A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK C APTAIN PETER THORNEYCROFT'S suggestion of the possibility
of a Coalition Government is interesting by reason of the position Captain Thorneycroft occupies. A former junior Minister who sits by preference on a back bench, he stands well with his party, and at the same time can always be counted on for a certain independence of outlook. There is no reason to suppose that in throwing out feelers about a coalition he was expressing anyone's views but his own. The case for a coalition rests on the conviction that the present Government is not strong enough to handle a grave crisis. The difficulty about it is that it would be difficult to imagine Mr. Churchill taking second -place in any administration—Mr. Baldwin in 1931 was a different story—and next to impossible to imagine the Conservatives taking part in a Government part of whose business it was to carry out the steel nationalisation Act. Responsibility for driving on with that disastrous measure—when a postponement of the vesting date would be perfectly simple—rests heavy on the Prime Minister. On the whole it looks as though a Coalition Government, if it comes at all, would have to come after another General Election. Would Captain Thorneycroft, I wonder, welcome the idea as strongly if the Conservatives were returned with a good working majority ?
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