a hung parliament
May. 6th, 2010 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacIt currently appears that the UK general election dust will settle with the Conservatives as the largest party but short of a majority of seats, what is known as a hung parliament. What happens next? As an overseas student of British political history, I can help point a few lights on the subject.
There were two significant hung parliaments in the last century, one in 1923-24, in which the circumstances were quite different from the current one, and the other in 1974, which was very similar, except that the two major parties have exchanged places in the drama. So I'll leave the first out, at least for now, and consider the second.
In the early 1970s, the incumbent Conservative government were having problems dealing with what they saw as obstreperous and overweaning union demands and behavior. In February 1974, the prime minister, Edward Heath, called an early election on the theme, "Who governs Britain?" Descriptions of the election always say that the answer was, "Not you, buster," but in fact the Conservatives received, by a modest margin, the most votes. Due to the vagaries of seat allocation, however, they did not get the most seats, being 4 behind the opposition Labour.
Now, British constitutional practice grew up back in the days when there were no formal parties, just ill-defined factions and many independents. (The "whigs" and "tories" of lore were tendencies and collections of groups, not a rigid dividing line.) The ministers were the monarch's appointees, and their job was - by deals, perks, bribery, or whatever - to round up enough parliamentary votes to pass their tax proposals and other measures. Only when they could no longer succeed at this did they have to give up and resign, and let someone else have a try at governing.
So the constitutional principle has been that the government remains the government until it no longer has "the confidence of parliament," as the phrase is. Only in the late 19th century did party lines harden up enough that a single opposition party could win a majority clearly enough that the losing government began the practice of resigning immediately, instead of convening the new parliament first to see how many votes it could round up.
Thus, when the situation is not that clear, the government had the right to attempt to remain in office. This is what Heath did in 1974. He promptly had an informal meeting with the leader of a third party, the Liberals (an ancestor of today's Liberal Democrats), to see if they could cut a deal, perhaps as a formal coalition. It foundered, though, on three things: 1) the Liberals really didn't want to sustain Heath in office; 2) Heath had no power to force his party to agree to the Liberals' demands, the principal one of which would have been proportional representation; 3) even with the Liberals added, the Conservatives still wouldn't have had a majority, the Scottish Nationalists and Ulster Unionists having taken just enough seats.
So Heath resigned, before parliament met, and Labour took office as a minority government, relying on the indulgence of the third parties to allow them to pass necessary measures. A few months later they called another election to try to sustain themselves into a working majority. This succeeded - barely - and Labour served a full term. (Incidentally, they didn't have any more luck curbing, or stomping, the unions than the Conservatives had, and the result was the "Winter of Discontent" and the election of Margaret Thatcher, whatever lessons that may provide.)
During the period that Heath was negotiating with the Liberals, the Labour leaders protested indignantly that Heath had lost the election, both in the sense of having fewer seats than Labour and in the sense of having blown his previous majority, and should resign forthwith. But some of Labour's wiser politicians saw the benefit of letting him go ahead and try. They knew he was unlikely to succeed, and it was to Labour's advantage if Heath used up his freedom of maneuver first. Because if Heath didn't try, and Labour took office and was unable to sustain its minority government, it'd have been awfully hard for them to justify another election so soon. The proper course would be for them to resign and let the Conservatives have a try. But if the Conservatives have already had their try with the new parliament, that's not a problem.
So that's where we seem to be today. Cameron, the Conservative leader, will say that Brown has morally lost the election and his Labour government must go. But Brown can fairly reply that, though he may have lost, Cameron hasn't won, because he doesn't have a majority. If Labour can come to some agreement with the Lib Dems, and if together the parties have a majority of seats, then they have an authority the Conservatives can't match. And if those two parties are willing to make a stab at working it out, which it appears they are, but the Lib Dems and the Conservatives aren't, that may well be what happens.
I don't know the details of how all the multi-party parliamentary systems on the continent of Europe work. In some of them, it may be that the leader of the largest party has the first right to try to form a government, regardless of who the incumbent is. I don't think the UK has gotten that far yet. Two things might help change that, though. First is if Labour, though with more seats than the Lib Dems, comes third in number of votes. That would diminish their moral standing so far that I think they'd slink off in embarrassment. Even in its worst hours, Labour's always been the first or second party for a century now. The other is if the Conservatives would have a majority with the adhesion of the Ulster Unionists. If so, I think Cameron could make a deal that would preempt anything Labour could do. And even if Brown has the right to work out a deal, he has no obligation to try.
If Brown and the Lib Dem's Clegg sit down to talk, even if they have a majority between them and thus avoid Heath's third problem, they're still faced with the other two. Brown would have to force his troops to accept what would be the Lib Dems' first demand, a proportional electoral system. Despite the fact that such a system is used for the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, and the UK section of the European Parliament, it'd also mean fewer seats for both Labour and Conservatives, and there'd probably never be a single-party majority again. So I don't know if Labour would swallow that, though after this election debacle, they might be shamed into it at last.
The Lib Dems might also demand a different Labour PM than Brown. This would partially atone for the problem of sustaining in office a party that they loathe, because Brown is held responsible for most of Labour's problems. Labour commenters have been pretty huffy about that idea: they say it's not for Clegg to choose the leader of the Labour Party. But, again, history shows that, in this situation, it actually is. When the National Government was formed in 1940, the price of Labour's agreement to join was for Neville Chamberlain, the incumbent Conservative, to step down as PM. He in fact remained technically party leader, but Churchill, the only Conservative whom Labour really trusted at that point, succeeded him as PM and was really in charge. Something similar could happen here, but it's hard to say who would be acceptable to the Lib Dems as a substitute. I would think not David Miliband. Possibly his brother Ed. Possibly Alan Johnson.
And if Labour leaves office entirely, Brown is surely immediately departing the leadership. Formerly, losing a general election was considered just a bad bounce of the ball and could be recovered from; this is why so many prime ministers of the past served multiple separate terms. (Gladstone was PM four separate times.) But nowadays it's considered a personal referendum on the leader's ability, and after each of the last four general elections, the leader of the major opposition party has resigned his post forthwith. (Not the Lib Dems, though, because nobody expects them to win anyway. Though the Lib Dems' bad result this time may be seen as a referendum on Clegg, depending on why they're doing so poorly.) If Cameron can't form a government out of this, he may well have to resign too.
I don't think a formal coalition is very likely, though. The British have no experience at this, and have no idea how coalitions between European parties work; they don't have the kind of inter-party relations that allow such coalitions to form there. A minority government is more likely and more in keeping with past British practice, with smaller parties agreeing to support the government from the opposition benches on votes of confidence, i.e. those on which the government's main program is on the line. This has been done several times in the past. A formal pact could be drawn up, but more likely it'd be an informal agreement that will muddle through until either the government collapses (at which point the other major party takes over and immediately calls an election in hopes of getting a majority in the wake of their opponents' failure) or else the government sees a promising light shining through and calls an election in hopes for its majority.
And I'm inclined to guess that Labour/Lib Dem negotiations will not work out, and that minority government will be Cameron's. That, I think, is the single most likely outcome.
There were two significant hung parliaments in the last century, one in 1923-24, in which the circumstances were quite different from the current one, and the other in 1974, which was very similar, except that the two major parties have exchanged places in the drama. So I'll leave the first out, at least for now, and consider the second.
In the early 1970s, the incumbent Conservative government were having problems dealing with what they saw as obstreperous and overweaning union demands and behavior. In February 1974, the prime minister, Edward Heath, called an early election on the theme, "Who governs Britain?" Descriptions of the election always say that the answer was, "Not you, buster," but in fact the Conservatives received, by a modest margin, the most votes. Due to the vagaries of seat allocation, however, they did not get the most seats, being 4 behind the opposition Labour.
Now, British constitutional practice grew up back in the days when there were no formal parties, just ill-defined factions and many independents. (The "whigs" and "tories" of lore were tendencies and collections of groups, not a rigid dividing line.) The ministers were the monarch's appointees, and their job was - by deals, perks, bribery, or whatever - to round up enough parliamentary votes to pass their tax proposals and other measures. Only when they could no longer succeed at this did they have to give up and resign, and let someone else have a try at governing.
So the constitutional principle has been that the government remains the government until it no longer has "the confidence of parliament," as the phrase is. Only in the late 19th century did party lines harden up enough that a single opposition party could win a majority clearly enough that the losing government began the practice of resigning immediately, instead of convening the new parliament first to see how many votes it could round up.
Thus, when the situation is not that clear, the government had the right to attempt to remain in office. This is what Heath did in 1974. He promptly had an informal meeting with the leader of a third party, the Liberals (an ancestor of today's Liberal Democrats), to see if they could cut a deal, perhaps as a formal coalition. It foundered, though, on three things: 1) the Liberals really didn't want to sustain Heath in office; 2) Heath had no power to force his party to agree to the Liberals' demands, the principal one of which would have been proportional representation; 3) even with the Liberals added, the Conservatives still wouldn't have had a majority, the Scottish Nationalists and Ulster Unionists having taken just enough seats.
So Heath resigned, before parliament met, and Labour took office as a minority government, relying on the indulgence of the third parties to allow them to pass necessary measures. A few months later they called another election to try to sustain themselves into a working majority. This succeeded - barely - and Labour served a full term. (Incidentally, they didn't have any more luck curbing, or stomping, the unions than the Conservatives had, and the result was the "Winter of Discontent" and the election of Margaret Thatcher, whatever lessons that may provide.)
During the period that Heath was negotiating with the Liberals, the Labour leaders protested indignantly that Heath had lost the election, both in the sense of having fewer seats than Labour and in the sense of having blown his previous majority, and should resign forthwith. But some of Labour's wiser politicians saw the benefit of letting him go ahead and try. They knew he was unlikely to succeed, and it was to Labour's advantage if Heath used up his freedom of maneuver first. Because if Heath didn't try, and Labour took office and was unable to sustain its minority government, it'd have been awfully hard for them to justify another election so soon. The proper course would be for them to resign and let the Conservatives have a try. But if the Conservatives have already had their try with the new parliament, that's not a problem.
So that's where we seem to be today. Cameron, the Conservative leader, will say that Brown has morally lost the election and his Labour government must go. But Brown can fairly reply that, though he may have lost, Cameron hasn't won, because he doesn't have a majority. If Labour can come to some agreement with the Lib Dems, and if together the parties have a majority of seats, then they have an authority the Conservatives can't match. And if those two parties are willing to make a stab at working it out, which it appears they are, but the Lib Dems and the Conservatives aren't, that may well be what happens.
I don't know the details of how all the multi-party parliamentary systems on the continent of Europe work. In some of them, it may be that the leader of the largest party has the first right to try to form a government, regardless of who the incumbent is. I don't think the UK has gotten that far yet. Two things might help change that, though. First is if Labour, though with more seats than the Lib Dems, comes third in number of votes. That would diminish their moral standing so far that I think they'd slink off in embarrassment. Even in its worst hours, Labour's always been the first or second party for a century now. The other is if the Conservatives would have a majority with the adhesion of the Ulster Unionists. If so, I think Cameron could make a deal that would preempt anything Labour could do. And even if Brown has the right to work out a deal, he has no obligation to try.
If Brown and the Lib Dem's Clegg sit down to talk, even if they have a majority between them and thus avoid Heath's third problem, they're still faced with the other two. Brown would have to force his troops to accept what would be the Lib Dems' first demand, a proportional electoral system. Despite the fact that such a system is used for the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, and the UK section of the European Parliament, it'd also mean fewer seats for both Labour and Conservatives, and there'd probably never be a single-party majority again. So I don't know if Labour would swallow that, though after this election debacle, they might be shamed into it at last.
The Lib Dems might also demand a different Labour PM than Brown. This would partially atone for the problem of sustaining in office a party that they loathe, because Brown is held responsible for most of Labour's problems. Labour commenters have been pretty huffy about that idea: they say it's not for Clegg to choose the leader of the Labour Party. But, again, history shows that, in this situation, it actually is. When the National Government was formed in 1940, the price of Labour's agreement to join was for Neville Chamberlain, the incumbent Conservative, to step down as PM. He in fact remained technically party leader, but Churchill, the only Conservative whom Labour really trusted at that point, succeeded him as PM and was really in charge. Something similar could happen here, but it's hard to say who would be acceptable to the Lib Dems as a substitute. I would think not David Miliband. Possibly his brother Ed. Possibly Alan Johnson.
And if Labour leaves office entirely, Brown is surely immediately departing the leadership. Formerly, losing a general election was considered just a bad bounce of the ball and could be recovered from; this is why so many prime ministers of the past served multiple separate terms. (Gladstone was PM four separate times.) But nowadays it's considered a personal referendum on the leader's ability, and after each of the last four general elections, the leader of the major opposition party has resigned his post forthwith. (Not the Lib Dems, though, because nobody expects them to win anyway. Though the Lib Dems' bad result this time may be seen as a referendum on Clegg, depending on why they're doing so poorly.) If Cameron can't form a government out of this, he may well have to resign too.
I don't think a formal coalition is very likely, though. The British have no experience at this, and have no idea how coalitions between European parties work; they don't have the kind of inter-party relations that allow such coalitions to form there. A minority government is more likely and more in keeping with past British practice, with smaller parties agreeing to support the government from the opposition benches on votes of confidence, i.e. those on which the government's main program is on the line. This has been done several times in the past. A formal pact could be drawn up, but more likely it'd be an informal agreement that will muddle through until either the government collapses (at which point the other major party takes over and immediately calls an election in hopes of getting a majority in the wake of their opponents' failure) or else the government sees a promising light shining through and calls an election in hopes for its majority.
And I'm inclined to guess that Labour/Lib Dem negotiations will not work out, and that minority government will be Cameron's. That, I think, is the single most likely outcome.
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no subject
Date: 2010-05-08 06:23 pm (UTC)