Author Archives: Owen Driscoll

A Proposed Alternative to Coalition: The Reserved Time Confidence Agreement

By Owen Driscoll | Mon 9th November 2026 - 3:41 pm

The prospect of another hung parliament is higher than it has been for years. For Liberal Democrats that raises a familiar question: how do we maximise our influence without repeating the electoral damage of 2010–15?

Full coalition is one answer. It is not the only one. I want to set out a competing model: the Reserved Time Confidence Agreement.

How it works

Under a Reserved Time Confidence Agreement a larger party forms a single-party government. A smaller party (or parties) agrees to support that government on all confidence motions and on supply. In return it receives two things:

1. Thirty reserved legislative days each session.

On these days the supporting party controls the agenda. Both parties in the agreement are explicitly free to seek votes from any other party in the House in order to pass measures that stick as closely as possible to their own manifestos. The supporting party may therefore build majorities with the official opposition or with other parties on issues where the senior partner is unwilling to move. Equally, the senior partner may use its own time, or seek support from others, to advance its priorities. If the two parties are closer to each other than to anyone else, they will often find it easiest to use the reserved days for joint business. The point of the rule is to maximise each party’s ability to deliver what it promised voters, rather than forcing a lowest-common-denominator programme.

2. A mutual veto on early elections.

After each general election the House elects two “election callers” by open ballot. Joint tickets are proposed by the Speaker on the advice of the parties. If no ticket secures a majority after five attempts, the positions default to the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. An early dissolution requires the agreement of both. In a majority government this is effectively the Prime Minister plus a colleague. In a hung parliament it is normally the two party leaders who are keeping the government in office. Neither can force an election on the other.