THE VALUE OF THE PARTY SYSTEM.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—The real issue in the election has been curiously overlooked. The primary issue was the Restoration of the Party System ; which Party should be entrusted with the government was only the secondary issue. Mr. Lloyd George, perhaps from ignorance, perhaps deliberately, substi- tuted another issue altogether, and a false one. He went about the country shouting that the revolt of the Con- servatives had raised the question, " Party before the Nation," and that he alone with his faithful followers " stood for Britain." Without doubt, that part of the electorate which still believes in him were influenced by this false cry, and had a little more attention been paid to counteracting it I cannot doubt but that many of the constituencies would have voted otherwise than they did. Mr. Lloyd George's ignorance of the Constitution may perhaps be excused ; he is ignorant of so many things which concern the govern- ment of this country. But his principal adviser, Lord Birkenhead, must have known better. lie, at least, must have known that all the talk about the country needing all its first-class Brains, irrespective of Party creeds, to co-operate in its government was stuff and nonsense. He, at leaSt, must have known that a Coalition can only exist
In the presence of the great national danger war, and that the condition of its existence is that all disputed questions on which the two great Parties of the State think differently are put on one side ; that, therefore, when the danger has passed away the Coalition must disappear and the normal method of government be resumed. " The country hates coalitions " is not a mere historical aphorism ; it is a fact that the Party System has made England what she is and the Assembly at Westminster come to be recognized the world over as the Mother of Parliaments. The ex-Lord Chancellor must at least have known that her offspring in the Great Dominions have adopted the System with the same success, that other nations seek to emulate her example, and that the measure of the stability of their governments is their success or failure in assimilating it. If these men, in their great immodesty proclaiming themselves the " Best Brains " in the country, do not know this, they should go to a Board school and learn the rudiments of statesmanship. The Party System is based on two facts : one, that public opinion in England has from (so far as we of to-day are concerned) time immemorial divided itself into two great groups of political thought ; the other, that there is no Third Party Lobby, and when the division bell rings all must be simply " Ayes " or " Noes," because there are only two ways out of the House, one to the right and the other to the left of the Speaker's Chair. The country dislikes the existence of a group of men who now vote one way, now another. The so-called Labour Party only exists to get what it wants for Labour, and will vote for whichever Party seems most likely to grant it. It occupies precisely the same position as the old Irish Party ; and it can only have been the most pro- found ignorance of statecraft which can have induced Mr. Lloyd George and Lord Birkenhead seriously to recommend to the electorate the formation of a " strong group of inde- pendent men freed from Party ties." In rejecting their advice the people have shown that they desire stable govern- ment ; and the best occupation for these Best Brains in their enforced leisure would be a study of the parliamentary history of their country.—I am, Sir, &c., IOTA SLBSCRIPT.
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