpolitical skins.” No other interpretation of the purpose of Mr. Davy’s suggestion could have been made reasonably by Mr. Coates, whose terse comment last Saturday that any structure raised on such a basis of party fusion could not endure cannot be challenged with hope of convincing anybody except the challengers. With all Its faults and failings, the Reform Party at least has been true to its own ideals and principles, and it would be an act of foolishness now to make them plastic enough to absorb the queer stuff of which the United Party was formed. And to be quite candid about the matter, Mr. Davy has lost the right to he hailed by any party as a political architect with inspired ability to build new parties. He need only look at the United Party as his latest political creation in ordei' to see the extent of his failure. It was established in assertion that its service would prove beyond all doubt that the Reform Party had everything to learn from the United Party. Indeed, the Dominion was guaranteed the early prospect of a new heaven and a new earth in the political sphere. A year or so has sufficed to turn illusion into delusion and to compel the mastei'-builder of the United Party structure to condemn its rickety character, and to appeal for Reform reinforcement. The Leader of the Reform Party has done the right thing in declaring that, while he will not accept fusion as a means of saving the United Party’s skins, he would “welcome support from anyone who is in accord with the objects and principles for which the Reform Party stands.” This attitude opens the Reform door to those members of the United Party who realise that the party’s days are numbered and its doom politically ordained. But those who enter will have to understand clearly that entrance will not give them the right to dictate terms or to barter for administrative position and power. As Mr. Coates has phrased it, there can be no patchwork fusion between the parties and no trifling with fixed principles. Thus, if any members of the hopeless Government Party wish to gain the shelter of the Refoi’m fold, they must be prepared to accept and support Reform policy, and be done with “impossible promises.” These terms may seem bard to a disillusioned group of politicians whose plight is pathetic. It would be a travesty of good sentiment to waste any sympathy on the futile party. From the inception of the United Government, it has been plain that the party (as already noted in this column) has neither direction nor administrative inspiration. It does not even have a bannei’ with a strange device; its banner has no device at all. The Government began in weakness and has failed to acquire strength. Its organisers and special pleaders may talk of the danger of national disaster through the advent of Socialistic Labour. That remote prospect is not the terror of Mr. Davy or his party. Their fear is the decay of the United Party, There is a great chance for a strong party with cast-ii-on principles. Such a party will not he raised on a basis of desperate fusion.