Minority governments and hung parliaments
Britain may have to get used to minority governments and hung parliaments.
In retrospect history may judge that the 2010 election result wasn't really the anomaly that we think it is, but the fact that this country has gone 65 years, since 1945, with only a few brief spells when we've had governments without a majority.
Anyway, I suspect we are now going to have to get used to it. In reality, many in the British political system are already used to it, thanks to two trends over the past 40 years. First the rise of the Liberal Democrats as a serious third force (and also the nationalists in Scotland and Wales), which has seriously challenged the old two-party system. Second, the advent of PR systems in the assemblies of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London, and in Scottish local government. Hence a hotch-potch of governing arrangements - coalitions and minority regimes, as I illustrated in Ipswich on Monday.
And Parliamentary systems in the Commonwealth and Europe have been accustomed to having governments without a majority for decades. Even Britain was used to it in the past, in the days when there was a big block of Irish MPs at Westminster, and during the first four decades of the 20th century when Labour gradually replaced the Liberals.
As I've said before, I suspect that over the next 50 years majority governments may become the exception not the rule, especially if the Lib Dems finally achieve some form of electoral reform.
I'm Michael Crick, and I'm Newsnight's political editor. My guiding rule is that in any story there's usually something the politicians would prefer the world not to know. My job is to find that out. Follow me on
Comment number 1.
At 7th May 2010, spywednesday wrote:Indeed - this really could be the Lib Dems last chance for a VERY long time to get electoral reform through. The election outcome has really pulled the rug from under Cameron's fallacious reasoning about first-past-the-post always delivering clear-cut results. But I'm not sure the Tories have the stomach for electoral reform; come the next election it could mean and end to the Tory party as we know it! Are they willing to pay that price just to get their hands on power now?
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Comment number 2.
At 7th May 2010, stanilic wrote:There is a view that the two-party system delivered the prevailing menace of petty nationalism as one or other of the two sought to do the other party down.
Perhaps our politics has become too ideological with those ideologies hard-wired into the social superstructure.
Whatever it is, it is not working.
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Comment number 3.
At 7th May 2010, Trefinboy wrote:If British Governments are more likely to be coalitions in the future (and I agree with you that that they are) then the Lib Dems have now reached their "coming of age" moment. The greatest challenge for the Lib Dems is not to persuade the Tories that electoral reform must be a condition of coalition/cooperation, but to prove to the British public that multi-party Government is a better and workable model. This opportunity was handed to them today. If they cannot seize this moment and make a Con-Lib Government work effectively for a full Parliament, why should we believe that multi-party Government would work if we employed an alternative voting system? The Lib Dems now need to prove that they can govern effectively on the national stage - that they are a serious grown-up party.
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Comment number 4.
At 8th May 2010, JunkkMale wrote:Seems that those who were keen on and advising tactical voting are now interpreting the actual results as 'mandates' for their pet manifestos. How does that work?
The metaphors for the age of reward for failure could not be more stark.
Having never won anything by way of a public mandate, and now having lost massively in an actual vote, it seems that Mr. Brown clings to 'power' on the basis of not having fouled up totally massively by being propped up by voter blocs created who were incapable of rejecting their support system.
That our screens are still alive with Labour shills claiming 'victory' on this basis is risible. There are the few senior members who did not get ejected or totally kicked in 'covering' from our man doing his duty in the bunker. Ben Bradshaw doing a nifty job off giving 'us' his 'government's' money and getting very selectively heated on SKY about the 'right wing press', ignoring any other influences that worked to help causes that were perhaps closer to home.
Equally Lib Dems smugly playing 'kingmaker' having fared so poorly is also discomfiting. Can't recall the last time I saw Mark Oaten, but he seems pervasive now.
Meanwhile the Conservatives' weak position, after all this, has to raise questions.
But whatever the system currently is, it is broke. And, hence, needs fixing.
I don't see what is being spun currently as working no matter who deals with whom.
But taking a lead from the tactical voting options that must surely have guided the electorate (pushed heavily by some in certain sections of the MSM), one has to wonder how, under the current system, the majority that gave the Conservatives the greater numbers and seats may feel about getting Clegg and Brown.... oh, and some other folk not noticed in the TV debates.
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Comment number 5.
At 8th May 2010, stevie wrote:Clegg has only been in there since 2005 and yet here he is like Churchill strutting round like he owns the gaff...who does this guy think he is? 75 per cent of his party loathe Tory policies and yet he appears to be trying to do his best to cobble something together rather than do a deal with the great unwashed...these public schoolboys really know how to stick togther....
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