UK Election Questions

Not currently resident in the UK, but when I left the election campaign was in full swing. The current campaign is genuinely bizarre: on the one hand we have Labour, who everyone believes will likely be in government in a coalition with the SNP, saying that they will never be in coalition with the SNP. On the other hand we have the LDP, who is currently in coalition with the Tories, talking about what evil bastards the Tories are.

Neither of them mean it. This is pre-election posturing; the LDP to try gain a shred of the credibility that have lost over the past 5 years and Labour to attempt to minimize the damage stemming from the Tory campaign, which essentially consists in arguing “a vote for Labour is a vote for the SNP, and the SNP are SOCIALISTS”. Miliband wants to try to reassure middle England that they can vote for Labour and get the Tories light. But I don’t think many people believe him (or rather, they don’t believe that they will get Tories light sans SNP).

By the way, it seems exceedingly unlikely that Labour will have the most seats. They would easily were it not for the SNP, but the Scottish wipeout makes it overwhelmingly likely that the Tories will have the largest number. I would still bet on a Labour-SNP coalition for the next government.

I’m finding it all pretty unbearable here. It is a campaign with no hope, but a mixture of fear and indifference (apart from in Scotland). The Tory campaign has been a mixture of risible and irresponsible promises (from the party of fiscal responsibility, ha ha) and demonisation of Ed Miliband, which hasn’t really come off. No energy, no enthusiasm. My prediction is for more right-wing coalition government, with the Tories and a weakened Lib Dems being propped up by the DUP. But then, I’m a pessimist about these things. My voting advice for England is to normally to vote Green if your MP is Caroline Lucas and in all those other cases where it won’t make a difference against Labour (unless your MP is of the ilk of Hoey, Field , Danczuk, Mann etc, in which case vote Green anyway).

I was listening to an election demographic/poll ‘expert’ on radio 4 last week who sketched out ten possible permutations of result, from Con overall majority through all the variations of no overall majority to Lab majority. In eight out of those ten, he said, Cameron will still be PM. I am not hopeful.

What happens, I think, depends on the SNP. After all, they could vote for a Labour Queen’s Speech and Budget without any explicit deal. And Nicola Sturgeon has said many times that she would never prop up a Tory government. If Cameron is defeated in a confidence vote (which he’s frankly likely to be), then Miliband will be the only possible choice for PM, governing in a minority government which will have to work legislation through on a vote-by-vote basis. Not exactly a recipe for stable government, but it might still be workable

He’s serious. If he’s lying labour gets hit like the LibDems in 2020. But Miliband just doesn’t really need to negotiate.

Unlike the LibDems, the SNP will not let a Tory government stay in power. If left parties have a majority any Tory Queen’s speech gets voted down and Cameron’s government fails – he doesn’t need to negotiate for that. Miliband can then become PM and put up his manifesto item by item, and give the SNP a chance to vote it down. They’ll be reluctant to do that – negotiation or not – for at least a good chunk of the manifesto, as they’re to the left of Labour and want left policies to do through.

You don’t need to negotiate with someone more extreme than you who has no other alternative.

Unfortunately, I believe it.

Yes, it is idiotic and a betrayal of everything his party should stand for.

Except: exactly the same thing happened last time. Labour could just about have cobbled together a majority coalition (or at least confidence+supply) from lib dems, SNP, and DUP. But labour rejected it off the bat, mainly because of the loathing between SNP and Scottish Labour.

[admittedly, such a coalition would have been outrageously fragile. But the fact that they didn’t even try makes me queasy]

I’ve been writing about this on my blog. Unfortunately it’s turned out to be a much bigger question than I thought – four separate posts instead of a couple, and I’m still halfway through the last one (which is the one about what Labour are playing at).

The story so far: Labour and the Tories are both talking about getting a majority; barring some extraordinary triumph or disaster in the next few days, neither of them is going to. The Tories will probably be the largest single party in the House of Commons, but nothing, absolutely nothing, in British constitutional history or in current operating procedure (which has been codified – google ‘Cabinet Manual’) says that being the largest single party matters a damn. The Tories may have a majority together with the Lib Dems and perhaps the DUP, but it’s likely to be a very, very small one. Labour almost certainly will have a majority together with the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and the Green[s], and quite probably with the SNP alone. UKIP aren’t going to get more than three MPs – my bet is two – and nobody wants them on their side anyway. (Hopefully this election will be the dawn of the irrelevance of UKIP.)

Nick Clegg is telling anyone who will listen that the Lib Dems (a) would never ally with either the SNP or UKIP and (b) believe that the largest single party should have first go at forming a coalition. The Tory press, meanwhile, is pumping out the message that nobody should ally with the SNP – any coalition involving the SNP would be illegitimate – and that the largest party should form the government. It’s fairly clear why they’re doing this; what Clegg is up to is less obvious, particularly as it gives the Tories a huge incentive to try and gain seats from his own party.

Thanks to the voting system, the SNP currently look like getting 90% of the seats in Scotland on 49% of the vote. If that happens a lot of Scottish Labour MPs will lose their jobs, and a lot of Scottish Labour voters will go unrepresented. So it’s understandable that Labour are fighting for every vote in Scotland, which necessarily involves making out that electing an SNP MP will have a totally different result from electing a Labour MP – which in turn means ruling out a coalition. I understand that.

My worry is how deep the opposition to the SNP goes. I think there are three main possibilities, which unfortunately get worse in ascending order of probability.

1. Perhaps we’re still waiting for the other shoe to drop – just as Labour announced they were going to “control immigration” and then revealed that this actually meant enforcing the minimum wage so as to stop gangmasters illegally undercutting British workers. Very clever. (Perhaps a bit too clever, but that’s by the way.) Perhaps in a couple of days Miliband will say something like, “I said ‘No deals,’ and I meant it. But that’s not to say I’ll refuse support if it’s offered. We’ve got a plan, and we intend to stick to it; if other parties want to support that, great. I say to them, we’re not going to change our plan to suit you – we’re genuinely not interested in deals. But if you want to support Labour’s plan for the country, please do.” I think that would shoot several foxes & almost certainly make Miliband PM. Unfortunately I can’t see him doing it. I hope I’m wrong, though.

2. The Labour leadership may be thinking in terms of a minority government. Ruling out a deal may not make much practical difference. In a minority government the parliamentary arithmetic would be exactly the same as in a coalition – the government’s majority would just be re-assembled every time, generally from the same parties as the time before. This would have the additional advantage of disrupting the Tory/LD bloc by encouraging individual MPs – or entire parties – to support Labour legislation. A hegemonic strategy, in other words, from a position of apparent weakness. I think this would appeal to Miliband on several levels.

3. Sadly, the explanation for Labour’s current tactical choices may be simpler than either of these: it may be that they’ve bought the Tory line, illegitimacy of SNP involvement in government, largest-party-goes-first and all. Or at least that they’ve taken the decision to act as if they’d bought it, as they did in 2010 (disastrously) with the “Labour overspending caused the crash” story. (Miliband is challenging that now, but it’s a bit late.) Miliband is certainly taking a very hard line on the SNP (“I am not going to have a Labour government if it means deals or coalitions with the SNP”). Jim Murphy, leader of the Scottish Labour Party, has openly endorsed the ‘largest single party’ model, saying that a strong result for the SNP would directly benefit the Tories: “If this poll [giving the SNP all the seats in Scotland] is repeated on election day, David Cameron will be uncorking his champagne, because he might cling onto power; not because Scotland’s gone out and voted Tory, but because Scotland has voted against the Labour party and made sure David Cameron has the biggest party”. Debating with Nicola Sturgeon, Murphy even said… well, this:

Murphy also indicated that Labour would resist pressure to vote down the Tories if David Cameron’s party became the largest in parliament. Murphy told Sturgeon the last time the losing party had formed a minority government was in 1924. “It was so long ago, there wasn’t a Queen’s speech. It was a king’s speech,” he said.

Sturgeon retorted that Gordon Brown had tried to broker a deal to continue as prime minister despite coming second behind the Tories in 2010 – disproving Murphy’s thesis. But the Scottish Labour leader implied that the former prime minister was wrong, saying there was “an unstoppable force” behind the Tories which made it clear they were correct to form the government.

Largest single party = “unstoppable force”? Constitutionally speaking this is just nonsense, and from a Labour politician it’s defeatist nonsense.

In short, there are three possibilities still open: an informal alliance on Labour’s terms; a Labour minority government; and a Tory (or Tory/Lib Dem) minority government, with Labour letting them back into power because hey, largest party, whaddayagonnado. I really, really hope it’s not the third of these, and I find it hard to believe that a politician as calculating as Miliband would have that as his game plan. But those quotes from Murphy are quite ominous.

One more quote, from Nicola Sturgeon:

“I heard Ed Miliband and he sounded awfully like he was saying – and I hope I’m wrong about this because I think people across Scotland and the rest of the UK would be appalled if I’m right – he sounded as if he was saying that he would rather see David Cameron and the Conservatives back in government than actually work with the SNP.

“Now, if he means that, then I don’t think people in Scotland will ever forgive Labour for allowing the Conservatives back into office. But if he is a minority government, then he will not be able to get policies through without winning support from other parties.”

This whole ‘deal’ question is mind-bendingly, face-palmingly, head-deskingly silly, because the Fixed Term Parliament (FTPA) act changed the rules of the game.

Unfortunately it seems few of the politicians down South, including the ones who passed it, seem to understand what it says, and the media seems (as usual) to be utterly clueless. Or at least it is suiting them all to pretend to not understand.

There is now a single specific form of motion that has to be passed to give confidence to a government, and a similarly a single specific form of motion to deny them confidence.

Nothing else now actually counts as far propping up or bringing down a government is concerned. Voting against any other bill or motion, cannot bring down a government even if that government loses.

If you read the SNP Manifesto, you see that it is almost entirely written in terms ‘we will support/we will oppose’, and many of the policies are exact duplicates or very near analogues of other parties polices. It isn’t a traditional manifesto at all, instead it is a very public roadmap of which way the SNP is intending to vote on a range of things that might come up in the House of Commons. Including a range of stuff Labour is likely to propose.

So in the scenario — by no means given — where Labour + SNP has a majority, unless Labour are willing to go into coalition with the Tories (or possibly voting with them for an immediate second election, which under the FTPA requires 66% of the House of Commons), I don’t think there is any way for for Ed Miliband to avoid becoming leader ofa Labour Minority government with SNP support.

As Ed Miliband isn’t actually leader of the SNP, he can’t stop SNP MPs from granting him confidence, and then voting as they have pledged or see fit, for or against, with no effect on that confidence, on the individual bills he brings forward.

Queen’s speeches are pretty much now irrelevant except (I believe) for relations with the House of Lords under the Parliament Act, as are shout-y declarations that ‘voting this measure down, means voting down the government!’.

The closest historical precedent for all this is actually the SNP Minority Scottish Government at Holyrood from 2007 to 2011, and not Westminister in the ’70s.

Apparently down South and in certain Scottish Labour circles, the SNP going ahead and doing this is seen as sticking it to the them good and ‘calling thei bluff’ for reasons I as a mere inhabitant of Scotland am unable to discern.

It score points in some kind of machismo heavy Westminster based pissing contest, I guess.

The politics of Scotland and England have apparently evolved into such a mutual state of incomprehension, I now can’t even begin to guess how baying hounds in the press, and the English public would react, and whether they would consider it ‘reneging’, should all that come to pass.

All I know up here in Edinburgh, is that stating a preference of letting the Tories in rather than dealing with SNP is, shall we say, a rather ‘brave’ stance to take.

I don’t believe in the Labour minority government thesis, if they have to rely on implicit SNP support. The SNP is not a more-left version of Labour who have to support any Labour government for fear of something worse. They are a Scottish party who want specific giveaways and constitutional advantages for Scotland. Labour would find it extremely difficult to keep them happy even within a formal deal, and without one it will be next-to-impossible to give them enough concessions to keep them happy, while maintaining the fiction that the SNP is just supporting Labour’s agenda. The SNP will never prop up a Conservative government, but they might be very happy to bring down a Labour one in a way that leads to a Conservative election victory.

If Milliband is serious about no deal with the SNP, then I think we are heading for a second election.

If Milliband breaks the promise I think we are in uncharted territory. Such a betrayal would likely lead to electoral meltdown at the next election, so ordinary Labour MPs would want to rebel. It all depends on how easy it is for Labour to get rid of him as leader (seems very difficult according to the rules, but as those rules have never been tested, who knows how it would work in practice).

The Tories may have a majority together with the Lib Dems and perhaps the DUP, but it’s likely to be a very, very small one. Labour almost certainly will have a majority together with the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and the Green[s]

If Tories + Lib Dems + DUP is a majority, then Labour + SNP + Plaid + SDLP + Greens can’t be.

#13 – Oops – your arithmetic is correct! If Labour and the SNP between them have 310 seats, there is no possible Tory majority. If Labour’s performance drops a bit below that, though, either Con/LD/DUP or Lab/LD/SNP could scrape a majority. Tough choice for the Lib Dems: the leftie Scottish secessionists or the Ulster reactionaries who have incited violence against the Lib Dems’ sister party?

Disagree on the SNP, though – they’re a left-of-centre party, probably no further Left than Labour apart from a couple of issues, but certainly nowhere near as right-wing as the Lib Dems. No way would they torpedo a Labour minority government just for the hell of it.

Skapusniak is right about the parliament act.
I am sure I heard Sturgeon saying a couple of weeks when pressed “would you bring down a labour govt” that the act meant it couldnt happen in the way thequestion was phrased – so its very likely the SNP already have it as a rationale to put to voters for when they do vote against Labour.

labour has never needed to go into coalition with the SNP and has always had the minority govt option for the reasons given by posters above – the media is confusing electoral success with parliamentary leverage.

The SNP are not left or right they are nationalists -everything else is secondary and changes from year to year.

I like Ed milibands strategy – the polls are within margin of error, the most unpredictable element is the scottish vote and the tory scares around the SNP have some traction in middle england so labour has to send a clear message to both scottish and middle england voters that SNP will get nothing extra out of a LAB govt.

Disagree on the SNP, though – they’re a left-of-centre party, probably no further Left than Labour apart from a couple of issues, but certainly nowhere near as right-wing as the Lib Dems. No way would they torpedo a Labour minority government just for the hell of it.

The SNP are a left-of-centre party, but they are a Scottish left-of-centre party. Of course they would torpedo a Labour minority government if they thought that a politique de pire would help towards Scottish independence. Here’s a clue: did the SNP’s seeming takeover of Scotland’s MPs take place under a Labour administration?

Salem@13 by under the fixed term parliament act how can they bring down the government? Once they let someone them in they’re in.

It just needs a bare majority of the House of Commons to vote no confidence in the goverment, and a new election is held. See here. This could even be gamed by the governing party voting no confidence in their own government.

To follow up on the numbers specifically, here’s the “worst case” for Labour based on the worst polling I’ve seen for them:
* Tory: 290
* Labour: 258
* SNP: 53
* LD: 25
* DUP: 9
* UKIP: 3

In this case, the Tories can muster a fragile peace with a rainbow of Tory+LD+DUP getting to 324 (with nowhere-else-to-go support from UKIP to tip them over the notional bar of 326 although in practice it’s 323 when you eliminate the Speaker and Sinn Fein’s seats).

In contrast, the polling averages look more like this:
* Tory: 280
* Labour: 265
* SNP: 50
* LD: 27
* DUP: 8
* UKIP: 3

In this case, the Tory+LD+DUP+UKIP combo gets a maximum of 318, whereas Labour+LD gets 292 with prop-up support from the SNP making 342. This looks a lot more stable assuming that the SNP play ball by passing Labour’s Queen’s Speech and budgets; there’s some flexibility in there for individual MPs to rebel without making Miliband look vulnerable.

What will be interesting to see is whether the Lib Dems have another crack at electoral reform under a Labour Party whose regional heartlands have been wiped off the map by the nationalists — Labour has always been mildly ‘for’ electoral reform on fairness grounds but resolutely against it on pragmatic loss-of-seats grounds. Now that they’re about to lose the seats anyway, will the fact that every party apart from the Tories is committed to some sort of electoral reform finally tip the balance?

@salem I had misunderstood the requirements for proposing a no confidence motion, thanks. I think it’s very unlikely the SNP would kick up a fuss and force an election.

They have a choice of working with Labour or Conservatives, or making no government possible. Of those three options only working with Labour won’t destroy them.

The SNP has already said they’re not interested in a formal deal. The thing is both sides know they don’t actually need one. Labour and the SNP are very close politically, and Miliband will probably find that policies he likes are the ones that the SNP will vote for given he’s trying to drive Labour left.

Given both parties are one another’s major opponents in Scotland, it’s not too surprising neither is really willing to work with the other on a formal basis.

He’s serious. . . in as much as a formal deal is kind of irrelevant given the SNP would self evidently prefer him to Cameron.

I think some commenters are missing the point of the SNP. The goal of the SNP is not a slightly more left-wing UK, the goal is an independent, (and fairly left-wing) Scotland. Consistent with this, Nicola Sturgeon, the party’s leader, is not even standing for election to the UK parliament. As a result a successful, stable minority Labour government, reconciling Scots to both Labour and the UK would be the worst possible result for the SNP’s long term goals ( starting with winning next year’s Scottish elections).

@Chris, 29 – a different country, different context, and different story to be told. But such a thing happened in Ireland. In 2007 then leader of the Green Party Trevor Sargent said he would resign as leader and would not accept a seat at cabinet if the party went into coalition with Fianna Fail after the 2007 election. The numbers stacked up in favour of a FF-Greens-Progressive Democrats coalition, negotiations started, the Greens got some minor concessions, and FF-PDs were propped up again for another term. Sargent resigned following the negotiations, but he slipped around the side door and came back into the fold after being nominated as a Minister for potatoes and garden cultivation by then PM/Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. Sure Bertie was a man you couldn’t say no to, even if all it was was a bit of plámásing, and at any rate, he was no longer officially leader of the Greens, so he wasn’t reneging on any commitment at all at all…apart from now being in cabinet. Another Green Party member Ciarán Cuffe wrote prophetically in 2007 that ‘a deal with Fianna Fáil would be a deal with the devil. We would be spat out after five years, and decimated as a party.” The Greens walked before they were spat out, resigning from government in 2011, but they were wiped out after the election later that year anyway when their six elected politicians not only lost their seats but polled so badly that they could not even claim back election expenses. And that’s the end of that diversionary side story. As for what’s happening in the UK, it looks like a pretty turgid affair from the hiberno side of the pond.

Somf — I think the results of this election are going to make people sit up and pay attention. The SNP are about to get 50 seats with approx 2.5% of the national vote share, putting them well ahead of the Greens with 1 seat from 6%, UKIP with 3 seats (maybe) on 18%, and Lib Dems’ 25 from 10%.

We’re going to not only see the second-largest party become the Government, but the right-wing parties Tory+UKIP gaining a bare majority of the national vote share, but locked out by a regional party hardly anyone gets to vote either for or against — who despite getting a minority of the votes in their region have won going on 100% of the seats. It’s utterly, utterly perverse, whichever way you dice it.

Thanks, this is great.

One response to Dan at #12 — I heard an interesting world service reflection on the 2010 election, with various insiders saying that in the weeks leading up to the election both the Tories and the LibDems had devoted a great deal of time to thinking about what to do if the parliament was hung — working out scenarios, figuring out what bargaining positions to take, what pledges to ditch if they had to. And Labour arrived the morning after the election having given it no thought at all. This would help explain why they didn’t even try. Presumably SOMEBODY is thinking this stuff through, despite Miliband’s public stance.

With enough seats, Labour can do a deal with PD and the Unionists or the LibDems minus Clegg. Depressingly, of course, the Unionists would be the left wing of a Unionist/Tory/UKIP and or LibDem deal. Not clear that they wouldn’t be the left wing of a coalition with Labour.

It’s utterly, utterly perverse, whichever way you dice it.

I guess it depends on whether you think representatives in a representative democracy are elected to represent the people or the people of some geographical sub-entity. As it turns out, I rather agree with your implicit position (that the proportion of representatives in the parliament should be closer to the general share of vote) but that leads to other perverse outcomes (in the case under discussion, the majority opinion of the geographical area Scotland would be underrepresented).

All in all, the prospective results seem to be a good case for the full autonomy of Scotland.

Ian Masters devoted a show to the election yesterday: http://ianmasters.com/content/april-30-russell-brands-interview-ed-miliband-analysis-next-weeks-uk-elections-shake-top-sau His featured interviewee was Prof. Toby Miller at Cardiff. I can’t say for sure they addressed the credibility of Milliband–I was listening on car radio while driving–but it was a good discussion about the election in general.

I admit it, I’m just looking forward to hearing about Chancellor Ed Balls.

Wouldn’t the logical strategy be to have Labour and the Conservatives (and any others of note) form a Union Party for Scotland, all agreeing to divvy up the districts so there was only one non-SNP candidate per district?

But I guess petty politicking is more important than the preservation of the Union.

I have a question about the Lib Dems that I wonder could someone clarify. I actually voted for them last time (having lived in England for only 7 months at the time, Labour couldnt win in my constituency and they seemed to have a number of decent policies) but I havent really been able to work out where they stand (ideologically,so to speak) over the past 5 years.
Are they politically closer to the Torys or Labour ? They seem to be a conventional liberal party in some ways (on small government, civil rights etc) but also not full Tory on the welfare state etc
How can they shift alliances (potentially) so easily ? Would their base be closer (demographically) to Labour or Tory voters ?

Ronan — others can disagree, but my take is that it is a pretty broad church, with some left of center, some right of center, and many quite unprincipled (ironically, I think, a legacy of the SDP), and how they act is (right, left, unprincipled) is subject to the somewhat arbitrary electoral process (the parliamentary party is not very representative of the membership) and the fact that as a small parliamentary party they have a tiny pool of possible leaders — so even if they are, on average, left (or right) their only plausible leader might be right (or left). If Clegg loses his seat they, and the Labour Party, will have much more room for manouevre than if Clegg keeps his seat. That said, the psephologists I have been listening to think their presence might be much reduced, and then who knows.

Also, about many decades of not having thought at all about what they would do in government (eg, tuition fees).

You don’t need to “do a deal” to be supported in a confidence motion. Miliband’s position is based on the best alternative to a negotiated agreement, given that the SNP has already pledged to keep the Conservatives out of government, and that there are plenty of English voters outside the circulation range of the Sunday Post who have expressed some aversion to having the SNP play any predetermined role in government. (Those voters have also expressed aversion to any coalition, even though collectively they’re going to vote for that outcome.)

We’re more likely to see the rump Lib Dems split than anything else, because that’s what Liberals do.

One curious aspect of the campaign has been how media attention has been directed towards how Miliband assemble a Commons majority, with none on Cameron. Given the seat projections, even if there’s a majority for Con+LD (perhaps with DUP support) it’s not going to be a continuation of the 2010-2015 coalition. And yet, not a dickie bird about that.

This is all so much number crunching and navel gazing. I am waiting for someone other than myself to notice that this election is about, foremost, the future of the British Union and within that, the future of the English component nation. Tam Dyell posed this issue years ago with his famous West Lothian Question: the rights of English MP’s to rule on Scottish affairs, and vice versa. It is now about to be answered.
The wretched Cameron, a product of the PR industry, gloriously over-promoted, has mangled the response (English votes for English issues) in such a fashion it is now an open invitation to consider both an independent Scotland and the English tearing along the dotted line known as the Border.
I aee also that no.one has noticed (so far at any rate) the connection with Parnell’s Irish Fenians who kept the Liberals in power way back before WW1. The Irish nationalists held the balance of power in Westminster. We are in for a repeat performance. The English Question is bubbling just below the surface.
That is why Nats are on steroids. They have a simple West Lothian answer. If, and it is an if, Labour attempts a Queen’s Speech with Ms. Sturgeon’s support, it will by the inevitable course of nature, dictate both Scottish and English independence. I will not complicate the issue with the matter of Wales, but it may be an inevitable outcome that within a possibly federally structured English nation, London, which is already a greater city dynamo state, will demand its own devolved status.
Richard Cottrell (ex Euro MP)

Help! What in the world are you supposed to do if, like me, you have three options: vote for a party whose policies you support (the Greens), but have no chance of winning your seat; vote for a truly excellent sitting local MP who is a paragon of virtue within his party, but is, you know, a LibDem; vote for the career politician Labour candidate whose entire campaign seems to involve attacking the excellent LibDem MP? Quite apart from the unfairness of fptp, I’m still stuck on whether I’m supposed to be giving a mandate or voting for a manifesto….

@Ronan(rf) – I am a fairly new migrant to the UK (new enough that this election will be my first opportunity to vote here) and I have found the party system here extraordinarily arcane. (I mean, I can handle the idea of political parties that are defined by common political opinions, and I can handle the idea of political parties that are defined basically by tribalism and history, but the system here seems to do both of these things at the same time.)

With regard to the Liberal Democrats, I found an old Dsquared post particularly helpful – .

This is a wonderfully helpful thread. Thanks all. (Special mention for Phil @14, which is fantastic.)

Ditto what js. said (except I prob. didn’t read the thread as closely as he did).

I think this is just all a long process of bedding in a non-two party system. Labour and the Tories want to go back to single party majorities, of course. But it doesn’t seem like that will happen. The Lib Dems are perceived to have done badly in their coalition: they had to give up on many of their pledges to support the Tories, and will undoubtedly be punished for it. What everyone is worried about is that in the next coalition, whoever it may be, the junior partner will be considerably bolshier than the Lib Dems, in order to try to avoid their fate. The rhetoric being used is that the SNP will hold their senior partner “to ransom” over certain issues.

What this reflects is that neither British politicians, nor the press, nor the public are yet used to a system in which every party goes in knowing that they’re not going to get everything they want. There isn’t a history of committed horse-trading to get a result, so no-one knows (a) how to do these negotiations, or (b) if some other party is going to blow the negotiations up. (Unlike many European countries, for example.) This will surely continue for another couple of elections, and then settle down. Once we’ve been through a few cycles of coalitions, minority governments, and broad alliances, everyone will start to get a feel for how it works, and that it does work, and we won’t have the scaremongering any more.

I’m glad the SNP are getting some traction, because it makes life easier. Five years ago we faced the possibility of the Lib Dems being permanently in power, allying with first Labour, then the Conservatives. It was an awful prospect. Now we have some options.

Nothing else now actually counts as far propping up or bringing down a government is concerned. Voting against any other bill or motion, cannot bring down a government even if that government loses.

It’s worth reading Harold Wilson’s remarks in March 1974, during the Queen’s Speech debate, in which he set out the terms by which the minority Labour government would treat Commons votes:

The Government intend to treat with suitable respect, but not with exaggerated respect, the results of any snap vote or any snap Division… In case of a Government defeat, either in such circumstances or in a more clear expression of opinion, the Government will consider their position and make a definitive statement after due consideration. But the Government will not be forced to go to the country except in a situation in which every hon. Member in the House was voting knowing the full consequences of his vote.

Now, it remains to be seen how the limitations of the FTPA are handled in practice, given that it was enacted primarily to seal the coalition deal in 2010, not for long-term use: conventions die hard. A government in a parliamentary democracy that can’t pass a budget could conceivably be kept in office, like a plaything mouse that a cat doesn’t want to kill right now.

Igor Belanov @71 is right – Labour has sacrificed its long run position for short term gain in not going for something like preferential voting (the Single Transferable Vote in UK parlance).

The point is that if they had been the ones pushing that they would have been the ones controlling the detail (eg do voters have to fully state their preferences by numbering the ballot from 1 to xx or is it optional, or is who the vote is to be transferred to nominated in advance by the candidates, etc) – and that detail actually makes a big difference to outcomes. Sticking with First Past The Post in the presence of strong REGIONAL parties that compete with them was always going to cause them grief eventually (not to mention creating perverse outcomes from the POV of democratic legitimacy).

You LIKE Jeremy Vine?

Why?

I listen to him in the mornings (my mornings, his afternoons), and the mix of frivolity and whereas at first I thought he was kind of stupid, and frivolous I’ve come to appreciate that he takes on serious questions reasonably well, is firm but kind with the people he talks to, manages to be sympathetic when things get traumatic without being mawkish, knows when to shut up, and loved Tony Benn and loves Dennis Skinner.

I’ve been pretty successful in tuning all of this out but I did make the mistake of switching on Radio 4 the other day and they had asked all major parties whether they thought there would be anything wrong with an education secretary sending their children to private school. All said no. Anyway: back to the football commentary.

You’ve pretty much got that totally backwards. Before the FTPA the PM could normally call an election at any time. The act means that the consent of parliament is now required. Either two thirds of the members voting for a dissolution or the government losing a motion of confidence, which is a simple majority of those voting, and no one then winning a confidence motion within 14 days. A second motion is not required for a dissolution of is required to prevent a dissolution.

On a more positive note: “Baltimore set for victory rally as officers charged”
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/05/baltimore-set-victory-rally-officers-charged-freddie-gray-150502071952674.html

Brett Dunbar @80
“You’ve pretty much got that totally backwards. Before the FTPA the PM could normally call an election at any time. The act means that the consent of parliament is now required. Either two thirds of the members voting for a dissolution or the government losing a motion of confidence, which is a simple majority of those voting, and no one then winning a confidence motion within 14 days. A second motion is not required for a dissolution of is required to prevent a dissolution.”

I’m not quite certain who the “you” meant may be. But I thought the power of the PM (who would generally have a parliamentary majority) to call an election is an aspect of a parliamentary system. It’s not calling an election when the PM doesn’t have a parliamentary majority that strikes me as the move away from a parliamentary system.

Further, the plebiscitary form required, rather than a budget vote or perhaps a key treaty approval, confuses the issues. By and large I think parties will find it much harder to vote new elections on a pass/fail basis, than to vote down a budget or treaty that openly violates their campaign pledges. It seems to me FTPA eliminates these as confidence votes. Also, limiting their choices to a new election or not, which in effect risks everyone’s jobs, rather than negotiating a new government coalition, I think can’t help but reduce the role of parties in parliament.

Given the UK’s unwritten basic law, I don’t see how a minority government couldn’t use FTPA to postpone new elections until the term is up, even if they can’t pass new laws. It’s true the parliament would continue to meet but it might as well have been dissolved, leaving the government to rule without new statutes or revenues.

stevenjohnson:

[the FTPA] seems to me to replace devising a new parliamentary majority with new elections

It’s not calling an election when the PM doesn’t have a parliamentary majority that strikes me as the move away from a parliamentary system.

The FTPA replaces new elections with a (time-limited) process of devising a new parliamentary majority, thereby taking power away from the Prime Minister and giving it to the House of Commons as a whole – the reverse of your first comment (as Brett said). But your second comment suggests you know this & don’t approve, so I’m confused.

The hope from Canada is that the Tories win the largest number of seats but Labour forms the government either in coalition with, or as a minority government with the support of, the SNP, Lib Dems, or whoever. This will scotch the argument Stephen Harper will make later this year — and that’s completely false to the parliamentary tradition — that only the party with the largest number of seats is entitled to form a government. This, one hopes, will allow some kind of Liberal-NDP combination.

Two further things. The Canadian experience with (many) minority governments is that the smaller supporting party always demands concessions for supporting the government. They’ll look foolish if they don’t, i.e. if they support a government they opposed in the election and get nothing in return. So Labour shouldn’t expect to be able to govern without deals. Also, the general tendency is for the smaller supporting party to suffer in the next election, as the Lib Dems are doing this time. If a vote for party X ends up as a vote for a government of party Y (even with some concessions), why not vote just for, or most clearly against, party Y? See for example the NDP’s success in the 1972 election followed by its sharp decline in 1974, after it had supported Trudeau’s Liberals for two years.

> At such a moment, no other issue has any relevance.

I really don’t think it’s up to you to dictate to others what they should — must — care about.

No. Other issues do, in fact, have relevance. You might not like it that people care about things you don’t, but at the end of the day that’s your problem, and as someone claiming an adult’s right to comment you probably need to step up to an adult’s responsibility to show some perspective.

The house is not on fire. The independence referendum happened last year, and No won. Telling the Scottish people that they don’t get to take part in UK politics is probably the best way to set the house on fire.

So UK voters has Miliband really held a press conference with his election promises carved in stone? it appears to be true from this article http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/03/ed-milibands-carved-pledges-could-sink-like-a-stone

– but as the writer says, it appears to break records for stupidity in elections (and I’ve seen a bit of that).

Also, excuse basic dumb question, but is the situation in the UK that the party with the most votes in an electorate wins that electorate, even if they don’t have a majority?

RE Val’s comment: The one argument for retaining FPTP was that it delivers stable majority governments. Everyone has always known that what is about to happen with the SNP is a theoretical possibility, given the rules of the game, but nothing like it has happened — the worst that has happened has been the majority party getting fewer votes than the minority party.

Is there now any argument for retaining FPTP that actually has any force at all? (other than that its hard to decide what the replace it with?).

45 is wrong about the SNP and 93 is right. The only goal of the SNP is to create the conditions for a Yes vote for an independent Scotland. If given the opportunity, the SNP will prove a responsible and pragmatic partner for Labour for 12 to 24 months. The right-wing press will present Nicola as evil incarnate and the Scots as lot of freeloaders living off the backs of ordinary English voters. Once the SNP have constructed a viable economic reputation for themselves, in part by helping stabilize the British economy, they’ll pull the rug out and force an election. Without the SNP, Labour can’t win. Which means a Conservative government which the Scots won’t live with. The SNP has been unrelenting in its hostility to the Conservatives before and since they lost the no vote. Deposing Cameron this week makes the SNP heroes at home. The prospect of conservatives ruling Scotland again, should be enough to allow the SNP to run on a platform of another referendum within two years. Labour needs to find a new leader who can figure out what Labour stands for very, very quickly. Don’t see that happening.

(correction the IPP rather than Parnell, who was dead by the second bill)

I had missed kidneystones comment, (non refreshed page) which I think clears up the SNP position for me. Although is that timeframe (before another referendum) a little short?

kidneystones@98: “Once the SNP have constructed a viable economic reputation for themselves”.

Given their frantic waffling before the referendum, and the collapse of the value of North Sea oil subsequently, I think that might take rather a long time.

the parliamentary math showed that after 2010 it was impossible to keep the Tories out of the government, you would have needed an unwieldy assembly of every non-Conservative and non-Unionist party

Not really. As I wrote at the time, Labour and the Lib Dems had 315 seats between them, in a House of Commons of 644 voting members (650 minus the Speaker and 5 abstentionist Sinn Fein MPs), making an effective majority 323. Two parties: 315 seats – or rather 319, counting the SDLP and Alliance, who vote with Labour and the Lib Dems respectively. That only leaves 19 MPs unaccounted for, and 14 of them would have had to vote with the Tories to bring the Labour/Lib Dem alliance down. This would basically mean the Tories allying with both the Democratic Unionists and the SNP – it couldn’t be done.

Clegg took the party into a coalition with the Tories, rather than Labour, for one reason only: he wanted to.

Val — I don’t really take issue with that. Though in other countries where this happens frequently it doesn’t seem to be a problem. I think the voting system makes it more sensible in the UK to say “no deal ever” (as long as you don’t really mean it, but only if you seem to mean it) than under a PR system. But I couldn’t articulate exactly why I think that (I’ll try to figure it out).
I don’t think Nicola Sturgeon (the SNP leader) is being any less devious than anyone else here, though.

Val, doesn’t this

UK readers might take issue with this, but from a feminist perspective it seems to me that the refusal to ‘do deals’ is – at least here – partly reflecting a gendered image of a proper leader, rather than realpolitik. A ‘real leader’ is firm and in charge.

sit rather oddly with this?

That vocal white male middle class left tends to be ‘realistic’, ‘pragmatic’ and so on. They will use the language of their supposed neo-liberal enemies, the language of rationality and econo-speak, quite freely, but they won’t often use the language of morality, priciple or ethics. To talk about fairness, even on CT, is to risk being derided … That’s one of the reasons why people like me, people in politics who try to make the left take left positions, probably don’t tend to make much progress. Because we’re unrealistic, we’re bleeding hearts, we’re fairies at the bottom of the garden (especially of course if we happen to be women).

Possibly not…

A handful of interesting and very ominous stats from a very recent poll:

Ed’s positive/negatives are identical to Farage’s..
Voters favor Conservatives to run the economy over Labour 2-1
Voters trust Farage to handle immigration over Labour 4-1, (48-12) with trust in Conservatives running a very distant second at 27.
Which means that whoever forms the government is going face an electorate that favors UKIP’s immigration by a much higher margin than support for either leading party. The interactive maps at the link: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/02/observer-opinium-poll-election-labour-tories-neck-and-neck
don’t show who’s running second in northern Labour seats, but UKIP will be running strong seconds in many races. Labour’s London elites have displayed such enormous disdain for the concerns of the working people outside London that it’s very difficult to see how they staunch the wounds. I’ve been in unions most of my life and can’t imagine sitting in the same room with Harmon and company. Should Farage lose and Evans take over we may see support for UKIP rise even more quickly.

@112

Like immigration restrictions in 1962 and 1965, [the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, 1968] was loathed by liberal opinion and loved by the public… Gallup, which tracked public attitudes from 1958 to 1982 (Coloured People in Britain; London: Gallup, 1982), found consistent majority support for immigration restrictions. Support for the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 ranged from 62% to 76% (question 35); support for ‘a strict limitation on the number of immigrants’ from the Commonwealth 87% in 1965 (question 50); support for the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, 1968 was 72% (question 56); and support for the Immigration Act, 1971 was 59%, with 25% not knowing (question 85). In 1968, The Times and the Spectator accused the government of shirking an obligation willingly accepted by the British government in 1962. See The Times, ‘Hasty law makes bad cases’, 23 Feb. 1968 and the Spectator, ‘A shameful and unnecessary act’, 1 Mar. 1968

In that sense, nothing has changed – we have always banked on elite consensus to exclude or at least slow the march of a perennially popular Powellism; see the recent cosmopolitan-communitarianism thread.

Labour’s elites have pretty much always treated the anti-immigration concerns of the working class with well-deserved disdain and contempt – remember Gordon “bigoted woman” Brown?

engels @ 101
No I definitely don’t think they conflict. Qualities being in inverted commas is probably a giveaway that they relate to an imagined self, yes? The image/s are both of someone who is realistic, practical, in control, firm, decisive etc – Maggie Thatcher and Ed Miliband could probably both subscribe to that, right? Doesn’t make those ideas any less gendered or any less constructed by a particular kind of masculinist/patriarchal discourse about leadership.

On the question of being firm and decisive, I can’t resist telling this story: when I was working for the Victorian Parliamentary Labor party, there was at least one senior MP who used to talk about not being a “soft cock” in politics. This was a member of the ‘leadership team’, not some outré backbencher. Admittedly that’s almost 20 years ago now, but social change happens slowly.

@kidneystones
On immigration – again comparing – in Australia, when we had a consensus position on multiculturalism, people were much more accepting of it. And in Victoria, where I live, we have never had as much problem with overt racism or support for anti-immigration parties as in NSW or Queensland, for example – and that seems to be because support for multiculturalism has always been a consensus position for major parties here.

The racist/anti-immigration party here was ‘One Nation’ – it never got much traction in Victoria, unlike other states. That is the effect of genuine leadership, I would say – politicians can take the people with them, when they take a principled position.

It’s the same with the death penalty. We have recently had a big uproar here about Australian citizens receiving the death penalty in Indonesia. In fact there are probably quite a few citizens here who would support the death penalty if they were given any encouragement, but because all the major parties here take a principled stand against it, they are not encouraged.

So I would suggest that there may be many in all classes and parties in the UK who are possibly at least potentially racist or anti-immigration at some level, but the more politicians pander to it, the worse they will get.

Val and Kidneystones,

A pro refugee group I am in met with our local Labor M.P. Lisa Chesters the other week about Labor party policy on refugees.

While both major parties are pro immigration (a professor I had said this is because Australian welfare state economics is based on having a growing population which is a bit like a pyramid scheme I guess) they take a hardline on refugees. Our M.P. is publicly on the left and thinks refugee policy should be more humanitarian.

Our electorate is working class and the average income is below the national one, and there is higher unemployment, and at the moment in the nearer big regional city there is quite a bit of reliance on sort of food banks like in the U.K. There was a petition that got a couple of thousand signatures that was against multiculturalism, and there is an outspoken councillor in the regional city who has campaigned against a mosque being built — which was a huge issue here (oddly enough the people in Occupy Melbourne became campaigners against the mosque too). So what kidneystones raises is quite a live issue in the area in Victoria where I live.

Our M.P. was very helpful when we asked how we could help influence the Labor party to have more humanitarian policies for refugees. But she also said she thought politicians will be followers rather than leaders on these issues — the issues need resolving at the community level before the parliament will act. So she said it is important to engage with people who fear multiculturalism or immigration or refugees, and often they are misinformed.

I think foreign students are beneficial to universities. I often do my group projects in groups with foreign students and sometimes I will want to try to change their choices of English words, as I think maybe they are not academic enough for the assignments — but then this also makes me more aware of the strictures of academic English which are not ever really specified you just end up taking them on board without good reason a lot of the time. Also foreign students help you have a more international perspective — I had a project with a Singaporean student and I did not like free trade, so I thought maybe we could have protectionism again — but protectionism would hurt Singapore.

On the low paid workers — our M.P. drew out attention to the fact that some visa categories are being abused and migrant workers are being treated like slaves in Australia despite labour regulations. There was just a Four Corners investigation into this the other day in the agriculture field :

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-04/supermarkets-food-outlets-exploit-black-market-migrant-workers/6441496

@kidneystones ” Labour elites characterization of working class concerns as bigotry?”

Well, I don’t know what you’re thinking of, exactly, but presumably Gordon Brown’s characterization of Gillian Duffy as “some bigoted woman” is in the background here.

A few points:

(1) the “working class” *in the sense employed here* is a declining and ageing section of the population. Assuaging their concerns in the future will win you fewer votes and lose you some among other voters.

(2) Bigotry does indeed lie behind a lot of hostility to immigration on the part of this demographic, and there’s plenty of good social scientific research to back this up. It may be bad political tactics to call people bigots, as well as being a poor strategy to get them to change their minds, but there’s a lot of bigotry out there.

(3) Concern about immigration among the UK electorate have always been high and have been so pretty much independently of how much of it there has been. This has certainly been the case ever since Powell’s notorious speech and has been accompanied since forever by a litany of moaning that “we aren’t allowed to talk about immigration” by people who talk about it incessantly. It isn’t clear that any policy response will change the level of anxiety one way or the other, since the anxiety has little rational basis.

(4) A lot of the talk about competition for jobs etc is just crap. On R5 yesterday there was a woman complaining about how the influx of Polish and Romanian workers has meant that her daughter, a social worker, had had to go and get work in another city. Competition from Romanian social workers? I don’t think so. In fact there’s a shortage, so a few Poles and Romanians would be a good thing. Generally people rationalize their bigotry by referencing a range of factoids that aren’t true, around jobs, wages, benefits etc.

Hi Chris,
Actually, what I’m thinking of is the fact that New Labour’s leadership is made up of oxbridge gits who view Britain’s working classes as a lower life form. Guano is partly right except that Labour’s roots have withered, in part thanks to New Labour policies. I’m pleased you’re so candid about your hostility towards the poor, irrational buggers who for some wholly irrational reason believe that Labour leaders who ask for their votes couldn’t give a damn about their concerns.

Have you ever done any factory work or manual labour? It’s honest work done by largely honest folk. Our own daughter elected to enter the work force rather than attend university, I’m pleased to say. Some here may regard her decision as a failure. Worse, it seems pretty clear she’d prefer to marry and start of family soon. I’ve worked in business and spend time with some reasonably formidable academics (I don’t include myself). I hope this doesn’t come as too much of a shock, but from my experience most of the really clever people I know operate outside the university environment.

Re: Grade inflation for cash: here’s the link: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/05/04/new-reports-consider-whether-australias-quest-international-student-tuition-revenue

Hi Igor,
Thanks for this. How would you measure the efficacy of the enlightened oxbridge elite to address the concerns of the bigots, as Chris calls them? (I stand by my assertion, btw, that bigotry is not a function of class. As one Jamaican explained, educated liberals are invariably better at concealing their bigotry.) 12 percent of Britons trust Labour on immigration. 13 percent of Britons are UKIP supporters. Yet, nearly nearly half the populace trusts UKIP on immigration. Bertram’s open smear of the lower orders put me in such a good mood, I’m about to watch season one of In the Think of It, again!

One view of bigotry, from someone who went to state schools in working class areas before going to Oxford: the kind of out-and-out racism which was common among ex-private-school boys at Oxford was unlike anything I’d ever encountered at school. Also: I don’t think there were any black students admitted that year by the enlightened tutors of my college (my black friend from school was rejected by his college).

The notion that “government employees” aren’t part of the people is remarkable. There are more of them than there are rich people, for one thing. But it’s true that if they go on strike, the owners can’t go bankrupt, so in that sense they aren’t workers.

As for the grade inflation poker game, I’ll match the pot with grade inflation for legacies and raise with grade inflation for athletes.

I am however awed by the achievements of a social system where only the graduates of Oxford and Cambridge Universities are sufficiently indoctrinated in snobbery to despise Britain’s working classes as a lower life form. Thank God the natural nobility of the less educated upper classes in England puts the kibosh on that sort of thing. And isn’t it convenient that an Oxbridge degree is such a reliable indicator of moral perfidy?

I’m pretty sick of this election, but there a re some good signs:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelection/general-election-2015-sixty-per-cent-of-people-want-voting-reform-says-survey-10224354.html

The current UK electoral system is frankly ridiculous and a big part of the problem.