The 2015 Parliament could witness the greatest transfer of power from the Executive (and Whitehall) to the Legislature (and the people’s elected representatives in the House of Commons) in the history of our countries.
Tony Greaves has written here and here seeking to explore how this Parliament might operate.
It takes me back to an afternoon in Winchester in 1986. Hampshire County Council, run by Tories for over 100 years, is about to set its budget. The Tories, until that morning, have the slimmest of majorities, thanks to the Chair’s casting vote, but news swishes through the corridors of County Hall – a Tory has said he will not vote for the Tory Leader of the Council’s budget.
In an efficient system an early vote would have been taken and negotiations on building majority support for a budget would have started. But the Tories could not understand the new dynamics. The council leader began with his Budget Speech. The leader of the Alliance, as it then was, replied and the Leader of the Labour Party followed, followed herself by speaker after speaker, until a vote was eventually taken in the late afternoon. The motion – the Tory budget – was defeated. And yet still the Tories could not conceive of what had happened.
Slowly but surely it became apparent to the Tories (and to the Chief Executive who left the leader’s side and went to the Alliance and Labour rooms) that the budget that day would be decided by the Alliance, Labour and the Tory rebel. Power had transferred from the Administration to the council itself. It still took a long time to negotiate the forming of a majority around a budget resolution and the final vote was taken late into the night.
This morning, Jim Naughtie, was interviewing the deputy leader of the SNP about whether they would bring down a Government (which its support had previously helped to create) by voting against the replacement of Trident. Of course, voting against such a vote, or a budget provision or an entire budget does not itself trigger a resignation or an election. That would require a separate vote on a specifically worded resolution laid down by the Fixed Term Parliament Act (FTPA). And of course the SNP would not be prevented from voting for that motion of confidence in a Government, one provision of whose programme it had voted against.
Nor would a PM, intent on staying where he was, necessarily mind much. He and his agents (let’s no longer call them whips) be out and about seeking other supporters. Because now, not just in theory, all he needs is at least 323 votes (perhaps fewer if there are abstentions).
I use MP and not Party deliberately. The Fixed Term Parliament Act transfers enormous power from the Executive to the individual Member of the House of Commons. It has the capacity to weaken the power of Leaders and their agents. All that most vexes the public about the Parliamentary system hangs there on habit and habit alone.
Of course the Government, the press and the commentariat may act like those Tories in Hampshire in 1986, but the Alliance managed to win the day, then, because they understood how the system had changed. They built alliances with other parties and individual councillors and succeeded in leading the drive for a majority. A similar prize awaits the leader and the Party that grasps the potential of the present situation.
We don’t need to be in Government in a Fixed Term Parliament to get policies enacted. We need to find individual majorities. And Whitehall will soon realize the need to inform EVERY Member of Parliament about policy background and not just the Secretary of State and her Ministers. When power moves across the road from Whitehall to Parliament, so does support, information and power. We need to be in the forefront of that transformation of decision taking and involvement.
We shall not be on the winning side on every issue but that is a strength too. It shows where we stand on each issue. Let’s seize the freedom that the Fixed Term Parliament Act has given us and become the leaders of Parliamentary change.
* Bill le Breton is a former Chair and President of ALDC and a member of the 1997 and 2001 General Election teams
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42 Comments
Excellent insight from Bill Le Breton.
By coincidence, Bill, whilst Hampshire County Council was in 1986 experiencing a cultural revolution – so in Kingston upon Thames something similar was happening.
The officers of the council were having to cope with a situation whereby for the first time since Charles Stuart was on the throne our council was not dominated by a large Conservative majority.
Explaining one or two basic concepts of democracy to Chief Officers who had only ever experienced Conservative majority rule was an education for them and a delight for us.
At UK Parliament level after 8th May 2015 — Sir Jeremy and the Perms Secs may have to get their heads round a few novel perspectives on democracy; I certainly hope so. 🙂
Having been elected to Hampshire County Council in 1985 I remember the 1986 budget meeting to which Bill Le Breton refers. It ended in the early hours of the morning with a Conservative councillor sadly dying as he left the car park.
The Conservatives have always found it hard to understand the notion that they don’t have a divine right to rule. It’s always a delight to see them starting to panic as they see power slipping away from them. I hope we’ll see them panic a lot in the days and weeks ahead and I hope Bill is right that this year’s election may see a fundamental shift of power away from the Executive and back to those individual MPs smart enough to build alliances and create majorities for the policies they wish to see enacted.
Depending on the election results on May 7th the Fixed term Parliament Act could help make this happen if it’s not abolished by old-style politicians aided and abetted by unelected mandarins who can’t or won’t grasp the opportunity to radically change the way we are governed for the better.
We could be in for an interesting summer!
Excellent post, Bill
Then again, all this may not happen.
Like most elections, this one is a contest between hope and fear. The Right rely on fear, and it often works well for them.
A hung parliament can be painted as fearful. Cameron has invented a nightmare, the spectre of militant separatists taking effective control of the UK government, which he describes as frightening. He is, of course, playing up risks for all he is worth. Still, the “ransom note” rhetoric may carry a measure of conviction.
Bill le Breton paints a balanced parliament as hopeful. But he does not mention any specific policy gains to be made, only the fact that individual MPs can gain more power. That is an appeal to political activists, but to few others. By contrast, Cameron can shroud-wave about several quite specific “nightmares”: the break-up of the UK, the bankruptcy of a profligate leftist government, the abandonment of our nuclear deterrent. To many people, these nightmares will seem very real.
So before we count our chickens, and drool over the opportunities that a hung parliament might bring us, we should ourselves recognise something to be fearful of. We should fear that Cameron frightens the nation into giving him five more years of majority power.
I don’t know, I’m pretty frightened of a Conservative victory. I’m not overwhelmed by the prospect of an SNP victory either, but the remedy for that is to make sure Labour and Liberal Democrats have enough seats to ignore the SNP together.
@David Allen how can Cameron have five *more* years of majority power when he’s not had any years of majority power yet?
Yes, it is really worth remembering that Cameron would have “governed like a true Tory if it were not for the Lib Dems” to quote the Daily Mail. In other words, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
It’s always a pleasure reading Bill’s posts.
He’s quite right in the above, of course. We may be about to discover just how much power can be wielded by third parties holding the balance of power in parliament, who don’t formally join the executive, but nonetheless have their power base in the legislature and can use that to effect significant reform from there – if they know how to make the most of it, and are reasonably competent and savvy politicians. If that’s the case, it may make the unseemly dash into coalition in 2010 seem all the more misguided.
@Seth the economy was wrecked in 2010. Look at the rate of growth of the deficit between 2008 and 2010 was, and how slow the reduction of it has been. “Austerity” in this parliament has been a convenient myth for the Tories to keep their support on side.
If we’d not formed a stable government there’d have been real austerity – caused by loss of market confidence and economic collapse. If you want to see what real austerity looks like visit Greece or Spain.
It is interesting that whenever any of us try to start a constructive discussion about what could happen after 8th May, people come back and talk about what might happen on 7th May. Yes, go away and discuss that as much as you like, but let’s have some intelligent discussion (such as Bill’s piece here) about the processes and options afterwards. Because there’s a good chance it will happen, and when it does it will be too late3 to start thinking.
Try the stuff on http://liberallord.com
What I think is going to happen is a Labour minority government which can (if all its MPs are obedient) choose between Lib Dems and SNP to get legislation pass- and will do so on a case by case basis. However, if Labour MPs rebel then it get more interesting (and individual MPs will be powerful yes).
Could be some Tory defections (to UKIP mainly).
I’d really like to see English+Welsh votes for English+Welsh laws but it looks like the SNP are against it.
@TCO: Ah, the old “Greece and Spain” fallacy. Structurally, the UK economy in 2010 bore no resemblance to Greece or Spain, and there was never any prospect of going the same way. It’s a complete myth, albeit a popular one. The spectre of defaulting on the national debt? 30% youth unemployment? Civil servants left unpaid for months, and given IOUs? I think not. Let’s stick to the facts, not hysteria and scaremongering.
We went into government because we wanted to, not because we were forced to do it by circumstance.
@Seth my point was more that is what austerity looks like. The UK has not had austerity.
Tony Greaves,
By all means think about processes and options in a hung parliament, which may happen. But don’t overlook the risk that it won’t happen, and that it won’t happen because nobody calls Cameron out and nails him for his mendacious scaremongering.
Clegg won’t do that, of course. I had hoped the Lib Dem left might do it.
TCO
Well spotted. I should have said, “five more years of power, this time with an absolute majority, so no need to butter up Clegg in order to exercise power any more”.
Can you spot any more errors in my previous post? You might find a typo – if so it will be a bigger error than the one you found!
Thanks for all the comments.
Two quick observations – Coalition is not the best solution for a small party in our Parliament (which is not to open the debate on May 2010) and secondly if the SNP are returned with 40 to 50 seats we shall learn from them a good deal about how the decision taking mechanics of new Parliament should be redesigned. Lessons of course that we learned in local government and which the SNP will have learned from us in the Scottish Parliament.
They will insist as their price for support (and don’t ignore the Tories here) on radical changes to Standing Orders to allow them as a small party to have access to the Parliamentary agenda. Importantly and specifically they will demand a change to the following House of Commons Procedure” ( from DODs Handbook):
“””“10.5.12 These motions relating to Estimates reflect the amounts requested in those [estimates] documents. The motions may be amended, but because the Commons agrees to expenditure on the initiative of the Government, rather than initiating expenditure itself (see 10.1.2), an amendment may only propose to reduce the amount of resources to be authorised. On the rare occasions when this is proposed the reduction has often been a token one of £1,000 ‘‘in respect of’’ whatever area of expenditure the Member tabling the amendment wishes to draw attention to, though under the new form of the Estimates it is doubtful whether an amendment in such form would make sufficient sense, in terms of how an Estimate is described, to be admissible as orderly.” Eighth (2011/12) Edition, page 102.””””
The transfer of power from Whitehall to Westminster is not inevitable and will take leadership and intelligence. And will have to be won against opposition from the civil service, academia and centralists.
I wrote this on Paul Walter’s piece yesterday,
“What is at stake is where power resides in the next Parliament. There will be three broad lobbies for this.
First the civil servants. Gus O’Donnell is already leading the charge here. He is suggesting far less work is given to Parliament. It’s a technocratic solution. Incremental change that the civil service can manage., using the difficulty that there might be in finding majorities for big decisions and legislation in the Commons to hand power to the technocrats for all but major budgetry decisions .
We should fight this every step of the way.
Second, Party Leaders. They will want written agreements – be these overt like the last Coalition Agreement 2010 -2012 or covert as was in the operation of the Coalition 2012 – 2015 and the operation of policy making outside of the 2010/12 agreement even during the 2010/2012 period eg Health Reform. Those last 3 years should be a warning to us. It’s bad for democracy, bad for the country (Bedroom Tax etc) and very bad for the Lib Dems.
We should resist joining any Coalition or arrangement of this sort in the next Parliament.
Finally, there is the chance of power being transferred from Whitehall and from Party leaderships (Whips etc) to the House of Commons and its elected representatives of the people. (I have written of this today – before Paul’s useful starter for 10 above was published, and I hope it can still see the light of day here.)”
This time we shall need to be insurgents in the new Parliament.
In the outgoing Parliament we were faced with the problem that where we would want to stand firm against the Tories, we had the right-wing press painting us as loony lefties stopping action being taken for our own little ideological reasons that no-one else was bothered with. This was particularly so on various classical liberal issues (I mean that in the proper meaning of that term, not as hijacked by the extreme market types). What we would really want would have been to be able to turn round to Labour to give us support in standing up to the Tories, which they might have been on some of those issues if they were more objective, and certainly should have been on economic issues. However, as I’ve been putting it, all we ever got from Labour was “nah nah nah nah nah”.
Even though I put a lot of blame on Clegg and his leadership style, I very much belief that the “nah nah nah nah nah” attacks on us from Labour throughout the Coalition, and refusal to recognise our difficult position and give us support when it was needed to stand up for the sort of thing that the Tories don’t like was a big contributory factor in our weakness in the Coalition. Labour had one tactic throughout 2010-2015 – to destroy the Liberal Democrats, re-create the two-party system, and so win power again by pendulum swing rather than by formulating workable and attractive alternative policies and winning hearts and minds over to them. Anyone who has ever fought against Labour and won will know that’s what they ALWAYS do. Well, they have fouled up, the consequence of their negative approach is what we see now in the polls and in people’s attitude to politics in general.
My concern is that much the same will apply to any party which “holds the balance of power”. It just doesn’t work as the mighty kingmaker position it gets painted as. If it is going to work at all it means anything we stand up for and put our foot down until we get it must be either something where we can get the backing of one of the big parties to do it, or something where we are absolutely sure we will have big public support for what the big parties and their backers are bound to paint as “the political losers trying to force on us their policies which no-one much wants”. For example, the line has often been put that we should insist on proportional representation and block a stable government being formed if we don’t get it. Well, I think electoral reform is really important and it would hugely benefit our country if we had a better electoral system, but how many others in this country see it like that? The AV referendum shows how it actually works out – few people see it as important as we do, and it is easy for the big powers to twist it and make it look like us wasting time on an “irrelevant” issue.
This sounds defeatist, but I am trying to be realistic. We need to be building up big popular support nationwide, not hoping for a balance of power situation so that we can exploit it to push through a few pet policies. That is why I am appalled at the way this election is so often being written up as if being in coalition again is our main aim, and I applaud Andrew George for what he is reported as saying today about that. So far as I am concerned, it is Nick Clegg who “is shooting from the hip” and pushing his own personal views without consultation with the wider party, not Andrew George as Clegg is reported as accusing him of.
Old habits die hard and radical innovation that challenges the model of 2 party hegemony is not conducive to the thinking of conservative (deliberate small ‘c’) politicians. At the “challengers’ debate” it seemed very much as though Miliband preferred a Con government to a Labour arrangement with the SNP. If Con+LD is less than Lab+SNP but Lab refuse to deal with SNP then what are the chances that there would be a “grand coalition” for just long enough to send it back to the voters for a second general election?
Paul in Wokingham 21st Apr ’15 – 11:31am
You make a good point, Paul.
A Grand Coalition is on the cards because Conservative and Labour (or at least those in charge of Labour) both have similar or identical policies on Trident, Nuclear Power generation, immigration, supporting Netanyahu, etc
Which is why Liberal Democrats in opposition should lend support on a vote by vote basis for enlightened changes to government policy along with the SNP, PC and Green Party “keeping Labour honest”. That way we could keep Cameron out of Downing Street, get rid of Trident, invest in renewable energy, scrap the bedroom tax, prevent the planned IDS wild-eyed destruction of social security, keep the NHS as a public service, end the Pickles destruction of local democracy whilst at the same time preventing the costly and dangerous distraction of a pointless referendum on the EU (or bringing the UK economy to its knees as that referendum might be more accurately described).
A second General Election under the FTPA would indeed require both the two largest parties to vote for it. That is probably the only way it is going to happen. But having set up a Grand Coalition why should either party want an early election unless the polls showed one of them moving into a decisive lead. I which case why would the other party want it?
Tony Greaves
http://liberallord.com
If things remain more or less as they are – with the SNP obtaining 40 – 50 seats – and being the king makers who won’t make Cameron king – wouldn’t Miliband be in the ideal position to to implement each and every one of his manifesto commitments [provided he does not enter into any formal coalitions]?
His main difficulty with the SNP is Trident – wouldn’t the Tories support the replacement of Trident?
If he does not go as far as the SNP,would like, in softening the austerity measures – would the SNP vote against measures that did help in this regard – but did not go as far as they wanted?
It seems to me that he could get enough support for virtually everyone of his policies if he shopped around all of the parties to get his majority!
“A second General Election under the FTPA would indeed require both the two largest parties to vote for it. ”
Not if the legislation is repealed, which would just require 50%+1 of voting MPs to vote for it.
This is the problem with so many of the ‘achievements’ in coalition – the assumption that everything that was done is set in stone forever. In reality, we’ve seen a pendulum swing between different parties’ measures in office, and there’s no reason to think our legislation should be immune to this effect, and to imagine that it won’t be quickly repealed. Some of our ‘achievements’ (the pupil premium?) might seem quite short-termist a few years down the line.
As Liberals, we should be aiming to forge a new consensus, and to change the nature of the debate. In the short term, that might have involved not joining a government until we had sufficient parliamentary strength to really make a stamp on it (which we clearly didn’t have in 2010-2015). Short-term, power-seeking fixes, to pass a few faddist measures that are easily repealed and even more easily villified, prompting a long-term, anti-Liberal backlash that may prove a lot more lasting than the anti-Tory/Labour sentiment that first swept us into the balance of power, should not be the solution. It’s a pity the leadership and their sycophants couldn’t see that, and take a longer-term view.
The greater danger comes from the civil service leadership which will encourage whoever is PM to ensure that as little as possible is done outside of existing executive power ie that can be done without needing backing from the House s of Parliament.
It will see more being done through Orders in Council. It may even be possible to avoid a budget.
This plays to the 2010/15 Coalition. ‘s advantage. It would be largely their legislative legacy and their spending and tax plans that would persist in all but the most minimal and incremental of changes.
So I am not sure that things can be put back into the box unless there is a majority for appealing or suspending the Fixed Term Parliament Act. And as Tony alludes to above, turkeys shouldn’t be relied upon to vote for Christmas.
Therefore, either decision taking will become less democratic/more secretive and administered by a technocracy, or there needs to be radical reform to the Procedures of the House to facilitate greater Parliamentary democracy., transparency and participation.
Borrowing from others, the Executive would propose and the elected representatives would dispose.
That sounds Liberal and attractive to me. And might begin to win back the public’s confidence in the system.
@ Matthew Huntbach – “We need to be building up big popular support nationwide, not hoping for a balance of power situation so that we can exploit it to push through a few pet policies. That is why I am appalled at the way this election is so often being written up as if being in coalition again is our main aim”
Can I have a “Hell yeah!” for Matthew here, please? Death to soggy centrism.
John Roffey,
“It seems to me that (Miliband) could get enough support for virtually everyone of his policies if he shopped around all of the parties to get his majority!”
Spot on. And that’s why Cameron’s scaremongering campaign about the Labour / SNP “danger” is totally bogus.
Miliband cannot easily explain that to the public, because he would have to admit to be prepared to play off (i.e. work with) the Tories against the SNP, when necessary. His supporters would misunderstand if he admitted this, and some of them woudl defect to the Greens. However, he can and will readily do it in practice if he needs to.
The dangers which Bill le Breton talks about, of the Civil Service neutering the powers of MPs in a hung parliament, could be real. The bigger danger is that Cameron scaremongers his way to a majority.
Bill le Breton, “This time we shall need to be insurgents in the new Parliament.”
Er, has anyone told Nick Clegg?
Matthew: The reason the election is “so often being written up as if being in coalition again is our main aim” is that the Lib Dems (not just the leadership but most candidates as far as I can see, and certainly nearly all Lib Dem MPs who have been on the airwaves) have explicitly put themselves forward as a brake-applying coalition partner to either the Tories or Labour in the next parliament, and stressed the superiority of coalition over informal arrangements. It is not a media agenda.
David Allen
“….The dangers which Bill le Breton talks about, of the Civil Service neutering the powers of MPs in a hung parliament, could be real. ”
By “Civil Service” I take Bill to mean Lord Gus, Sir Jeremy and the relatively small gang of Permanent Secretaries who expect to join Lord Gus in the Upper House when they quit running a Department.
I also expect he means the rest of the hidden establishment who lutk in the nooks and crevice of the unwritten Constitution.
There is Buck House and all those guys who of course are “not political” but play a mean hand of politics when they chose — remember the Scotland Referedum 2014 for the role that Her Majesty of course did not have in securing a majority for the status quo as she “purred like a cat” and just happened to speak to a little girl outside a church within the hearing of the media.
Then there is the military — all those Admirals who sail a desk in Whitehall when they are not briefing friendly journalists or putting forward the views of the USA military.
Then there are the “Corporate Interests” with their discrete dinners in London Clubs and old school tie influence, “men in suits” as they used to be known in the Tory Party.
The media moguls with whom Cameron and Blair spend many a happy hour (I am still trying to picture the scene on The Banks of The River Jordan when Blair turned up to be godfather at the baptism of Urdoch’s child).
There are of course more — but Ihope I have made my point.
Alex Sabine 21st Apr ’15 – 4:22pm
“….and certainly nearly all Lib Dem MPs who have been on the airwaves”
Alex – you are correct it is not a media agenda. But how many Lib Dem MPs out of the 56 have you actually see on the media? How many of the more than 100 Lib Dem Peers have you seen on the media in this election?
My movements are restricted nowadays so I have seen more of the media election this time than I have ever done before. I doubt if I have seen more than 20 Lib Dem MPs and Peers on the media in the course of the last six weeks and that includes Jeremy Browne and Don Foster who are not standing for re-election.
I have only seen Vince Cable a couple of times despite the fact that he is one of the most popular and one of the most capable in a media interview.
I have of course seen a lot of Danny Alexander – possibly more so than voters in his constituency.
Unfortunately most candidates of all parties nowadays just say what they are told to say by the inadequates who frame the messages.
“windjammer” – whoever you are (why don’t you be honest about that like most people here?) You are right the FTPA could be repealed (I don’t think it could be summarily just suspended but it could be quickly repealed, if necessary by suspending normal parliamentary timetables. But in whose interest would it be to do this? In practice it would need the active co-operation of both largest parties. I assume this would only happen if both of them thought that they would win a clear one-party majority in a new election. In the short term it is likely that one of them (at least) would prefer to run a minority government under the existing numbers. The longer that was in office, the less likely it would be that both largest parties would vote for an early election.
Tony Greaves http://liberallord.com
David Allen 21st Apr ’15 – 3:45pm
“The bigger danger is that Cameron scaremongers his way to a majority.”
I would have thought that Miliband has still some big aces to play in the last weeks/week of the campaign – unlike Cameron [or his advisors] – who have clearly reached desperation point with some of the ‘give aways’ announced recently – in direct conflict to Osborne’s additional unidentified cuts. Both Cameron & NC seem to me to know that the game is up by their body language.
The employment of Lord Green after Andy Coulson – and the HMRC tax official’s responsible for the taxation of global corporation’s move to HSBC at huge salary .
Cledgegate.
That is a fair point John – I am only going by those I have seen/heard and yes that is probably 10-15 MPs and the odd peer. However the message that they would prefer to be in coalition again has been near unanimous. Maybe you are right that there are lots of other Lib Dem MPs and candidates who don’t share this view, but if so they have been keeping a low profile.
No doubt a lot of MPs are otherise engaged in their constituencies. I would have thought Vince Cable was safe in Twickenham but maybe Lord Oakeshott’s private polling a little while ago spooked him. Doesn’t sound like it though:
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/general-election-2015-majority-should-make-vince-cable-invincible-in-twickenham-but-the-tories-want-to-stop-him-waltzing-back-in-10192027.html
Oh dear, I am going to be dragged off my own topic!!!!
The psychological impact of the kinds of defeats that 600 of our candidates are going to face is impossible to predict. 30 or so of these will have their existing careers snatched away, a further few will have thought upon selection that there was a strong probability that such a career awaited them.
Many will have fought hard for two or three or four elections – twenty years perhaps – building up the vote only to seem them go from a hard won good second into a poor third or worse. Even those who bravely fly the flag so that people have a Lib Dem to vote for will perhaps not be prepared for the nature of the beating they will receive.
It is therefore impossible to predict how such heroes and their teams will react on the Friday, over the weekend, during the days that follow when government and majority building takes place.
Some indeed will have signed up with vigour to the “giving a heart to the Tories and a brain to Labour” strategy. Many will have viewed this with dismay but done their bit to push the message out.
One thing is for sure, there is going be the need for some first aid and great tenderness.
Alex Sabine: No, it’s not just that. Many of our members and MPs have said that they would prefer us not to be going in to coalition after this election. I don’t have the figures to hand, but I think it may even be the majority of members polled, and certainly many more MPs than just Andrew George. Yet the media are writing it up as if all of us are just panting for a coalition with us as the junior partner, and would regard it as a bad thing if we didn’t get that.
As I’ve said, I would like more of an acknowledgement that minority party in a coalition is not a pleasant place to be in, and does not have nearly so much power as it is often put as. Making out we are panting for the minor place we had before is doing us no good. We need to put across more that we don’t regard that as an end goal, and we feel we could do so much more with more MPs. The problem with Clegg’s line is that making out we are so powerful and influential in this coalition first makes us seem much more right-wing than we are, and second gives no incentive for anyone outside the places we have MPs to vote for us, since why should we want more MPs is we can do all we want just with those we already have?
If we do end up in a situation where we feel for the sake of stability we have to join a coalition, we should at least come across as angry that the distortion of the electoral system so reduces our influence, rather than happy to have a few bums on seats in the cabinet again.
New role for Lib/Dems?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJUdNHhJM1U
Along with a Ministry of Happiness?
Matthew:
“…we should at least come across as angry that the distortion of the electoral system so reduces our influence…”
You can have a five-year sulk about it if you want, but those voters who don’t like your being in coalition with one party or the other will not be placated by such mood music.
And the argument about the distortion caused by FPTP might be rather blunted if the Lib Dem seat tally is reduced to 25-30; yes it will still be disproportionate but other parties – notably UKIP – will be able to point to much greater disproportionality and would be arguing this from a position of having trebled or quadrupled their vote share not seen it more than halved. If UKIP have (say) 12% of the vote and 2 seats, and the Lib Dems 10% of the vote and 30 seats, I think it’s clear which result would look more indefensible to most ordinary punters.
Of course, the Liberals/Lib Dems have had the rough end of that stick many times before, but it’s significant that the first time arguments about the electoral system got much of a hearing was in February 1974 when the result was on a knife-edge, both main parties were deeply unpopular and there had been a surge in Liberal support that wasn’t remotely reflected in seats gained. The question will be whether this time the result is not just inconclusive for the second consecutive election, but the outcome so messy, and the disproportionality egregious enough in various different ways, that demands for voting reform might just gain more traction than they have in the past.
I understand your argument that it is counter-productive to exaggerate the influence that a junior coalition partner can wield. But in that case it follows that most of what happens is no more than a mild modification of what the main party governing alone would have done. It is not credible to play down Lib Dem influence on the one hand but then to say ‘just think how different – ie worse – a Tory majority government would have been’.
I’m not saying that you personally are claiming this but it seems to be a big part of the Lib Dem message: that in this parliament you have been, and would be again, not merely a diluting agent but a highly effective and powerful diluting agent saving the country fom the ravages of Labour or Tory majority rule. If that is the pitch then claims like implementing 75% of the manifesto (or whatever percentage it turned out to be) and blocking X, Y and Z become central to substantiating it. If you claim that in reality the voting system has left you largely impotent then voters must conclude that the government of the country has been only marginally altered.
Personally I think this understates the potential influence of a junior coalition partner. Sure, 57 seats is only 9% of the total and 16% of those on the government side but considerably more leverage arises from being able to deliver or prevent a Commons majority. The Major government in the 1990s and the Lib-Lab pact in the late ’70s knew only too well how much power a handful of MPs could exercise when it was their votes that would swing the balance. There are different types of disproportionality beyond the initial vote-to-seat ratio, in terms of the effective power that can be exercised by minority groups or rebellious MPs in a finely balanced parliament.
I think the reality is somewhere in between the rather hyperbolic claims that the leadership sometimes makes and the misleading idea that a given bloc of MPs can only exercise influence in direct proportion to their numerical strength. The latter proposition ignores both the power that comes from holding the balance and how well the smaller party plays the negotiating hand it has been dealt.
In that context it is perfectly reasonable to point out how many of the things you stood on in 2010 have been implemented in government and to contrast that with the inability to deliver policies in opposition. (Of course, part of the reason for the high percentage of policies deemed to be ‘delivered’ is that there is a fair amount of overlap in all the main parties’ manifestos and many policies are not necessarily particular to one party except on a detailed level; then there are the distinctive elements of each coalition party, some of which are implemented and some blocked).
Alex Sabine
You can have a five-year sulk about it if you want, but those voters who don’t like your being in coalition with one party or the other will not be placated by such mood music.
Sorry Alex, but I see your line as just giving in to the Labour “nah nah nah nah nah” propaganda, throwing half our voters to them, and then what? There’s no evidence of a significant bunch of new voters coning to take their place. Even if it were all to work out in that way, since it means the party has shifted greatly from the one I joined, why should I carry on being a member of it? And if I don’t, why should I be labelled a “defector” or some such term when the reality would be that the party has defected from me.
Also I see your line here as very much a line AGAINST the whole idea of coalitions. If joining a coalition, even when it had to be done as there was no realistic alternative, means a small party is forced to make a dramatic and permanent change to what it is about, then a coalition must surely be regarded as a damaging thing. I’ve always believed in multi-party politics, and hence the principle of having coalition and government by reaching a consensus which inevitably means compromise. However, accepting that principle must mean accepting that these are compromises due to the circumstances and a party can retain its long-term image and independence throughout them. This is no more than basic democracy: the fact that we accept the consensus of the government being elected having the right to make policies and law and do not attempt to overthrow that government in a coup does not necessarily mean we support the policies and law of that government.
Labour are against multi-party politics and are actually quite shaky on basic democratic principles. So, sure, they won’t accept the true liberal democratic line on coalition formation, and will instead push the idea that we Liberal Democrats were all Tories really and we agree to what this government is doing because we like it all, not because we see it as a democratic compromise. But, as a believer in liberal democratic politics I don’t accept Labour’s line, and I think it needs to be argued against. You are not doing that. Instead you are saying “Labour has it right about the Liberal Democrats – now you are just another form of Tory as they say, and you had better play along with that”.
As for “five year sulk”, no, I’ve felt angry about the distortions of the electoral system for more like 40 years, ever since I first became aware of politics as a teenager and saw how the electoral system denied people like my family a voice in Parliament, and hence rendered us invisible. Would you describe that phrase “no taxation without representation” as a “sulk”? By using that word you are suggesting I am being irrational and unfair, that I don’t have a right to point out that we have an electoral system which means the Conservatives with about 50% more of the vote that the Liberal Democrats got about 500% more seats. Why should it not be a perfectly valid point to make that the distorting effects of the electoral system mean there are many more Conservative MPs than Liberal Democrats and that this has a big effect on the sort of compromises a coalition of the two parties can arrive at?
Alex Sabine
Personally I think this understates the potential influence of a junior coalition partner. Sure, 57 seats is only 9% of the total and 16% of those on the government side but considerably more leverage arises from being able to deliver or prevent a Commons majority.
As you know, I have myself argued strongly against the “nah nah nah nah nah” line that the Liberal Democrats have just “rolled over and given in to the Conservatives”. I see the policies coming from this government as about what one would expect from one where the ratio of MPs is 5:1 Conservative to Liberal Democrat. I very much do accept that the Liberal Democrats have blocked things coming from the more extreme wing of the Conservatives. I am sorry that so few people can see this. One reason is the howling down of anyone who tries to say it by the “nah nah nah nah nah”s. Another is the huge shift to the right of the Conservative Party since it was last in government with John Major as PM, so a compromise between what it is now and the LibDems looks like a capitulation to the Conservatives if one is just supposing they are like they used to be. However, you seem to be saying that I and the party should not be making these points to try and win back people who used to support us in the past, that instead we should just let the whole thing push us rightwards and finish the job of painting ourselves in the colour the Labour “nah nah nah nah nah”s started.
I don’t think junior coalition partners in general have anything like the influence you are suggesting. In the end, how are we to push our line? The only real card we have to play is pulling out of the coalition early, and Nick Clegg threw that one away at the start. If there was a workable coalition with Labour as an alternative, and Labour were making overtures to offer it instead of howling “nah nah nah nah nah”, we would have had a LOT more power and influence in the coalition. But there wasn’t, was there? By your own line, any junior coalition partner is going to be damaged by the mere fact of being in coalition, since it loses that part of its support which least liked the senior coalition partner. So that is a reason why junior coalition partners don’t have much power – their only real tactic to push their ideas is like that old Liberator cartoon of David Owen sitting in a toilet and saying (can’t remember the exact word) but something like “Unless you do what I want, I’ll pull the chain”. And he did, and he destroyed himself politically by doing so.
It seems to me that the 60 or so most right-wing MPs in the Conservative Party have more power in this situation than the similar number of Liberal Democrat MPs. Mostly they sit in safe seats, so the prospect of an early general election doesn’t scare them. They are more able to use their influence by making their threats behind the closed doors of their own party organisation.They aren’t going to be derided for standing up for what they believe in by outside supporters of that as we are if we try to stand firm against the Tories, look round for moral support from those who would agree with us on that and all we get “nah nah nah nah nah” thrown in our faces.
If you look across the world, the junior coalition partners who are most successful in getting what they want are groups with small but committed support who have a limited agenda. Their committed support means their supporters are not going to abandon them for joining the coalition, and their limited agenda means less likelihood of an incompatibility between it and the senior coalition partner. Their limited agenda means they can be more easily bought off by the senior coalition party, since it can give it to them without watering down its main aims. Under FPTP it also helps to be a small party with support concentrated in a few places, rather than a small party with support spread out. That applies to the regional parties – the DUP and SNP and PC, but not to us. That is why I feel the most stable outcome from this election if it does give what the polls suggest is a Tory government supported by the SNP. The Tories would be able to pay off the SNP with generous policies for Scotland, not so costly as they only apply to Scotland. In return, the SNP gives implicit support to a far-right Tory government, probably under the line “We won’t vote in England-only policies”. I rather suspect that in the end the Tories wouldn’t mind breaking up the UK in return for dominance over the Scotland-less rump.
We can’t do that. We don’t have a big bunch of committed supporters who are obsessed with a limited number of policy issues, so would carry on enthusiastically voting for us so long as we got those through. The nearest to this sort of thing was gay marriage, which is why that was waved so triumphantly – and it was an almost cost-free in money terms, though it did lead to quite a big drop off of old-fashioned small-c conservative members, and perhaps the Cameroonies like the Cleggies secretly liked that drop-off as it served in both cases to push their parties towards being purely free-market parties. Well, even if our support was mostly from gay people, and gay people really did care more about gay marriage than anything else, since they are spread across the country rather than concentrated in certain areas, it still wouldn’t have helped under FPTP.
If we had true multi-party politics in this country, Labour wouldn’t be yelling “nah nah nah nah nah” at us, there would be a more objective view of our accomplishments in the coalition, and that would advantage the long-term pursuit of the sort of politics Labour wants. But Labour will never do that. They would rather pull the flush as well, destroying us and so handing back all those “true blue” seats we’ve worked to win over to the Tories so that they can continue sitting sm ugly on the opposition benches without being challenged by an alternative opposition.
@Bill: to me, this is how our system should have been working from the start. Let us hope it happens at last, even if it is 800 years too late.
I like the idea that MPs will have more power and the Executive less. Changing the House of Commons procedures I now see as vital, but am concerned that neither Labour nor the Conservatives will vote to change them. It seems likely that the coalition’s plans will be the starting position and if the Conservatives and us vote to keep those plans in place it will only be when both Labour and the SNP agree that change will happen. I have posted elsewhere on this site that any minority government could be conservative.
The passing of a budget I thought had to be done by Parliament each year. Isn’t voting the taxes the historical role of Parliament? However the 1909 budget introduced in April 1909 wasn’t passed until April 1910 so I assume that an annual budget is not needed, as the provisions of the previous budget just roll on.
If a minority government doesn’t need to pass legislation to govern then the scrutiny of the Executive will become even more important and I wonder if individual ministers could be removed by a Parliamentary vote rather than being in the gift of the Prime Minister?
The House of Commons has never abandoned its right to impeach a government minister for any reason (or for no reason at all), which I suppose, if successful, would lead to his or her removal from office. Impeachment has been in desuetude since the early 19th century, but it was quite common under the Stuarts, where it was an effective means by which Parliament exercised a check on the executive.