I call the British Parliament an absurd body with set and measured intention. It is twice as big as it ought to be for efficient government; it carries a load, a fatty encumbrance, of more than three hundred undistinguished and useless members; much of its procedure, its method of taking divisions for example, is idiotically wasteful of the nation’s time; and it is elected by methods so childishly crude that it represents neither the will nor the energy nor the intelligence of the country. It dissipates and caricatures the national consciousness. Assembled, it will have nothing definite to say to France, Germany, Russia, America, or to the festering mass of British unemployed. From the Parliamentary point of view that sort of thing is subsidiary. Its party leaders will engage at once in the primary business of party leaders, which is, of course, to secure the sweets of office as speedily and securely as possible. The broad lines of the game to be played this year are now fairly evident. They raise a number of profoundly interesting questions. The Conservative Party is the strongest of the three, but the Government it supports can be and will be turned out of office by a vote of “no confidence,” in which the Liberals, the smallest party of all, will support the Labour motion. The King will then send for Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, the leader of the Opposition, and ask him to form a Government. This Mr. MacDonald says he intends to do. He will have the qualified support of the Liberal Party. Almost immediately the Labour Party will have to produce its Budget. The prophets foretell two alternatives. The Labour Government will produce a weak, individualistic Budget, an apologetic, compromising, imitative affair; it will drop or reserve almost all its Socialistic ideas, and it will be permitted to continue in office under the distinguished patronage--gracefully and frequently reiterated--of Mr. Asquith, so long as its good behaviour continues. Everyone will praise Mr. Ramsay MacDonald’s statesmanlike moderation, and when at last the Party has to face the constituencies----But it will have no face left for the constituencies. A mass of votes will drift back to Liberalism, which by that time will be seen to be just as good as Labour or better, and the crowd of unemployed, the poor, the disinherited, and all who are really weary and angry with the exploits and adventures of the untrammelled rich, will turn their faces away from the Labour Party and Parliamentary methods towards revolution. But the Liberal politicians will take little heed of the latter drift because it is outside the scope of Parliamentary procedure.