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# Governing without majorities
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/governing-without-majorities/
- Published: 2010-04-16T12:04:01.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T23:05:17.000Z
- Author: Stuart Wilks-Heeg
- Tags: Europe, #Migrated, Politics & activism, United Kingdom, Democracy and government, UK, #en, #Import 2026-04-09 15:45

The Democratic Audit has just published a [paper](http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/Hung%5FParliament%5Ffinal.pdf) on what we are now learning to call 'A Balanced Parliament'.

The key points it makes are:

- Parliaments in which no single party had a majority of MPs, or out of which a coalition government was formed, were the norm in UK politics before 1945.
- The somewhat pejorative term, ‘hung Parliament’, was not introduced into British political debate until the 1970s; in an increasingly multi-party system, the term ‘balanced Parliament’ would be preferable.
- Recent electoral trends suggest that single-party majority governments will become less likely in the UK, even without reform of the electoral system.
- The Cabinet Office model for determining the appointment of a Prime Minister in a ‘hung Parliament’ is based on a questionable interpretation of precedent and is flawed.
- Recent discussion of the possibility and implications of a so called ‘hung Parliament’ has failed to consider these issues from a specifically democratic standpoint.
- If the general election produces a ‘hung Parliament’, serious deficiencies in the UK’s constitutional arrangements may well produce a controversial appointment of the next Prime Minister and create a moment of constitutional crisis.

You can read it [here](http://www.opendemocracy.net/files/Hung%5FParliament%5Ffinal.pdf)