Hung Parliament
This is the media buzz now, with the polls pointing to a much closer finish than at the beginning of the year. This is a good moment to examine why the new parliament may lack a party with an overall majority and what it would mean.
Labour has won the first part of the campaign and narrowed the gap with the Tories, who have the huge task of having to win nearly a hundred and twenty seats to get a majority of one, whereas Labour could lose about thirty and still have the magic one. Churchill said one is enough. It is not. Wilson had a handful in 1974, but bye-election losses meant that his successor Callaghan ended up without and had to do a deal with the Liberals. Major had over twenty in 1992, but lost his majority again through bye-election losses and ended up in hoc mainly to the Ulster Unionists. Apart from Ken Clarke who was a savvy Chancellor the rest of the government became a shambles. Nevertheless the tradition is to avoid coalitions in this country and allow a minority government to totter from one vote to the next until it spies a moment of advantoge to go the the country or the opposition is strong enough to bring it down. That it what happened to Callaghan. Thatcher’s first scalp.
The reason this election is now very difficult to call is that, for the moment anyway, the Tories do not have a big enough lead to neutralise the effects of smaller parties and really break through. They may recover their position by polling day or they may not. Labour has done well so far but may be near its high water mark. Going into the lead and returning with a majority is still something of a dream. Now enter the Lib Dems.
The Lib Dems can suffer defeats and still hold the balance. That may happen if some of their marginals in the south fall to the Tories and some of those in the northfall to Labour. They do, however have a strength. There is no obvious fringe party eating into their vote. This means they could stand still and gain seats if the BNP eat into the Labour vote when the Lib Dems are placed second and UKIP eat into the Tory vote where the Lib Dems are second in those marginals. Opinion polls have some difficulty with third and fringe parties because the national percentage does not translate into a universally even outcome. So without a real surge from the Tories (or Labour) a hung parliament is now a real possibility.
All across Europe hung parliaments requiring coalition goverments are commonplace and generally produce good quality administrations with a better track record of national advancement than our own. Unfortunately the terrible weaknesses in our so called Unwritten Constitution offer no clear framework of rules to which all elements of government have to abide. The string of practices, customs, laws and procedures lawyers bandy about as our constitution are in fact nothing of the kind. A proper constitution is the supreme set of rules setting out how and in what form government of the people, by the people for the people may operate. This is why, apart from Israel we are the only major democracy not to have one. It is worse than that; we are one of only three countries in the world which does not have a proper written constitution.
Few people grasp just how archaic our set up is. Because we are an absolute Monarchy at the core of the State, the Government is not the people’s government or parliament’s government. It is the Queen’s. When she dissolves parliament at the start of the election campaign proper, the entire government remains in office and getting paid, although none are any longer MP’s. This is because whilst the Queen is the titular Head of State, all her powers are notionally vested in her Prime Minister. In a proper constitution the powers of the Head of State are important political offices requiring impartial but active participation. Unless directly elected ( the U.S and France for example) the head of State is one tier above the government but acts as referee to make sure the rules are stuck to and a viable coalition agreement is signed between the parties to ensure government of appropriate quality and stability (Germany, Ireland, Italy etc). This does not mean these countries have perfect government, but it does mean they have in place the rules by which it will operate.
A hung parliament will either lead us quickly into another general election or it will bring into the open the rickety and outdated structure from which our limted democracy manages to govern so inefficiently and, at the same time, proclaim its legitimacy. Maybe both.
Finally Nick Clegg is reported to have remarked that the largest party will have the moral authority to govern, even without a majority. That is rubbish. Until every MP has a majority of all the votes cast in the constituency as a rule of getting into the House of Commons and until Governments achieve over fifty per cent, either on their own or in coalition, of the votes cast by the people, there will be no such thing as moral authority in our government. Just power grabbed by minorities exploiting totally inadequate rules.