May the 8th 2015 – when the hard bargaining starts?

All the forecasts indicate a hung Parliament as a probability rather than a possibility. I offer my understanding of the mechanic and dynamics of this to those who perhaps have never examined the matter in any detail.

If you are already well-informed on such matters, pass on – what follows is not for you, you clued-up thing, you …

CURRENT STATE OF PARTIES
Conservatives           303
Labour                       257
Liberal Democrat       56
Democratic Unionist   8
Scottish National          6
Sinn Fein                       5
Independent                 3
Plaid Cymru                  3
Social Dem & Lab.        3
UKIP                               2
Alliance                           1
Green                              1
Respect                           1
Speaker                           1

Total no. of seats  650

HARD ARITHMETIC OF FORMING A GOVERNMENT

After a general election, the leader of one of the parties has to demonstrate that he or she can command a majority of the votes in the House of Commons on major issues - e.g. the Budget, major legislation, decisions to commit the Armed Forces – in other words, impose the democratic will of the Government on dissenting voices in the House and govern the United Kingdom. This is a obviously a practical necessity and of course constitutional requirement, as the leader has to convince the Queen as Head of State.

If one political party has this capacity, its leader de facto becomes Prime Minister, subject to the Queen’s ratification, but if no single party has the requisite number of seats – even though one may have more seats than any other single party – then either

a deal has to be struck with another party or parties, or

the party with the majority of seats has to risk governing as a minority government, or

a hung Parliament effectively  exists and another general election has to be called.

This situation existed in the hectic days following the last general election in 2010, and a fascinating spectacle it was.

There have been many projections of just how the seats will play out after May 7th, and there will be many more, as poll after poll offers its forecasts, but for the purpose of illustration of the arithmetic, I’ll use a slightly dated, but useful projection of the BBC’s – the first Newsnight Index - for no better reason than that I already have a graphic for it – and it may well be as accurate as any other that comes up!

With 650 seats in the House, a simple majority requires the aspirant governing party or parties to be able to command 326 seats (half of 650 + 1)– but since Sinn Fein doesn’t take up its five seats, that becomes 323 (half of 645 +1).  Sinn Fein could of course put a green cat among the Brit pigeons at any time by deciding to turn up!

If we look at the Newsnight Index projection (it’s not the current one), Labour, on this projection, would be the party with most seats, but not enough to hit the magic 323. Ed Miliband could then choose to “do an Alex Salmond 2007” and elect to govern as a minority government – a high-wire act, with huge risks, which Alex was well-equipped to perform – requiring him to do ad hoc deals on every major vote with other parties or interest groups within and/or across parties. If he hadn’t the balls for this – or the Queen didn’t like it – he would then have three other options -

call for another general election, or

try to strike a confidence & supply deal with another party or parties – a kind of minority government with a pre-arranged support understanding, or

form a coalition government with one party or with more than one party - a Rainbow coalition

(Aficionados of the various Borgen series on BBC Four will understand all of this effortlessly, plus have an insight into the role of sex in government!)

Who will Ed’s likely partners in government be – if he chooses to have partners – and how would it play out on the above, or similar projections of a May  7th outcome?

To get to the magic 323, he needs 37 votes. For comfort – and to reassure Lizzie – he ideally needs more. The SNP can give him 33, Plaid two and Greens one. He definitely(?) won’t find his extra one from the Tories or UKIP, and thus is left to trawl among the LibDems, the Northern Ireland parties and the Others!

Perhaps George Galloway will see his way clear to support Ed, but probably at a price that would be unacceptable!

However it plays out, it seems inevitable, if present polling trends are accurate, that the SNP will be the key player.

But consider this possibility – the LibDem 26 plus 11 others – but drawn from where?

I haven’t had so much fun since the 1945 General Election, where I campaigned for Labour and Attlee as a ten year-old. Now, that was fun …

N.B. The Speaker does not vote, except in deadheat votes, when the convention is that the speaker casts the tie-breaking vote in favor of the governing party.

The Tories’ moral mandate in Scotland

A letter from a Tom Gill appeared in Monday’s Herald, critical of Alex Salmond’s comments about the Tory Party’s moral mandate to govern Scotland. I sent the undernoted reply, but it wasn’t published. As a great admirer of the Herald’s Letters page, let me say that I am sure my response was simply crowded out by a number of fine letters on other highly important topics, and that this was simply a question of space and priorities.

Nonetheless, I would like my argument to be on record, and here it is -

LETTER TO THE HERALD (unpublished)

Dear Sir,

Tom Gill (Letters 17th May) criticises Alex Salmond’s statement that a Tory government has no moral  mandate to govern in Scotland. Under the UK’s deeply flawed electoral system the new Tory/LibDem coalition - with the Tories as the dominant partners – has a legal and constitutional right to govern Scotland, but morally, they have no mandate. That is what the First Minister said.

85% of  Scottish voters did not vote for a Tory government – they voted for a centre left government, with the majority voting for a Labour government. Every commentator and media pundit has recognised that Scotland and England voted, to quote one such view, “as if they were on different planets …”, and that the implications of this for the Union and for democracy are deeply disturbing.

Tom Gill also advances the familiar, but deeply flawed argument that this is equivalent to an area of Scotland opting out of a general election result. Others have used the same argument for an English county opting out. Both analogies are utterly false and misleading.

No one, least of all the First Minister, is suggesting that we should opt out of the result – we are bound by the electoral outcome.  But Scotland is not an area of the UK – it is not a county, nor is it just a region - it is a nation of over 5m people, with its own legal system, its own church, its own Parliament and its own proud history and unique culture.

Scotland, a sovereign nation,  entered into the treaty of union voluntarily,  but reluctantly, with profound misgivings and with many dissenting voices. For the last century at least, that union has not served the Scottish people well. At the very least, a substantial minority of Scottish voters now believe that we should end that treaty and withdraw from the union, and no one constitutionally denies our right to do so if a majority vote for it in a referendum. The deeply undemocratic outcome of the general election has now caused many more Scots - and a great many English people - to question the continuing relevance of the UK as a political entity.

My belief is that a great political watershed has been reached, and that radically new thinking about political alignments in Scotland between the Labour Party, the SNP and the trades unions is urgently required. The outcome of the Labour leadership election will be a catalyst in this process, especially if it results in David Miliband as the new Labour leader  reviving the deadly power cliques and disastrous policies of New Labour.

yours faithfully,

Peter Curran