Mark Bell & Alasdair Murray (London, CentreForum): Opinion polls suggest a hung parliament is more likely than at any point in the last 25 years. Long term electoral trends also point in this direction - the share of the vote received by the Labour and Conservative parties has fallen in every general election since 1992. Over this period the Liberal Democrats have increased their number of seats, reaching a post-War high of 62 at the last election, as important local factors are increasingly deciding constituency outcomes.But Westminster is singularly unprepared for a long-term hung parliament, and there is little agreement on what its political or institutional implications would be. In our view Westminster should not fear non-majority government. While it may introduce added complexity, and the need for certain new institutional mechanisms, experience from both at home and abroad show that such governments can be both stable and productive, and may pave the way for a more consensual style of politics Furthermore devolution has meant that coalition and minority government is no longer a purely foreign import in the UK. The experiences of both Scotland and Wales shed light on how non-majority government could work at Westminster.
First, there is much greater political ‘promiscuity' in non-majoritarian parliaments, with even political enemies often able to work together. Parties find it surprisingly easy to set aside tribalism when the circumstances demand. For example, following the 2007 Welsh election previously unthinkable coalitions emerged as possibilities - including a ‘Rainbow Coalition' of Plaid Cymru, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, and a ‘Red-Green Alliance' of Labour and Plaid Cymru. This means that a Liberal Democrat-Labour coalition should not be regarded as the inevitable response to a hung parliament.
Further, minority governments can function effectively. A Labour minority government in Wales was effective, and now it seems a SNP minority government in Scotland will be too. If political or other pressures make coalition formation impossible, minority government should not be regarded as an automatic path to instability.
However, it will require a shake-up of the institutional and cultural framework of Westminster politics for non-majoritarian government to work in the UK parliament. In Wales and Scotland a range of institutional mechanisms have been created to minimise and deal with conflicts between coalition partners. For example, the Scottish Liberal Democrat-Labour coalitions used expert committees to craft recommendations on controversial policy areas such as student tuition fees - providing both parties with the political cover to make compromises on manifesto pledges.
Westminster parties could, in principle, take similar measures to ensure a coalition could operate successfully. This would mean discarding a political culture that views non-majoritarian government as little more than a short term fix, and the idea that ‘strong' winner-takes-all regimes are the best way to run a country.
The report, ‘In the balance: coalition and minority government in Britain and abroad', is published today. It is available from http://www.centreforum.org/assets/pubs/in-the-balance-web.pdf
