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NEW ZEALAND: Swing to Left

1 minute read
TIME

Big, sleek, masterful Sir Joseph Ward completed, last week, a remarkable comeback to Power. He was last Prime Minister from 1906 to 1912. Prior to the Parliamentary Election of last month he welded disaffected groups into the new Union Party (TIME, Nov. 26), and when ballots were counted was found to control only two less Parliamentary seats than the Reform Party of Prime Minister Joseph Gordon Coates.

Having scored such a victory Sir Joseph had only to magnetize into his Union Party a few more Independents, ere he could overthrow the Coates Cabinet and resume the Prime Ministry—after 16 years.

Last week this comeback was masterfully staged. Today Sir Joseph Ward is again “His Majesty’s Prime Minister in New Zealand.” This development, portentous, means that New Zealand has swung away from the intense conservatism and empire loyalty of Mr. Coates, to a judicious but advanced liberalism stopping just short of radicalism. The prolonged unemployment crisis through which the Dominion is still struggling probably accounts for this shift to the left.

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