Posts Tagged ‘coalition government’

Coalition government is not a marriage

On 7 January 2012, Conservative Party leader David Cameron and Liberal Democrat Party leader Nick Clegg held a joint press conference, which you can watch here, to promote the Coalition government’s Mid-Term Review. That review lists what the government says it has achieved in meeting its coalition agreement and outlines further reforms to come. Both Cameron and Clegg stressed that the coalition would last the full five-year term.

One of the stranger questions asked during the press conference was if the coalition was like a marriage. Indeed, when Cameron and Clegg held their first press conference together back in 2010 to launch the coalition, some of the press coverage read as if it should have been on the Society pages rather than in the Politics section (see for example, this piece, or this one). Cameron answered that question thusly:

“To me it’s not a marriage, it’s a Ronseal deal, it does what it says on the tin – we said we would come together, we said we would form a government, we said we would tackle these problems, we said we would get on with it in a mature and sensible way, and that is exactly what we’ve done.”

This prompted the BBC’s political editor to write a column entitled: Coalition: Official – it’s not a marriage. The column starts:

It’s not a marriage. It never was. They were never in love so they are not renewing their vows.

That, in summary, is the reaction inside Downing Street to how the media, including me, have spoken about today’s joint news conference to be held at Downing Street by David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

Robinson goes on to explain:

The reason this debate about terminology is revealing is that both sides of this coalition have concluded that all this talk of marriage is toxic as it invites hacks like me to conclude that the Tory and Lib Dem partners are still “in love” – something which infuriates many of their natural supporters – or preparing to “divorce” in the run-up to the next election.

The Cameron/Clegg talk of their strengthened “shared purpose” was, of course, always going to make it hard to resist the temptation to ask whether both men are protesting too much. I doubt that many hacks today will resist.

It’s not surprising that the UK media haven’t known exactly how to cover the coalition – it is a rarity in First-Past-the-Post jurisdictions such as the UK. Indeed, the UK media, almost from day one, has regularly speculated not on if the coalition would collapse – that seemed to be a given, but when this would occur. At times it seemed that every single policy was “the one that will tear the coalition apart”, bring about the aforementioned “divorce”.  What the press have failed to understand is that, in the words of the Constitution Unit’s Robert Hazell, is that the UK has a coalition government, but not a coalition Parliament.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have not merged their two parties, therefore it is not surprising – or at least, should not be surprising – that the backbenches of each party often disagree. Such disagreement in the House does not mean that the coalition itself is coming apart at the seams. Indeed, even the parliamentary splits aren’t always divisions between the Lib Dems and the Tories, but divisions within the Conservative Party itself, as this other analysis from the Constitution Unit explains. A coalition is not merger of two parties; it is an attempt by two parties to find common ground in order to govern jointly.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was questioned by the House of Lords Constitution Committee on 9 January 2012 and addressed many of the issues surrounding the workings of the coalition, in particular how it impacts the doctrine of collective ministerial responsibility. It’s an interesting discussion and I recommend watching it.

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The Politics of Coalition: the video

In support of their book, The Politics of Coalition: How the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government Works, which was published in June 2012, Dr. Robert Hazell and Dr. Ben Yong of UCL’s Constitution Unit delivered a talk in October highlighting some of their main findings. That talk was recorded, and is now available for general viewing online.

I strongly encourage anyone interested in coalition government and minority parliaments to watch the video (and buy the book). Drs. Hazell and Yong were given wide access to everyone who mattered – including Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, as well as ministers, MPs, Lords, civil servants and others. While they focus primarily on the coalition’s first 15 months in office, the authors also look down the road, raising important lessons political parties in the UK would do well to consider since hung parliaments are likely to be increasingly regular occurrences.

From a Canadian perspective, despite the more recent difficulties the coalition parties have encountered, it’s still very refreshing to know that elsewhere in the world, political parties are both capable of and willing to work together and that the very idea of coalition government isn’t considered something evil or unconstitutional. Canadian political parties, both federal and provincial, would do well to take note.

Where to buy The Politics of Coalition: in the UK, from Amazon.co.uk, in Canada, from Amazon.ca, in the US, from Amazon.com.

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The length of two swords

Recently, the brilliant UK actor Philip Glenister (Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes, State of Play, Mad Dogs, Hidden, etc.) was interviewed on the Andrew Marr show in connection with his latest role, that of Chief Government Whip in the play “This House“, which is set in 1974, when Labour had a shaky minority government.The discussion turned to the innately adversarial nature of politics in the UK House of Commons, with Marr noting that the play was in some ways an attack on the British parliamentary tradition, that of two sides against each other, and that underneath, there was a dream of a better way of doing things, a call for politics to be more consensual. Glenister noted that UK was “one of the few democracies, just by the layout of our parliament… it’s in a rectangular shape as opposed to in the round. It’s only one of two in the world.”

If Glenister is correct, and there are only two democracies in the world with rectangular Chambers which force government and opposition to face off against each other on opposing sides, then the Canada is the other one. The Canadian House of Commons, the Senate and most of the Canadian provincial and territorial legislatures are also rectangular, the exceptions being the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba, the Legislative Assembly of Nunavut and the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories.

What is being implied here is that layout of the Chamber, government on one side, opposition parties on the other, makes our politics more adversarial because it imposes an “Us vs Them” feel from the outset. This is the same argument put forward by architects in this very interesting article, “The Shape of Debate to Come“.

However, it is debatable to what extent the shape of the chamber might influence how adversarial or consensual debate will be. As Professor White notes in the above article, countries which end up with a more consensual approach to politics also tend to use some form of proportional representation rather than First-Past-the-Post:

But, in an email, he said there was “pretty much zero” chance of more co-operative behaviour in Canadian legislatures. And he put the differences in approach in legislatures such as Wales and Scotland more down to mixed electoral systems, not just first-past-the-post.

He said: ”Unquestionably the opposing rows of benches in standard Westminster parliaments reinforces the adversarial nature of the place; for my students I liken it to opposing armies or sports teams squaring off. At the same time, I see seating arrangements as very much secondary to underlying political culture and prevailing political norms.

“The Manitoba [legislature], which is semi-circular, has exceedingly nasty, adversarial partisan politics, and the US Congress these days is hardly a paragon of non-partisanship.”

Because PR makes it very difficult for any one party to form a majority government on its own, this means that coalition government tends to be the norm in countries which use some form of PR, and that reality alone will require parties to work harder to find some sort of consensus. As Prof. White points out, despite sitting in the round, politics in both Manitoba and the US Congress are very partisan and adversarial, and both jurisdictions use FPTP. The Australian House of Representatives is horseshoe-shaped, and politics Down Under is every bit as partisan as it is up here, particularly in the current minority parliament. Australia uses the Alternative Vote to elect its MPs, a voting system which requires voters to rank the candidates on the ballot in order of preference, and to win the seat, a candidate must gain over 50% of the vote, either outright, or through transferred preferences. AV, like FPTP, is not at all proportional, which may explain why political debate in the House of Representatives is partisan and adversarial.

This summer, it was reported that the UK Parliament could be closed for five years for extensive refurbishment, with MPs and Lords “convened in a replica chamber or a conference centre for the duration of the repair work, which could start in 2015.” This immediately alarmed some. The Spectator’s Fraser Nelson raised the threat of some advocating that a new, refurbished chamber would be “a chance to move the MPs to a lifeless, European style semi-circular chamber that supposedly encourages them to co-operate.” Fraser comments on how deathly boring debate is in the Scottish Parliament, which is circular. He does not mention that Scottish Members of Parliament (MSPs) are elected using Mixed-Member Proportional representation (MMP).

But is the electoral system alone enough to determine how consensual or adversarial politics will be in a given jurisdiction? Thomas Carl Lundberg, in his paper “Politics is Still an Adversarial Business: Minority Government and Mixed-Member Proportional Representation in Scotland and New Zealand“, concluded that while both nations introduced MMP in part to bring about a “new politics”, in the end, “the impact of institutional engineering upon the behaviour of politicians has been limited.” New Zealand adopted MMP in 1996, Scotland in 1999. New Zealand has seen the formation of mostly minority governments under MMP (albeit minority coalition government rather than single-party minority government) supported by other smaller parties through confidence and supply agreements, while Scotland has experienced two terms of majority coalition government, one term of single-party  minority government, and most recently, to the surprise of most, a single-party majority government.

The reasons why MMP has had limited success in curbing adversarial politics in Scotland and New Zealand, according to Lundberg are varied. Long before New Zealand adopted MMP, it had a very strong two-party system (Labour on the left and the National Party on the right) and a long history of single-party majority government. With the introduction of MMP in 1996, that didn’t really change. Politics remained quite adversarial between Labour and the National Party, but both of the main parties learned to work with the much smaller parties in order to form governments.

Scotland on the surface may appear more consensual, but there are other tensions at work. Scotland has a true multiparty system, that is one in which “there are three to five relevant parties which are not separated (polarised) by a large or intense ideological distance” (which isn’t the case in New Zealand). Rather, Scotland’s party system “is characterised by two significant cleavages” – class divisions and “the process of building the UK (with England at the centre dominating the periphery composed of Scotland, Wales and Ireland) in the latter.” The two largest parties in Scotland are Labour and the Scottish National Party – both are centre-left, and they have a long, adversarial relationship dating back before devolution, or to quote the former leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats: “there is a level of visceral hatred between the Nationalists and Labour to this day. So, it just transferred from London to Edinburgh … we just so massively underestimated how important it is for people to have good, personal relationships across all parties.”

Simply put, how adversarial or consensual politics might be in a given democracy will depend on many factors. While the shape of the debating chamber and the voting system used to elect members undoubtedly play a part, changing one or both will not necessarily bring about more polite politics.

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Collective ministerial responsibility and Coalition Government

There appears to be significant interest in the issue of collective ministerial responsibility during Coalition government. For what follows, I will be largely quoting or paraphrasing Vernon Bogdanor’s The Coalition and the Constitution.

Following the formation of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition in May 2010, the Coalition issued its Programme for Government which outlined in detail a full range of policy aims for the new government. It also provided for the explicit abandonment of the doctrine of collective responsibility on one issue in particular – the referendum on the Alternative Vote. The two parties would be whipped to get the Bill implementing the referendum through the House of Commons, but would be free to campaign on opposite sides during the referendum itself.

Elsewhere in the Programme for Government, there were explicit “agreements to differ” on issues such as new nuclear power stations, the renewal of Trident, on married couples’ tax allowances and on university tuition fees.

Agreements to differ were not inventions of the current Coalition. They were first introduced in 1932, to hold together the National Government on the issue of free trade. As Bogdanor writes:

Three Liberal Cabinet ministers had been allowed, not merely to abstain, but to speak and vote, both in the House of Commons and in the country, against the Import Duties bill, which imposed a tariff, being promoted by their Conservative coalition colleagues. The ‘agreement to differ’ was defended by Stanley Baldwin, Lord President of the Council and in effect deputy Prime Minister, as an expedient for a coalition since ‘[t]he fate of no party is at stake in making a fresh precedent for a National Government’. But, he went on to warn, ‘[h]ad the precedent been made for a party Government, it would have been quite new, and it would have been absolutely dangerous for that party’. (pp 51-52)

The doctrine of collective responsibility was suspended twice in the 1970s, not by a coalition government, but by a Labour government, both times on issues involving Europe. Consequently, ‘agreements to differ’ aren’t limited to coalition governments, but are more likely to be needed by coalition government than by single-party government.

What is different about the 2010 agreements to differ is that they are the first to be agreed to before the formation of a government, as part of a Coalition Agreement, rather than after the government is formed, as an expedient way to deal with new and/or unforeseen issues. Bogdanor states that because of this, “the ‘agreements to differ’ of 2010 are, from a constitutional point of view, more soundly based.” (p. 52)

What does an agreement to differ do? Simply put, it allows for the suspension of the convention of collective ministerial responsibility for certain specific issues. Interestingly, Bogdanor posits that there is no reason in principle why a Cabinet – any Cabinet – should not agree to suspend collective responsibility on any issue. The New Zealand Cabinet Manual has accepted the legitimacy of the agreement to differ since 2008, thus governments in New Zealand are free to waive it whenever they wish. Bogdanor does not note, however, that New Zealand has been governed by coalitions since the adoption of Mixed-Member Proportional in 1996, which may explain why agreements to differ are specifically recognized in the Cabinet Manual.

Bogdanor explains that with an agreement to differ, what is actually happening is that the doctrine of collective ministerial responsibility is replaced by collective Cabinet unanimity – in other words, the Cabinet collectively agreed to suspend collective responsibility. Ministers are therefore collectively responsible for the decision to suspend collective responsibility on a particular issue for a limited time.

Bodganor also makes clear that on none of the occasions when past governments have used agreements to differ did it bring credit to the government in question. All it succeeded in doing was to draw attention to important differences within the government. He concludes his discussion of agreements to differ thusly:

Not only a government but any collegiate executive, whether a Board of Directors or the committee of a students’ union, will make itself look ridiculous if it publicly advertises its disagreements. Any such body must therefore weigh up the benefits of employing an agreement to differ rather than trying to discover a compromise formula on which all can unite. It is surely advantageous if a coalition Cabinet can discover such a compromise formula. For the sanction on any departure from the convention of collective responsibility is not constitutional but political. It lies in the danger of public ridicule. (pp. 53-54)

I highly recommend The Coalition and the Constitution. It can be purchased in from Amazon UK and Amazon Canada.

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Inside the New Zealand House of Representatives

Like its Australian counterpart, the New Zealand House of Representatives’ debating chamber is arranged in a horseshoe shape. The Chamber measures 19.3 by 13.12 metres, which is  smaller than the Canadian  and UK Houses of Commons. As in the other chambers, the Speaker sits at one end, on a dais, and the Clerk and other Table officers are seated at a Table in front of and below the Speaker’s Chair.

The Members sit at desks arranged in three to five tiers. The MPs who are members of the Government side sit on the Speaker’s right, with the members of the executive nearest to the Speaker. The members of the Opposition parties sit on the left, with the members of the shadow cabinet nearest the Speaker, as we can see in this image from Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand:

The Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition and deputy to the Leader of the Opposition sit facing each other in recognised front bench seats. Their respective whips are seated immediately behind them. Other Ministers and members are allocated seats within the area of the Chamber occupied by the party to which they belong on a basis determined by the party. As far as practicable, each party occupies a block of seats in the Chamber, so that its members are seated contiguously. It is also a recognised practice that, if at all possible, every party leader should have a front-bench seat. Because New Zealand uses Mixed-Member Proportional voting rather than First-Past-The-Post, coalition government is the norm and so the government side of the House will include all of the parties forming the coalition.

In this image, we note that the horseshoe shape of the Chamber is divided at three points by gangways. One gangway at the far end of the Chamber leads beyond the bar of the House to an exit. The other two gangways are on either side of the Chamber. The one on the Speaker’s right leads into a lobby known as the Ayes Lobby, and the one on the left leads into the Noes Lobby. New Zealand MPs used to use these lobbies for divisions as is done in the British House of Commons, but since adopting MMP voting in 1996, the lobbies are used only for what are called “personal” votes. Party votes – which would be the equivalent of a whipped vote in other parliaments – don’t even require that all MPs be present. If a party indicates that is it voting in favour of a bill or motion, then a number of votes equivalent to the number of MPs that party has is attributed to the Ayes. Because of this, even the Speaker votes in New Zealand, which is not the case in other Westminster-style parliaments. The Speaker’s vote is included in any party vote cast and the Speaker votes in a personal vote, though without going into the lobbies personally – the Speaker’s vote is communicated to the teller from the Speaker’s chair. Because the lobbies are rarely used for divisions, they are now set aside for the exclusive use of members while the House is sitting as a place where they can go to relax.

Ministerial advisers are able to converse with their Minister from a bench situated immediately to the right of the Speaker’s chair (not shown in the diagram). Immediately to the left of the chair there are seats available for former members of Parliament, heads of diplomatic missions and visiting members of overseas parliaments.

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Some parliamentary reforms to look forward to in 2012

The BBC’s parliamentary correspondent, Mark D’Arcy, has an interesting look ahead  at what to expect at Westminster in 2012, with two items in particular worthy of special attention.

The first will be a review of the Backbench Business Committee. I have written a number of posts about this new committee, and many readers have frequently asked if the Backbench Business Committee has been a success. By most accounts, it has, which is why the review will take on added importance. As D’Arcy notes:

While the Leader of the House, Sir George Young, and his Lib Dem deputy, David Heath, are both convinced reformers, not everyone is an unalloyed fan of the new empowerment of backbenchers.

“Too keen on confrontational debates”, murmur some voices. “Too ready to schedule debates on a Thursday on voteable motions”, complain others. They might want to clip the committee’s wings by limiting its powers in some way.

It is not clear when this review will take place – D’Arcy has it listed under the April to October timeframe.

He also writes that both the chair and members of the Backbench Business Committee will be up for re-election, probably some time in June:

having realised the power it wields, committee places and perhaps even the chair will be hotly contested.

In particular, I’d be slightly surprised if the contingent of Tory awkward squaddies on the committee remained unscathed.

The other item of note is in some ways the counterpart to the Backbench Business Committee: the creation of a House Business Committee. The Coalition Government had promised to institute a House Business Committee by 2013, therefore in order to meet that deadline, moves in that direction will have to occur this year.

What is a House Business Committee and what will it do? In theory at least (since nothing has yet been proposed), it will be a Committee of the House of Commons, with (one assumes) an elected chair and members similar to most of the other Select Committees, which will organize most, if not all, other debates in the House of Commons. This might not sound particularly important, but it is very close to revolutionary change since it is currently the Government which has full control in deciding the House’s business agenda. As D’Arcy explains:

A house business committee would decide how much time would be devoted to particular bills, which matters more than you might imagine.

In the last Parliament [under Labour] it was quite usual to see heavily-amended legislation hammered through the Commons in a single day’s debate on “remaining stages” – report and third reading – with the result that scores of important changes were voted through unscrutinised.

To its credit, this government has avoided that particular practice – but a more open approach to scheduling debates, something more than the normal carve-up between government and official opposition, could still produce improvements.

The key would be that the agenda for coming weeks was presented as a voteable motion – so MPs who were unhappy that not enough time was being devoted to some bill or debate could attempt to amend it.

Not everyone likes this idea. “I’m not having the business of the House decided by (shudder) Peter Bone,” one upwardly mobile backbencher told me.

Some fear the government would lose the ability to put its bills before the House – defying the time-honoured maxim that the government “must get its business”.

Others fear that a house business committee would amount to no more than the same old backroom dealing, but clothed with a little extra legitimacy because a few establishment grandees had been in the room when it was sealed.

But for those who want the Commons to control its own business, and not have it handed down from on high, the key will be that voteable motion.

They argue that the prospect of being over-ridden by a vote in the House will help ensure the concerns of backbenchers are not ignored.

This innovation should be of great interest to Canadian readers, particularly given the current Canadian government’s propensity to curtail debate through the use of time allocation and closure motions. This is one initiative that I will follow with great interest, and keep readers updated on developments as they occur.

One other item of note will be the Coalition’s draft bill on Lords’ reform. That draft bill is currently being scrutinised by a committee of MPs and peers, and the committee is due to report in March, which means there would be a Lords Reform Bill available to be put into the coalition’s next Queen’s Speech (what Canadians call the Speech from the Throne).

All in all, for those interested in parliamentary and procedural reform, the coming year at Westminster promises to be an interesting one.

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Christina Blizzard doesn’t get coalition

I was hoping, in the wake of the formation of the UK Coalition government in 2010, that Canadian political journalists and columnists would perhaps follow events in the UK a bit more closely (or at all) and maybe even occasionally write about how the Coalition was getting along, if only to provide a contrast to how things were here in Canada during the previous minority government situation.

Alas, that didn’t happen, and there is rarely any coverage of UK politics even in the “international” sections of our media. However, the rare times UK Coalition is mentioned, it is inevitably in a negative light – as something that Canadians should well avoid. And usually, the person writing the article simply doesn’t seem to understand how coalition government works.

The latest example of that is a column from Christina Blizzard with the absolutely bizarre title “We don’t want our politicians getting along“. Ms. Blizzard covers politics in the Canadian province of Ontario, where the most recent election (6 October 2011) resulted in a hung parliament and a minority Liberal government. During the campaign, the Liberals had made it very clear that they would not enter into any coalition or other arrangement with other parties, while the Progressive Conservatives tried to scare voters by claiming that this was exactly what the Liberals were planning to do. As I’ve previously discussed on this blog, coalition has become a very bad word here in Canada.

Ms. Blizzard’s column is not going to help matters here in Canada since she seems to fail to understand the point of a coalition, and how one measures its success (or failure). If I read her correctly, Blizzard postulates that coalitions are to be avoided/don’t work because 1) voters really don’t want parties to work together; 2) the only time coalitions do work is during times of war and 3) the junior party in the coalition usually suffers in the polls. Let’s look at some of her claims in more detail.

The truth is that politicians don’t get along.

Nor should they. They’re elected to represent the differing interests and views of the diverse communities across this province.

That’s why I believe the proposed federal coalition of opposition parties before the last election was doomed from the start.

It is true that voters have different priorities, which is why they vote for and elect MPs from different parties. Does this mean, however, that voters don’t want politicians to try to find common ground and work together? The reality is that the ideological differences between the major political parties in both Canada and the UK grow smaller all the time as parties on the left and right try to appeal to the political centre in order to broaden their appeal with larger numbers of voters. To try to argue that our political parties divide on hardcore ideological differences which make cooperation impossible ignores this reality. The fact that no party in the recent Ontario election managed to win an outright majority of seats doesn’t mean that voters want a political stalemate; rather it means that voters weren’t sold completely on any one party’s platform and instead want the parties to address the issues facing the province together to try to find workable solutions.

Ms. Blizzard makes a reference to the failed coalition attempt at the federal level in 2008. I do agree with her that it was doomed from the start, but not because politicians don’t get along, or because they represent differing interests and views. The proposed Liberal-NDP coalition failed because 1) the coalition would have been led by a politician who had already announced that he was stepping down as his party’s leader because of their dismal showing in the October 2008 election; and 2) the Liberals and NDP together still did not command a majority of seats in the House of Commons, which is why they needed a supply-confidence agreement with the pro-Quebec independence party, the Bloc Quebecois. These are exactly the same reasons why a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition wouldn’t have worked in the UK in May 2010. A Lib-Lab coalition would have been led by a political leader who knew he was a liability and had agreed to step down and the two parties together did not have a majority of seats in the House of Commons – they would have had to depend on support from all the minority parties in the House of Commons, including the nationalist Welsh and Scottish parties. In both cases, this was simply an undesirable situation best avoided, but not for the reasons Ms. Blizzard puts forward, that politicians inherently don’t get along and shouldn’t.

Coalitions only work in wartime.

This is quite obviously patent nonsense. Most countries in Europe have coalition governments – they work just fine during peace time. New Zealand has had coalition governments since it changed its voting system in 1996, and those governments have functioned just fine. Perhaps Ms. Blizzard is referring to the fact that the UK and Canada have very limited experience with coalition government, and that experience has been largely (but not solely) limited to national unity coalitions during wartime. However, she doesn’t specify that this only what she is talking about. Some Canadian provinces have had coalition governments while the country was not at war, and they functioned fine. The most recent example was the NDP-Liberal coalition in Saskatchewan that was formed after the 1999 election. There is some truth to the argument that coalition governments can be more factious because they have to find common ground between sometimes rather disparate partners, but you can hardly argue that single party government always functions well. Evidence in the UK is that the coalition government is functioning far more smoothly than did the previous Labour government, with far less friction between key players in both parties than there was between key figures in the Labour party.

At other times, they spell political suicide to whichever party props up the government.

Here Ms. Blizzard seems to miss an important point: there is no party “propping up the government” in a coalition – all the parties in the coalition ARE the government. And in countries were coalitions are the normal, expected outcome of a general election, being in a coalition does not spell political suicide for any of the smaller parties because no party expects to govern on its own.

You need only look to the U.K. to see how a coalition can be death to a political party.

Liberal-Democrat Party leader Nick Clegg was the golden boy of politics during last year’s British election. The mercurial rise in popularity of the impressive young politician gave him the balance of power in a minority government.

Here Ms. Blizzard makes a fundamental error which makes me question her ability to write about politics. The Liberal Democrats (not hyphenated, I would like to point out to Ms. Blizzard) and Nick Clegg did not have “the balance of power in a minority government” – they held the balance of power in a hung (minority) Parliament. The very fact that Ms. Blizzard is confusing a Parliament with a government doesn’t bode well for her credibility as a political commentator.

He agreed to a coalition — and he’s now David Cameron’s deputy prime minister.

So he’s being held just as accountable for the unpopular cuts Cameron’s Tories are being forced to make as is the government.

Ms. Blizzard again demonstrates her complete lack of understanding of how coalition government works when she states: “he’s being held just as accountable for the unpopular cuts Cameron’s Tories are being forced to make as is the government.” Why is she making some sort of distinction between the Lib Dems and “the government”? Of course Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems are being held just as accountable for the economic cuts and other policies the government has brought forward – they are part of the government.

The government is not the Conservative Party, it is a Conservative-Liberal Democrat government. The two parties form the government. The Lib Dems are not separate from the government, this isn’t a minority Conservative government with supply-confidence support from the Lib Dems. It is not only Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg who got a cabinet post – there are four other Lib Dem ministers, as well as a number of Lib Dem secretaries of state. They work side by side with the ministers from the Conservative Party. They sit at the cabinet table. Decisions and policies are made by both parties working together. Both parties will be held accountable accordingly.

Clegg’s in a no-win situation, and it could spell the demise of the Lib-Dems.

How will he define his party next election when, in the eyes of voters, he’s one and the same as the Conservatives?

I will acknowledge that this is a special challenge for the Lib Dems, and one that is generating a fair degree of speculation in the UK media concerning possible electoral pacts in the 2015 election (see this post in the Specator, for example). However, this is primarily due to the fact that the UK has very limited experience with coalition government, and because of this, neither the parties nor the general public, really know how to react to and deal with this reality. It isn’t a failure of coalition government, but of the UK’s lack of experience with coalition government. This is much less of an issue in countries where coalition government is the norm, not some weird exception or crazy experiment.

A coalition government’s success or failure is not contingent upon the popularity or unpopularity of its constituent members, but on whether or not it governs effectively. Yes, the Lib Dems’ poll numbers have dropped since the May 2010 election, but the party expected that to happen. And I don’t think it’s a mistake to say that their numbers have dropped not because they’re in a coalition per se, but because they’re in a coalition with the Conservatives. A lot of Lib Dem supporters are more favourable to the Labour Party and were quite dismayed with the party entered into a coalition with the much-hated Tories. Again, this can’t be said to be a failure of coalition government in and of itself.

All in all, another very disappointing commentary on coalition government from a Canadian journalist.

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Understanding government formation

There is some confusion in Canada (and elsewhere) as to how government formation occurs following a general election, particularly when an election results in a hung parliament. This post will attempt to provide a basic overview of the process. First, there are a couple of key concepts to understand and keep in mind.

1. In Westminster parliamentary systems, voters do not elect governments

You may frequently read media reports saying that recent polls show that a minority or majority government will be elected. This is false. Canadians, including at the provincial level, do not elect governments, we elect a parliament. The vote you cast is for your local MP or provincial representative only. You are not casting a vote for who you would like to see as Prime Minister or Premier, nor for what party you want to see form the government. The only person you are electing is your local representative. Certainly, if there is a party you would prefer to see form the government, you can vote for that party’s local representative, but whether or not that party ends up in government will depend on the overall configuration of the parliament elected.

2. A parliament is not the same thing as a government

Media reports will frequently use the terms “minority government” and “minority parliament”. This may confuse some people into thinking they mean the same thing. They do not. A parliament is the sum total of all the elected MPs (or MPPs/MLAs) from all parties. A Parliament is summoned following a general election and continues to exist until it is dissolved (ended) by a proclamation of the Governor General/Lieutenant Governor at the request of the Prime Minister/Premier. This is followed by another general election to elect a new parliament. Every member of the government is a Member of Parliament, but not all Members of Parliament are members of the Government.

A minority parliament is one in which no one party has won a majority of the seats. The British use the term hung parliament rather than minority parliament, which is preferable (but still not great) since it is less open to confusion with minority government. This is the term I will use.

A minority government is a type of government where a party (or group of parties) forms the government even though they don’t control a majority of the seats in parliament. Minority government most commonly occurs when there is a hung parliament, but it isn’t the only type of government which can be formed in a hung parliament situation.

3. To form the government, a party or group of parties must demonstrate that it has the confidence of the House.

The Prime Minister/Premier and the Cabinet are responsible to, or must answer for, their actions to the House as a body and must enjoy the support and the confidence of a majority of the Members of that Chamber to remain in office. This is commonly referred to as the confidence convention.

Government formation in a hung parliament

There has been a general election. No single party has won a majority of the seats in the legislative body. This is a hung (or minority) parliament. What happens next?

1. Does the leader of the party with the most seats (but not a majority) automatically become the Prime Minister/Premier?

No. This is a very common misconception, but it is not how our parliamentary system works. It is the party leader who can command the confidence of the House who will form the government. This could be the leader of the party which finishes with the second-most seats, as long as they have the support of other smaller parties.

2. Does the incumbent party have the first shot at forming the government?

Yes. The incumbent party is the party which had formed the government in the previous parliament, i.e. before the election was called. As the incumbent, they have the right to first decide if they believe they can form a government which will command the confidence of the House, even if they do not finish with the most seats.

Depending on the actual distribution of seats, the likelihood of this will vary tremendously. For example, the May 2010 general election in the UK resulted in the Conservative Party winning 307 seats, Labour (the incumbent party) winning 258 seats, and the Liberal Democrats winning 57 seats. Other smaller parties claimed the remaining 28 seats. As the incumbent party, Labour had the right to see if it could form a government with the help of other parties. It began negotiating with the Liberal Democrats, proposing a sort of “rainbow coalition” with the Lib Dems and other smaller parties. Meanwhile, the Conservatives also negotiated with the Liberal Democrats. It took five days before it became clear that Labour wouldn’t be able to form a government which would command the confidence of the House, and only then did Prime Minister Gordon Brown tender his resignation to the Queen. The Conservatives reached an agreement with the Liberal Democrats to form a majority coalition government. So while the UK has a hung parliament, it has a majority government.

In some instances, it will be very clear that the incumbent party cannot in any way command the confidence of the House on its own, or even with the help of other parties. In other instances, the incumbent will be able to form the government, even if it finishes second, if it can get the support of other parties either formally, by forming a coalition, or more informally, through a confidence and supply agreement, for example. If we use the example of the 2010 UK election, if the gap between Labour and the Conservatives had been narrower, or if the Lib Dems had won a greater number of seats, it might have been possible for Labour to form the government with the support of the Lib Dems, even if they were still second in number of seats to the Conservatives.

3. How long does it take to form a government?

It takes as long as necessary.

Canadians are quite accustomed to finding out on election night what sort of government they will have. In the case of a single party winning a majority of seats, the outcome is obvious – that party will form the government. In the event of a hung parliament however, the type of government which will be formed isn’t immediately apparent. We have become use to the media declaring a “Party X minority government” but they really should not do this. It is not up to the media to decide what sort of government will emerge – it is up to the newly elected parliament.

As mentioned above, in the UK in 2010, it took five days for a government to form as both Labour, the incumbent party, and the Conservatives, who had won the most seats, negotiated with the Liberal Democrats to see what sort of government could be formed which would command the confidence of the House. No one in the UK media declared a “Conservative minority government” on election night once the results were known – they simply stated that it was a hung parliament and then waited as the parties negotiated.

If, on election night in Ontario, it is a hung parliament result, even if the PCs end up with the most seats but short of a majority, until the Liberal government officially resigns, they are still the government. The Liberals can take a few days, even weeks, to negotiate with the NDP to see if they can work out some form of government. The PCs can do the same thing. Even if the media immediately declares a “PC minority government”, they really should not do that until the parties themselves decide on what form of government will emerge, as will be discussed below.

The 2011 Ontario election: possible government formation outcomes

Current polls re: the 6 October 2011 election in the province of Ontario show that the two main parties, the Liberals – who are the incumbents – and the Progressive Conservatives, are in a virtual tie, with the third party, the New Democratic Party (NDP) not far behind. Most interpret this as meaning that a hung parliament will be the outcome of the election. However, Liberal support is higher in areas of the province where there are more seats at play, which means that there is a slight chance that the Liberals could eke out a very narrow majority win. Let’s look at various possible scenarios for government formation which could occur following the election on 6 October. Remember, there are 107 seats in the Ontario legislature, therefore a party (or coalition of parties) needs 54 seats to form a majority government. A hung parliament will result if no single party wins a majority of seats (54 seats or more).

1. Single-Party Majority Government

This is the most common, and traditionally expected outcome of an election conducted using First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) in the Westminster-model of parliamentary government. This is when a single party wins an overall majority of the seats in the legislative body. In the case of Ontario, one of the parties would have to win 54 or more seats in order to form a single-party majority government.

While most polls currently have the two main parties in a virtual dead heat, because Liberal support is strongest in parts of the province where there are more seats available to be won, some are projecting a very narrow Liberal majority government. For example, ThreeHundredandEight currently projects 58 seats for the Liberals (that is his final projection). If that is the result of the election, then the Liberals will form a narrow (5 seat) majority government.

2. Hung Parliament, Single-Party Minority Government

This is what Canadians and Ontarians are used to seeing when an election results in a hung parliament, with no single party winning a majority of the seats. Usually, the party which does win the largest number of seats will form a minority government. From 2004 until 2011, there have been minority governments in Ottawa, first Liberal (2004-06) then Conservative (2006-2008, 2008-2011). The last minority government in Ontario occurred in 1985.

Minority governments can be unstable, since the opposition will outnumber them and thus could easily defeat them on a confidence vote. Because of this, the party forming a minority government might seek to strengthen their position somewhat by reaching a confidence and supply agreement with a smaller party. This simply means that the 3rd party will commit to voting in favour of the governing party on all confidence votes and budget measures, sometimes in exchange for the party forming the government incorporating some of the 3rd party’s policies into its program. The governing party might also agree to not call another election for a fixed period of time, for example, two years. The smaller party will not be part of the government, however.

While normally it is the party with the most seats (but not a majority) which will form a minority government, this isn’t always the case. The party with the second highest number of seats could form a single-party minority government, if it reached some sort of agreement with a 3rd party. This is exactly what happened in Ontario in 1985. What matters, remember, is that the party forming the government have the confidence of the House, not whether they finished first or second in the seat count.

3. Hung Parliament, Coalition Majority Government

A hung parliament does not exclude the formation of a majority government. Two (or more) parties can agree to form a coalition government which would have a majority of seats in the legislature. This is what occurred in the United Kingdom in May 2010.

Unfortunately, coalition government, while entirely legitimate – and many would say preferable to single-party majority or minority government – is not likely to occur because there isn’t a tradition of coalition government in Canada or Ontario. Coalition government is far more common in jurisdictions which use some sort of proportional representation rather than FPTP.

Coalition differs from a confidence and supply agreement between two parties in that both parties form the government and both parties would have cabinet positions. The leader of the largest party in the coalition would become the Premier, and the leader of the smaller party would most likely be named Deputy Premier or given some other high profile portfolio.

4. Hung Parliament, Coalition Minority Government

In a hung parliament, it would be possible for two parties to form a coalition government, but the coalition would still be a minority government in that between them, they would not have a majority of seats in the Legislature.

This scenario would be highly unlikely in Ontario because it is extremely unlikely that a 4th party, or any independents, will win any seats. Because there will likely be only three parties elected to the Ontario legislature, Liberals, PCs an NDP, there isn’t any scenario that would allow for a minority coalition. Even if one party fell just shy of a majority of the seats on its own, for example, if the PCs won 53 seats, if the Liberals and NDP formed a coalition, between them they would have 54 seats – a majority. If the seats were more evenly distributed between the three parties, for example, Liberals 40, PCs 37, NDP 30, if the PCs and NDP formed a coalition, they would have a majority of the seats (67). If the Liberals and NDP formed a coalition, that too would be a majority government, 70 seats.

For a minority coalition to occur in Ontario, a fourth party would need to win seats. For example, let’s pretend the Green Party won seats as well, resulting in the following: Liberals 48 seats, PCs 42, NDP 10, Greens 7. The Liberals have more seats, but the PCs and NDP decide to form a coalition. Together they have 52 seats, more than the Liberals, but still not a majority. The Greens don’t want to be a part of the coalition but say they might support it on key votes. They aren’t interested in any sort of deal with the Liberals. So it’s still a minority government, but a PC-NDP coalition government rather than a single party government. However, as stated above, with only three parties expected to actually win seats, the math would not allow for a coalition minority government to occur.

The most important thing to remember is that which party, or parties, form the government will depend on whether they can command the confidence of the House, not where they finished in the seat count.

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The Coalition Government’s working majority

Philip Cowley and Mark Stuart have prepared a very interesting analysis on the subject of the Coalition Government’s Commons’ majority.

As stated in the blog post, the Coalition enjoys a 76 seat majority: 363 government MPs (306 Conservatives and 57 Liberal Democrats) out of 650, which leaves 287 non-government MPs. Of that 287, however, five seats are held by Sinn Fein, and their MPs never take their seat in the House of Commons because they refuse to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen. The Speaker doesn’t vote (except in the rare instance of a tie), nor do the three deputy speakers (not even when they aren’t in the Chair). This reduces the number of non-government MPs to 278 and increases the Government’s majority to 85. Also, the eight members of the Democratic Unionist party usually (but not always) vote with the Government, which brings the Government’s majority close to 100.

What Cowley and Stuart have found, looking at the 306 whipped votes that have occurred since the May 2010 election (excluding the 25 occasions when Coalition MPs were given a free vote), is that on average, the Government enjoys a majority of 142. The authors note that this is the mean average and that the median average is 94, which is much more inline with the actual seat distribution (Government vs non-government). The researchers write:

This suggests that there are some very high outlier figures, dragging up the mean average – and indeed that’s what happening.

The key factor is the behaviour of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition. Most of the time (some 238 votes so far), Labour oppose the government, and when they do the average majority is 91 (with a median of 87).  But when Labour abstain (44 votes), the majority averages 270 (median: 276); and when Labour support the government, the average majority rises to 421 (median: 450).  (The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that these numbers don’t sum to 306 – because there was one vote when the government was whipped, but Labour allowed a free vote).

The most striking example of this occurred on 21 March this year when the Government won a vote endorsing military action in Libya by 557 votes to 13, thanks to the support of the Labour frontbench, producing the largest Coalition majority so far this Parliament of 544.

There has been a lot of talk about how rebellious this current parliament has been. Since May 2010, there have been 110 rebellions by Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs. Coalition MPs have rebelled on 52% of votes (see this post). However, the above statistics have implications for the likelihood of any backbench rebellions by government MPs actually succeeding in defeating Government legislation:

On paper, it would take 39 Coalition MPs to rebel to defeat the Government – but only if the Labour frontbench was to vote with the rebels.  There are plenty of issues on which 39 Conservative MPs might rebel, but there aren’t as many on which the Labour party would be willing to join them. That is not to say that it won’t happen at some point in the future, merely that it is not likely to happen very often.

The hurdles in overturning a large in-built Coalition majority are even more acute for the Liberal Democrats. Their backbench MPs number only 35, so even if all of them vote against the Government with all the Opposition MPs, that would still not be enough to defeat the Government.

For the Government’s majority to fall much below 50, both Conservative and Liberal Democrats need to rebel in decent numbers, with the support of the Labour frontbench and the minor parties. This has been happening rarely since May 2010.  The Government’s majority has only fallen below 50 on only six occasions in its first fifteen months in power.

But it can happen.  On 9 December 2010, over university tuition fees, 21 Liberal Democrat rebels combined with six Conservative backbenchers, the Labour frontbench and the minor parties, reducing the Government’s majority to 21, which remains the lowest Coalition majority thus this Parliament.

As the paper concludes, all in all, what this demonstrates is that the Coalition has a strong majority not only on paper, but also in practice.

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Minority assumptions

At the outset of the most recent Canadian federal election campaign in March of this year, I wrote a post addressing how the concept of coalition government had become almost toxic in Canada. This phenomenon didn’t start this year – it dates back, as the posts states, to events in 2008. The Canadian media has not always helped on this front; there have been far too many op ed pieces dismissing the idea of coalition government as being, if not actually illegal, at least foreign and certainly undesirable (see, for example, my dissection of one such column here).

There will be a general election in the Canadian province of Ontario this October. The outcome of the previous election, in 2007, resulted in a Liberal majority government. This time around, if polls are accurate, we will end up with a hung parliament. Already we see some in the media jumping to conclusion as to what sort of government might emerge.

For example, back in August, polls were showing the Official Opposition party, the Progressive Conservatives, to be ahead slightly, with the Liberals running second and the New Democratic Party (NDP) third. Based on those current polls, the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy released an attempt at projecting a seat count for each party. The province’s Legislative Assembly has 107 seats. The Institute projected 51 seats for the PCs, 41 for the Liberals and 15 for the NDP. The news article carried on the Global News website was headlined: Laurier professor projecting Conservative minority in Ontario.

The professor projected no such thing. The only thing the Institute projected was a hung parliament. Yes, they projected that the Progressive Conservatives might emerge with the most seats, but they were still short of the 54 seats required for a majority. The Liberals and NDP together, however, would have a majority, 56 seats. Similarly, the PCs and NDP together would be in an even stronger position, with 66 seats. The Institute made no attempt to determine what form of government would emerge, they simply projected that no party would win a majority. It was Global News which unilaterally decided that this meant the only possible outcome was a PC minority government.

More recent polls have shown similar results, sometimes with the Liberals slightly ahead in the seat count, but still short of a majority, sometimes the PCs and Liberals are shown to be in a dead heat. And the media never fail to trumpet minority government. Most recently, for example, a new poll has the Liberals and PCs tied at 35% each. The story’s headline: Massive poll finds minority looming. The first sentence of the article reads:

Ontario is headed toward a minority government for the first time in decades with the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives deadlocked, according to a major new poll.

Again, this isn’t accurate. The poll indicates that Ontario is headed toward a minority parliament. It is impossible to determine what sort of government will emerge and it most certainly isn’t up to the media to dictate what form of government should emerge in the event of a hung parliament. It doesn’t have to be a minority government. It could be a majority government, if two of the parties are willing to work together and form a coalition. Or it could be a minority government that would be as strong as a majority government if the third place party agreed to support one of the other parties (and it wouldn’t have to be the party that finishes “first” in seat count). Perhaps our journalists simply don’t understand the difference between minority parliaments and minority government?

No poll has yet indicated that any party would end up with a majority. So what happens in the event of a hung parliament?

As the incumbent party, it would be up to the Liberals to determined if they have any way of commanding the confidence of the Legislature. Depending on the outcome, this might or might not be possible. If they had the most seats, but shy of a majority, it could be possible. If they finished second to the PCs, then on their own, obviously, they could not. However, this does not mean that they would have to immediately concede defeat. They could enter into discussions with the NDP and if they secured the support of the NDP, either via a formal accord similar to the Liberal-NDP accord of 1985, or by forming a full-fledged coalition government similar to the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government in the United Kingdom, they would command the confidence of the Assembly. However, the NDP is under no obligation to work with the Liberals. They could also negotiate with the PCs, offering supply-confidence support in exchange for certain NDP policies to be implemented, or even explore coalition with the PCs. In the UK, after the May 6 2010 election, it took five days for a government to emerge, as both Labour and the Conservatives negotiated with the Liberal Democrats to see what might be possible.

My only point here is to yet again bemoan the Canadian media’s penchant for assuming any hung parliament result can lead only to minority government.

Voters in Ontario will not be electing a government in October, they will be electing a new parliament. It will be the MPPs elected to form that parliament who will determine which party or parties can command the confidence of the House. It may well result in a minority government, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be that – it will all depend on the numbers and parties’ willingness to work with each other. With polls as close as they are, a hung parliament could allow for at least six possible outcomes, not one or two.* I would simply ask the media to remember that a minority government does not have to be the only option on the table.

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*If the October election did result in a minority or hung parliament, depending on the actual seat numbers, any of the following types of government would be entirely legitimate. 1) a Liberal minority government. As the incumbent party, they get the first shot at trying to form a government which can command the confidence of the House. They could attempt to govern on their own even if they finished second to the PCs. If they did finish second to the PCs, this would be highly unlikely, however, since the government would be very unstable, quickly brought down on a confidence vote by the opposition and, perhaps more importantly, the optics wouldn’t look good at all. 2) A PC minority. This would be the most likely outcome if the PCs end up with the most seats, but shy of a majority. However, it too would be unstable and easily defeated by the opposition parties (see 1985). 3) A Liberal minority with formal support from the NDP (à la 1985). While not officially a majority government, it would act like one since two parties combined would command a majority of the seats. 4) A Liberal-NDP coalition government, which differs from option 3 in that the NDP would actually be part of the government, with some cabinet posts going to NDP MPPs. 5) A PC minority supported by the NDP (see point 3). 6) A PC-NDP coalition government. These last two are less likely than their Liberal-NDP alternatives simply because there is a wider ideological divide between the NDP and the Progressive Conservatives than there is between the NDP and the Liberals. I would add that there even exists the possibility of cooperation between the Liberals and PCs (again, not likely, but certainly entirely legitimate. This could even include a “grand coalition” between the two parties). I just want to stress that the media, political parties and voters needs to stop limiting discussion to minority government only since that is not the only option available.

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