The result of the election has put Mr. Attlee into a position of almost intolerable uncertainty and he can take no decision without immediate conference with his Cabinet colleagues. A Cabinet meeting will be held to-morrow so that some of the many obscure consequences of the near-deadlock may be studied.
Mr. Attlee has been given a majority and robbed of power. He was in conference with one or two senior colleagues to-day. It is probable that the Labour Ministers will adopt the view that an overall majority in these circumstances, however small, compels them to continue in government.
That is the probability. But they have suffered a moral defeat and in fact the total anti-Socialist poll is greater than the Socialist vote. Moreover, no Government could relish the task of trying to conduct the business of Parliament on the basis of a majority which an epidemic of influenza might remove overnight.
MEMORIES OF 1924
The Parliamentary prospect is simply appalling. But the survey which Ministers make to-morrow must cover a far wider field than this. The prevailing view among the leaders of the Labour movement may be that they have already been reduced to a state which is in effect that of a minority Government, and the memories of 1924 and 1929 are so deep and so bitter that they might prefer almost any course to that of holding office on such terms.
Alternatives to a Labour Government cannot be shaped by Ministers alone. Would it be possible that Mr. Churchill might agree himself to form a minority Government with tacit or explicit assurances from Labour to permit the performance of some urgent and essential Parliamentary business until both sides have had time to look round and consider what is the best to be done to end the stalemate?
It might conceivably be easier for Labour to practise temporarily a form of passive resistance instead of trying to carry out a programme (even though the programme were modified) for which they have received no certain endorsement from the country. Ministers quite frankly are bewildered by the interpretation of the Liberal vote, and can make no estimate of what the handful of Liberal members in the house will do.
When the question of another general election is gone into by the parties the future of the Liberals will become a big factor in the calculations. It is impossible to believe that the Liberal party in the near future could repeat an effort on the scale it has just made. Perhaps a large part of the vote that was cast for Liberal candidates would in a new general election be there for whichever of the two major parties could win it. And with so many results turning on less than a thousand votes this might make a difference between a bare majority and a working one.
