and being beholden to a handful of Ulster Unionists and right-wing Tory backbenchers for keeping their party in power

You mean Democratic Unionists – the sole UUP member of parliament recently quit over the UUP’s deal with the Tories.

Coalition government and electoral reform (read: PR) delivers stability? Does it?

I think the facts tells us otherwise. Nearly everywhere, coalition government and PR leads to instability and a government beholden to minority interests.

Sure, Germany is one example where coalition governments don’t collapse every other week, but you would be wrong to think of Germany as a model of good governance. Just look at the policy disputes between the CDU and the SPD, and how this led to indicision throughout government. You could probably also argue that Germany’s culture is more suited to coalition government than nearly anywhere else.

And Germany is probably the best example of coalition govt. Look at Italy, where the extreme right can hold Berlusconi to ransom. Or Israel, where the religious parties are all but guaranteed to get into power, and will always push subsidies towards the religious community. How about France where they tried a PR system once, and the Front National suddenly gained large Parliamentary representation. They soon changed their minds about the merits of electoral reform.

Frankly, a government which is beholden to minority interests in the legislature would just lead to bad governance and pork barrel politics.

In what way were Tony Blair and Gordon Brown more experienced than Cameron and Osborne currently are when they took over in 1997?

Yeah, Jesus – the idea of Traditional Ulster Voice, or the loony right of the Tories, getting that much power is a terrifying prospect I hadn’t considered.

2- Arnie, erm, what about Scotland? And you seem to e missing the point – governments can be beholden to minority interests either within or outwith their party. A Tory government in coalition would be less beholden to extemist nutters than would a Tory government with a very small majority/propped up by ulster unionists.

Stephen:

PR tends to produce stable coalition government in one of two circumstances:

1) Where there is a dominant centrist party that effectively ‘wins’ every election in terms of always coming out as a the largest party. In that case, swings to the left or right in terms of the overall character of the government depend on which of the two political wings the centre party needs to secure enough seats to form a government.

2) Where there are two dominant parties, one occupying the centre-left and the other the centre-right, each of which is capable of forming a coalition with their more natural allies on either the left or right, depending on which comes out as the largest party.

The current situation in Germany, where there’s a grand coalition between the CPD and SPD is atypical for that country.

Bearing that in mind, the single biggest barrier to stable coalition government in the UK is currently the Lib Dems due to their insistence on fence-sitting, a position that is sustainable at the moment only because the FTPT system makes a hung parliament extremely unlikely.

In the event that the UK were to adopt a PR system that did make coalition government the norm, the LDs would, within a couple of terms at most, come up serious pressure to get off the fence and move closer to either the centre-right or centre-left and form a natural coalition with either the Tories or Labour – that or fracture one or both of the other parties and pull in enough support to be able to dominate from the centre by pushing the other parties to the fringes.

Even under PR, a three-party system is not a recipe for stability.

I think a narrow Labour victory would be the worst possible result, especially as Brown obviously intends to stay on as Prime Minister under any circumstances.

Incidentally, a Tory victory with between 50 and 100 majority is probably the best result, as it would remove the power of the Ulster Unionists and right-wing backbenchers that you mention. That has to be the way forward, surely?

On the basis of uniform national swing, the Tories would be just short of an overall majority. But, in reality, it’s quite likely they would do well enough in the key marginals to sneak over the 326 seats threshold needed to form a majority government.

I’ll go out on a limb here. If the final tally is 40/30/20 then the Tories will have a comfortable working majority of between 40-50. Differential swing in the marginals, overall tactical unwind and a better performance overall in England than in Scotland will make the Tories substantially outperform UNS.

You mean Democratic Unionists – the sole UUP member of parliament recently quit over the UUP’s deal with the Tories.

Well yes, but there’s an election coming isn’t there? And the DUP ahven’t exactly covered themselves with glory recently…

It’s a truly frightening thought: this country’s government too weak to exert any real authority, held to ransom by special interests and unrepresentative idealogues. But that’s the reality of what a first-past-the-post general election may well deliver.

If there’s a hung parliament. Alex Salmond was on the radio this morning extolling, as a particular virtue of hung parliaments, the disproportionate influence carried by minority parties and their ability to force concessions and pork-barrel amendments to major bills to allow them to pass.

In the event that the UK were to adopt a PR system that did make coalition government the norm, the LDs would, within a couple of terms at most, come up serious pressure to get off the fence and move closer to either the centre-right or centre-left and form a natural coalition with either the Tories or Labour – that or fracture one or both of the other parties and pull in enough support to be able to dominate from the centre by pushing the other parties to the fringes.

Or, most likely, split on the old Social Democrat/Liberal lines, and return British politics to the old two-party standard…

Wouldn’t a small Tory majority actually be the best case?

A hung parliament would see nothing achieved; worst case is chaos and lack of any leadership, best case is a fragile compromise that pleases no one.

A Labour outright win would have to be by the tiniest margin, and is surely the least likely option.

A big Tory win (97 type landslide) would lead to arrogance and complaceny in the way it did for Blair.

Surely a win for the Tories, albiet a small one, would give the country a definitve government, would allow for a change of tack, a change of focus, and an end to this anti-politics mood that has come about as a result of the expenses mess and mass disatisfaction with Brown. If Cameron has a small maj, he couldn’t go around enacting a radical right-wing agenda – he would have to be mindful that his position was just about fragile enough.

@ Arnie

The old “PR and coalition government produces instability” canard rears its withered head once more, i see. A quick read of Arend Lijphart’s “Patterns of Democracy” and chapter 9 of this:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=GKKu6HAEbsIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+new+institutional+politics+performance+and+outcomes&source=bl&ots=IhWjeK__Ir&sig=zXYVrfZYHeACRj0p93ckb1CmUYg&hl=en&ei=zUuzS_n_JJSI0wTl5ZC7BA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Will confirm that statistical analysis shows no firm link between instability and PR.

I was amused to read “How about France where they tried a PR system once, and the Front National suddenly gained large Parliamentary representation. They soon changed their minds about the merits of electoral reform.” In other words, the French discovered that when they accurately represented the electorate’s views, those views were often racist, and so decided to cover that up again by reinstalling a system that is distortionate enough to block those voters from getting the representation they wanted. Great argument for FPTP right there!

“Frankly, a government which is beholden to minority interests in the legislature would just lead to bad governance and pork barrel politics.”

1) This is more likely to occur under a system (like FPTP) which actually allows a minority of voters to get a majority of seats in the Commons.
2) When smaller parties try to exert undue influence over their major partners in a multi-party system, they tend to get punished at the ballot box, as the New Zealand First Party did in 1999 when their vote share plummeted from 13.35 to 4.26%.

I’d have a read of this if i were you:

http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/downloads/PRMyths.pdf

It is, as John Lanchester has pointed out ‘a very good election to lose’

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n05/john-lanchester/the-great-british-economy-disaster

I don’t see the electorate showing any great enthusiasm for any of the major parties.

I’d hate the Tories getting in, but if they did they’d be loathed within 12 months.

If Labour sneaked in, they’d be hated pretty soon too and if Labour got back again it would delay the destruction of already-on-its-last-legs New Labour which I consider to be essential.

(Still I suppose if New Labour got back in it would have one good result; it would really screw that Blairite Andrew Rawnsley and his bloody book)

“In contrast, coalition government with electoral reform and fixed-term parliaments delivers stability, and politicians with a popular mandate to govern effectively – as happens in Germany”

Only one problem – this isn’t Germany and we aren’t Germans. Otherwise we’d have lower crime rates, less crime and public disorder, a manufacturing industry, balance of payments surplus, sensible house prices and a trades union movement that was in partnership with employers.

It may be that a coalition government would deliver stability. But the fact that it delivers stability in Germany is not relevant, given the enormous difference between German and UK culture.

oops ! lower crime rates and less crime ?

A hung parliament would see nothing achieved; worst case is chaos and lack of any leadership, best case is a fragile compromise that pleases no one

As someone of the centre-left, can you explain why I’m supposed to view this as worse than a Tory victory? The economy stuff will end up sorted no matter who’s in charge, because it has to be. If the next government’s unable to pass any legislation at all on social matters, that’d be better than either a Tory government restricting abortion, curbing gay rights, etc or a Labour government building more crazy databases and abolishing fair trial rights, etc.

Now, if the Tories were running on a manifesto of repealing all Labour’s illiberal laws, you might be onto something – but they really aren’t.

a manufacturing industry

UK manufacturing’s larger in real terms than it was 30 years ago, and accounts for a larger share of GDP than manufacturing does in the States.

@ Laban

The logical implication of what you’re saying is that we can draw no lessons in any circumstances from countries that differ to a defined extent from our own in some vague, ill-defined, catch-all sense that we’ll call ‘culture’. Now while it’s true that the structure of other societies means we can’t simplistically transplant the political system of one country into another’s (hence the folly of neo-con projects to ‘install’ democracy in other countries as though it’s some simple piece of software), the idea behind the study of comparative government is that we should investigate those differences and come to understand them, not remain wholly agnostic about them as you seem to suggest.

Additionally, it’s unclear why broader statistical analyses that control for the significant variables that might differ across countries can’t deliver the kind of general analysis of political systems you seem to suggest is impossible. That, in turn, seems to suggest a total agnosticism about whether PR would work here – every other country is ‘a different culture’ to some extent.

@ Laban

Finally, your ‘Germany is different to us’ argument also applies to countries that seem to have bad experiences of PR, e.g. Italy, Israel, etc.

It’s time the scaremongers on both the right and left stopped trotting out the same old guff about the dangers of a hung parliament. The (by now) faintly hysterical wimpering that we are not culturally equipped for coalition governments, or that it will breed instability and a run on the pound, need to be seen for what they are…. a monstrous red herring pedalled by two parties who are terrified of not being able to govern alone.

If the decision of the electorate is NOT to give either major party a majority, then so be it. It’s about time they and their supporters started getting real, and deciding how to make it work.

The reason a hung parliament IS quite likely is the disillusionment felt by the majority about both parties. Let’s just pray that neither Cameron or Brown are in a position to govern alone. We need electoral reform, and a government (of whatever complexion) which is actually prepared to be radical about the issues that matter.

Laban @ 13 is right, this isn’t Germany, but if we want some of the benefits he extols, it is more likely to happen with a coalition than with either of the tired old men of the left or right!

“In the event that the UK were to adopt a PR system that did make coalition government the norm, the LDs would, within a couple of terms at most, come up serious pressure to get off the fence and move closer to either the centre-right or centre-left and form a natural coalition with either the Tories or Labour – that or fracture one or both of the other parties and pull in enough support to be able to dominate from the centre by pushing the other parties to the fringes.”

I think it is more likely the LDs would split in two (or more). And they would end up with fewer voters anyway once PR meant people could go Green without wasting the vote. Right now, they are playing a third party game (“get whoever’s here out!”), adapting their message to different constituencies without any need to resolve any overall inconsistencies. That strategy won’t work once PR is introduced.

@11: “Will confirm that statistical analysis shows no firm link between instability and PR.”

There you go, invoking facts again, tiresome facts which only go to show that, whatever else, Britishness is totally incompatible with political consensus.

In 1997, Blair sold us New Labour on the beguiling promise of his “strong leadership”. By the 2005 election, Blair had lost 4 million votes and half the membership of the Labour Party. Turnout at the election was the second lowest since 1918: more voters didn’t vote than the number who voted for Labour candidates – the turnout at the 2001 election was marginally lower. The evidence from most polls nowadays is that politicians are held in low public esteem.

FWIW I think a series of hung parliaments bringing coalition governments would help no end in bringing better self-discipline to our political parties. The trouble is that we have been ruled by a succession of oligarchies for too long:

“Public funds totalling £500 million a year are being spent on an army of at least 29,000 professional politicians in the UK, according to new figures.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/feedarticle/8605308

That compares with an electorate in Britain of about 44 millions.

“held to ransom by special interests and unrepresentative idealogues.”

Gosh, that would be…. exactly the damn same as the last ten years.

Large numbers of quite sensible people will not be voting in this election (or at least will not be voting for one of the two main parties) because they are tired of the superficiality of their politics. It is then up to those two main parties to decide how to react; they can reach out to the people turned off by soundbites and talking-point politics, or they can reach out to groups like the Ulster Unionists.

There would seem to be plenty of scare-mongers from the two main parties who want us to believe that a hung parliament would create a dangerous situation. It seems to me that it is quite likely that the election result will be close and the two main parties should think about why many sensible people are alienated by their politics. They should reach out to the electorate that wants a sensible conversation with their politicians and not try to scare them by syaing that they will have to work with Ulster Unionists: that sort of scare-mongering won’t work.

What’s intersting is whether the polls are actually right or whether what we are seeing is a large number of people who are going to vote tory not saying so, as they did in the 93 election when the polls were predicting a labour landslide.

I think this must be true because I cannot beleive that with the mess the economy is in, the state of the country as a whole, an unpopular government, an unpopular war, and a prime minister who hasn’t exactly captured the public imagination, that there are still enough retards left to actually vote nulab in again.

@24: “what we are seeing is a large number of people who are going to vote tory not saying so, as they did in the 93 election when the polls were predicting a labour landslide.”

You must mean the general election held on 8 April 1992.

“So what did cost Labour the 1992 election? Worcester has no doubt that it was the Sheffield rally, just eight days before polling day. On the eve of the rally, three polls came out, showing a seven-point lead, a six-point lead and a four-point lead for Labour. That day, Labour peaked.”
http://www.newstatesman.com/199812110020

To get a taste of why the rally generated such an adverse reaction, try this BBC video clip:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/vote2001/in_depth/election_battles/1992qt_sheffield.stm

Sorry yep I meant 1992. It was Neil Kinnocks infamamous rally, where he practically gave a victory speech before they’d actually er won. It was the fact that the polls conistently predicted a labour victory that I was talking about. Pollsters credibility took a nosedive in the aftermath and their conclusion was that a lot of people were unwilling to admit their true intentions and said they would vote labour, but then actually voted conservative, hence the outcome contradicted the polls. I’m not sure the rally actually made that much difference to the outcome, although it was cringeworthy even then.

In contrast, coalition government with electoral reform and fixed-term parliaments delivers stability, and politicians with a popular mandate to govern effectively – as happens in Germany, and almost every other democracy in the world.

We don’t have whichever electoral reform you like, or fixed term Parliaments. Which means that a new election could be forced at almost any moment at relatively short notice, which means that the main parties will stay in pre-election mode, and fight each other like cats in a sack until one of them wins.

The general election result that seems most likely, and which would be most damaging for this country, would be a small Tory majority.

So if the Tories were doing better, and there was no expectation of a hung parliament, you would be campaigning for a large Tory majority?

@Adam Will the Greens then support Labour and the Lib Dems in certain areas? The best bet to deny an overall Tory majority with the Ulster bombers and the Europhobic mouth-foamers in charge, is to maximise the number of Labour and Lib Dem MPs, along with one or two Green MPs too.

“It’s a truly frightening thought: this country’s government too weak to exert any real authority, held to ransom by special interests and unrepresentative idealogues”

Isn’t that what we have at the moment?