Jan, 2
The statement of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald to the Labour Party, a summary of which we publish to-day, is but one more out of many indications that Great Britain is on the eve of a general election. There is no announcement yet as to when it will be held, whether Mr. Baldwin will wait until the autumn before dissolving Parliament, and it will certainly be interesting to see what tactics he decides to adopt in this respect. One element out of many always influences the time at which an election will be held, and this is the harvest, for if it be bountiful the country will generally be found to be in good humour and the outgoing party, provided it has behaved itself with a certain decency as regards taxation, may hope to reap a benefit which it has done nothing actually to deserve. Of course, there is always the desire to get the agricultural vote, and an election in the midst of harvest. time would prevent a very large number of people from particfpating, while the astute politician' also endeavours to make his appeal to the country: fit in with the time when the great fishing population of the east coast is not at sea and so can attend the polls. At any: time a snap vote, resulting in the defeat of the party in Power, may upset all such calculations, but it is unlikely'
the present state of the House of Commons that anything of the kind can take place, and so Mr. Baldwin will have the advantage of choosing his own time for his appeal to the country.
In the most recent of the Parliamentary debates, the House was more concerned over a non-political -issue—that of the new Prayer Book—than anything. of a party controversial issue, and the last effort of the Labour Party to tackle the government in a debate on the po-ion of the coal mines was so badly bungled that it did no edit to the Labour leaders who have generally shown themselves, to be clever parliamentarians and good debaters, In the circumstances interest in the election situation has lately cen-fred upon the Labour proposal for a surtax on unearned incomes of over five hundred pounds a year, and so much prominence has been given to this that it may well be imagined that a good part of the coming election fight will be over it. The proposers of this meas-suggest that it will br in £85,000,000 annually, and this very fact would make a popular appeal to their principal supporters, those who do not come within the scope of its opera tion. Already, however, it has lost the Labour Party one of its leaders, for Mr. Philip Snowden, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Mr. Ramsay MacDo ministration, has. for the reason that he up the view held by most. economists that nothing like such an amount of money will be forthcoming from the scheme, An important question is whether the electorate can persuaded that Mr. Snowden and the economists are right, whether it will allow itself to be fascinated by the access of revenue promised from the pock ets of the bourgeoisie, Tt is axiomatic that an electorate believes what it wishes to, but in this case it will have to swallow bhara to believe that all this revenue will be forthcoming, ax the total has already been vigorously attacked and the flaws in the caxe made amply clear. What the protagonists forgot ix that when this figure wax evolved from the minority of the Colwyn Committee the total took into account the possibility of taxing all "unearned" incomes kuch as those from reserves of companies, and ax the "Spectator" recently said any such measure would deliver a staggering blow at industry.
en if the present Labour proposals do not include such taxa the very possibility, that might be made to do uild_ be sufficient to put the majority of people on their guard against a government tending towards such legislation, while the exclusion of a tax on reserves would rob the proposal of much of its apparent attractiveness. Tu the circumstances one cannot but come to the conclusion that the Labour Party has up to the present fai ed to evolve a programme of any special popularity on which to 0 to the countts
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.