A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
LIBERAL party politics are no concern of mine, but it strikes me as a little singular that, at a time when party politics generally are in abeyance, there should be enough party politics among Liberals to keep two Liberal parties going. A good deal seems to be claimed implicitly in the term National Liberals, but it may be noted that it is to a non-National Liberal that the most important of all the Service Ministries (I can forgive Mr. Alexander if he disagrees with me on this) is entrusted. Everyone is a Government supporter nowadays and one would suppose it was political Euclid that parties which are supporters of the same thing are supporters of one another. So far as there have been differences in the recent past, the National Liberals tended to appeasement when the Independent Liberals denounced that policy. But appeasement is stone-dead now, and unless the strain of individualism innate in Liberals is so persistent as to make a fissure inevitable it would seem elementary sense for them to support the Govern- ment as a united whole instead of as two logicless halves. I believe a good many National Liberals are coming to that con- clusion and I should hope the Independents would respond to any advance. The day will come when a strong Liberal Party will be a national necessity, and some left-wing Conservatives, as well as the handful of National Labour members, might find themselves more at home in it than anywhere else.
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