jack

A Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government will put a binding motion before the House of Commons in the first days following this agreement stating that the next general election will be held on the first Thursday of May 2015. Following this motion, legislation will be brought forward to make provision for fixed term parliaments of five years. This legislation will also provide for dissolution if 55% or more of the House votes in favour.

Many people are worried by the last sentence here, but I'm not really sure what the problem is.

I don't know the history of votes of confidence and of dissolving parliament, but a surprising amount of it seems like common sense. If MPs are local representatives with no fixed party affiliation, then a new election won't produce any particularly different result. So if parliament chooses a subcommittee to run the country, ie. a government, they are naturally people who can command the support of half of parliament (or all their decisions are useless because no-one will vote in favour of them, or of necessary prerequisites of them such as voting to impose taxes).

If the government doesn't have the support of the majority of parliament, then hopefully there's someone who does, and parliament can support their forming a government instead.

If you have two political parties, then the process is somewhat simplified, because almost always, the former government will be the leader of the majority party, because they are already a majority and already support their leaders. And the new government, if any, will be the leader of the other party, because the other party isn't going to prefer anyone else over them.

However, if everyone agrees that the current government isn't up to the job, but can't agree on anyone else who would be, you're stuffed. Your only hope is (i) a reelection and hope that enough people of similar mind will be elected to choose a government or (ii) someone unexpected can be found who can command support (eg. a popular non-leader). If you don't have that, you just run around in little circles not passing any legislation and panicking. Britain has been comparatively fortunate in this regard: we've had unstable minority governments SOMETIMES, but never (I think) PERPETUALLY as seems to happen in some countries, with which I may say sometimes apocalyptic results.

In a two party system the process is further simplified because typically even if the government lose a vote of confidence, no-one else has enough support to govern, and so we call an election and (touch wood) we elect a new parliament with a strong majority.

However, that's not NECESSARILY the case. If Party A have 100 seats and Party B have 99 seats, and Party A lose a by-election, then the Party A government, which was surviving on a very narrow majority, is suddenly vulnerable when Party B says "ah! no! we vote against you". Then the government all fall on their swords and call for a new election. However, it's possible the appropriate response to this is "come of it, pull the other one! you governed with a 51% majority, so can the other lot!" It's typically obvious to parliament if this is the case, and I can't recall the specific way it plays out in the British system, but I think it's something like:

Parliament: WE WANT PARTY B LEADER AS PM.
PARTY A LEADER: NOOOOOO!
QUEEN: OK, 400 years ago I might have made this decision off my own bat, but in actual fact, I'm just going to listen to the obvious desire of parliament. Party A Leader, out. Party B Leader, in. Right?

There are some details about exactly how an election is triggered, which are very important parts of the unwritten constitution, but there doesn't actually seem to be much question about when, and only when, it's necessary to do this SOMEHOW.

The difference in a multi-party system is that if government coalition lose the confidence of a majority of parliament, it's a lot more plausible that a DIFFERENT coalition of parties will be able to form a majority. Say, A+B+C+D were governing, but fall out, but C+D+E+F decide that maybe they can work together after all. Except that this involves another week of negotiation instead of simply being able to count to 51. And that if no-one CAN agree that, you fall back on having an election. This is business as usual in, say, the Netherlands.

The other thing is that if the government DOES command a majority, then they can call an election themselves if they happen to feel like it, because, as previously mentioned, they command a majority so they can do whatever they like within certain constitutional and traditional limits, either directly, or by permanently and traditionally delegating the power to a minister, which as previously mentioned, are much the same thing if they're still willing to listen to the PM.

The time they feel like must always be within five years, and is normally after two years, normally when things are going fairly well, and normally on a Thursday. But some people, for instance LibDems, think that choosing the time of the election is an unfair advantage to the incumbent party.

Thus, this coalition, instead of waiting to choose an election at a potentially advantageous time, which (a) goes against lib dem dogma and (b) would be politically divisive as the different parties may feel the most advantageous time is different, have stated an intention to (1) pre-agree that the election shall occur after the maximum period of five years (2) propose some legislation to make this the required default.

I don't know if (2) is a good idea or not, but we'll have time to lobby about it NEXT week when it foes before parliament. However, despite this stated intention, it's still possible for the coalition to fall apart at some point. Some people correctly asked "what happens then" and made much cynical but probably accurate analyses that there would be a temptation for both parties to make this happen at a politically advantageous time.

The intent of the agreement, and the future legislation, seems to be that the government (or rather, the PM) shall not call for an election except after a pre-arranged term, and specifically not simply because parliament booted them out. If a ruling coalition DOES fall apart or lose a majority, what can happen?

The intent seems to be that everyone should have a shot at forming a different coalition before triggering an election. Either a different agreement between the same parties (say, if Lib or Con revolted over a bill, but decided they could renegotiate their original agreement to cover it!) or a different coalition could be formed (say, if everyone apart from Con decided that working together would be better than Con after all!)

This seems entirely sensible and, if rarely invoked, entirely in keeping with the tradition of the British parliament. I can't remember if there are instances of the monarch calling the leader of the opposition and saying "OK, now you're the new PM", but I think there were, and this is exactly the same, except that the will of parliament might (a) take a few days to get negotiated rather than being obvious and (b) in rare cases need an independent advisor to nudge it forward into some sort of agreement. This is tricky, but eminently achievable: my advice is that Liz should take a light hand, but if necessary, ring Bea in the Netherlands for a few words, other parliaments already having negotiated the tricky bits and found workarounds that seem fair and effective.

So the only questions about the 55% are firstly "What if the PM reneges on the agreement and asks his party or coalition to call an election early anyway?" which isn't a big problem because that's the current system, and it may not be perfect, but it works fine.

And secondly, "What if the coalition dissolves, but no-one can form another one, can't we have an election then?" Several people have phrased this as "If the coalition falls apart but a minority government remains, and 51% of parliament is baying for for a new election, do they not get one?" and talking about ways they can circumvent the problem. One option is that the 5-year term will, in fact, be fixed, and that if no-one can negotiate a new government, the supply of money will run out and Britain will collapse into chaos. This is a goad to the politicians to agree already! I think it's reasonable that we TRY to form a new coalition, but that if we can't, a new election will hopefully (and empirically almost always) provide one if necessary.

But that's not actually that likely. I believe a more common system, and one more sympathetic to is that if 51% of parliament, and the speaker, and the queen, all agree that a new election is necessary, then a new election we shall have. The only question is whether it will happen immediately, or after a defined waiting period of no government, or as soon as a minority government sees the writing on the wall, and, rather than letting the deadlock persist and Britain founder on the rocks, give in to the majority will, or through some constitutional/legislative trickery. But it seems likely it will happen somehow -- it has to, and there's no particular reason to suppose that politicians will have incentives not to let it.

Of course, it's possible to fuck this up. But I don't see any evidence it's more susceptible to fucking up than any other parliamentary process.

It's also possible that 55% is chosen to let one or other current coalition partner gain a situational advantage. But I'm not sure why that's necessarily the case. If the coalition doesn't fall apart, it doesn't matter. And if the coalition DOES fall apart, it doesn't really matter, because if someone can govern, then they WILL govern, and that's ok, and if no-one can govern, then everyone will see that and vote for dissolution anyway, even if only 53% of people wanted it to start with.

I just made all this up, so there's no particular reason it's true, but it all seems obvious to me, and further, no-one seemed able to explain what the problem with that clause WAS. Of course, many smart people in parliament and on my friends list disagree with me, so likely I AM wrong, but hopefully it will be interesting anyway.

I was also going to say something rude about the Italian parliament in the middle there, but forgot what, so never mind.

Provide for dissolution if 55% or more of the house votes in favour.

Provide for dissolution if 55% or more of the house votes in favour.

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