What are the UK Conservatives' options now?

Factual Questions
21

The trouble with minority government is that the governments cannot even expect to rely on its own members for support, you can quite easily get a backbencher rebellion, it has happend to Labour in this current term for example, but their majority was such that these rebellions rarely had much of an effect.There have been one or two occasions where the Labour backbench rebellion was such that the Labour government had to rely on Conservative support ot pass certain crucial bills.

You get the situation where one part of the coalition does not have as effective party discpline as the other coalition partners, and this is when it tends to fall apart.

It may come as a surprise, but actually most of parliamentary business works on cross party consensus, and its only the minority of government operation that leads to adversarial votes in parliament, and it is on this basis that a minority government operates.

I think some of the reports of it being 40 years since we had a minority government are somewhat distorted, the Conservatives for at least one full term under Margaret Thatcher had to rely on the Ulster Unionists to maintain their control, because there was serious disagreement in their own ranks, they had to rely on support from other parties, they could not even control their own members. The trade off for this was that the Ulster Unionists made damn sure the price of their support was not to have any dealings in talks with Sinn Fein, and that delayed the peace process.

If we do go over to PR, then it would mean big changes to the local party political system, as the local organisations would not be able to appoint their favoured candidates, they would all come from the party central office, but then we have had list of approved candidates vetted by party HQ for years now, so it would not be impossible to work it out.

The Scots and the Welsh Nationalists would probably be more keen to work with PR and Labour since there are so few Conservative MPs in those regions, you could actually see this being that those regions have withdrawn their consent to be governed by the Conservatives in any form. This has been like it for quite a few years now, I’m pretty sure they do not want to see a Tory administration.

Conservatives have already stated quite flatly that they will not go for PR, and I don’t see how Liberal Democrat aspirations can accomodate that, unless there is some concrete commitment to a referendum on the issue.

The other point to note, given the average age of the Conservative party Association member, if they wait a few weeks, half of them will be dead anyway :slight_smile:

22

In all this I must have missed how a Minority govt. gets formed. If Cameron can’t get Clegg on board, and Labour can’t get their huge mishmash of parties together either, does Cameron go to Liz and ask to be made PM anyway? There was a hint upthread that Cameron doesn’t even have to wait for Labour’s efforts to fail to form a Minority govt. How does this get done?

23

That doesn’t mean that they won’t go for a change in voting system. As long as it’s a net benefit to them. :slight_smile:

I happen to agree with the Tories that PR is to be avoided. IMHO it weakens the link between the MP and the constituency. That said, there are better voting systems than FPTP. I wonder if the Tories and LDs might both look at the large number of places where they came second and go for something like Approval Voting.

24

Mr. Brown is Prime Minister at the moment, even though his party came in second, because his tenure as Prime Minister is not directly connected to the electoral outcome.

By custom, the incumbent PM in this situation has the right to try to put together a new government that has the support of a majority in the Commons - often framed as saying the Prime Minister has the right to face the new Commons.

By convention, Her Majesty will respect the political process and recognize that Mr. Brown has the right to try to put together a government. Mr. Cameron doesn’t have the right to go to her and ask to be made Prime Minister.

What happens next will depend on the politics. If Mr. Clegg were to say outright that he would not support Mr. Brown in any event, then Mr. Brown is done and would likely advise the Queen that he cannot form a government. She would then call on Mr. Cameron. However, he is not required to do so - he could insist on his right to face the Commons, and after defeat he would then advise the Queen that he cannot carry on the government. At that point she would send for Mr. Cameron.

If Mr. Clegg announces that he is open to offers from Mr. Brown and Mr. Cameron, it will take longer, and Mr. Cameron still doesn’t have a right to go to the Queen. If Mr. Clegg and Mr. Cameron reach some sort of accord, then Mr. Brown will likely resign without the formality of facing the new Commons and being defeated there.

There was an example of this sort of situation in the Canadian province of Ontario in 1985. The Progressive Conservatives went into the election with a majority, but lost it in the election: they were the largest party in the new House, but short of a majority. The other two parties, the Liberals and the New Democrats, together had a majority and the New Democrats announced that they would support the Liberals in exchange for certain policies which the Liberals were willing to follow.

The leader of the Progressive Conservatives, Premier Miller, could have resigned at that point, but he chose to face the House. The two other parties combined in a non-confidence vote, Mr. Miller resigned and advised Her Majesty’s representative, the Lieutenant Governor, that he could not longer form a government. The Lt. Gov then called on the leader of the Liberals to form the government.

Even though the Liberals had the deal with the NDP, the Liberal leader did not have the right to go to the Lt. Gov. and request that he be appointed Premier. The current Premier had the right to face the House, knowing that he would be defeated. Only once he had been defeated and advised the Lt. Gov. that he could not form a government was it permissible for the Lt. Gov. to send for the leader of the Liberals.

25

Even if the Liberals agree to serve under Brown rather than someone else in the Labour party (by no means guaranteed) he still won’t command enough MPs to be able to outvote all the other parties in the House combined against him. Such a situation is not to anyone’s taste, and Brown will either have to stitch together a broader coalition or accept that his administration is not likely to last very long.

26

I mentioned it a bit earlier, but when they talk about a Labour/Lib Dem coalition, they really a “progressive alliance” of a bunch of parties. The Social Democratic Labour Party already sits with Labour anyway, and those three parties combined have 319 seats. Add in Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party and they take a majority, which is the option favored by the SNP. You’re right though, it wouldn’t be a great scenario: a coalition of so many parties would be fragile, and they’d have to convince the public that a coalition excluding the party that comfortably won the most votes and the most seats would be legitimate.

27

I don’t understand what Salmond is talking about with respect to this progressive alliance. He was on the news last night talking about it, then mentioned it’s a long standing SNP policy not to form an alliance with any Westminster based party, yet Labour “should think about it”? Am I being dense, or is all this talk about a progressive alliance just attention seeking from Salmond? He seemed to rule out an alliance altogether in the interview that I saw as being against SNP policy, yet still wants the Westminster parties to think about it?

28

This issue comes up from time to time over here as well, but the flip side of it is, a majority of the people of the United Kingdom did not vote for the Conservatives.

If you put together Labour and Lib-Dems in a coalition, with support from minor parties, you have more seats and more popular vote combined than the Conservatives.

29

Salmond would surely extract a heavy price from Brown - a referendum on independence at least.

30

Can Sinn Fein be “relied upon” not to take their seats in Parliament? That would effectively reduce the number of seats required for a majority from 326 to 323, which just happens to be the number of seats held by Labour, the Lib Dems, the Social Democrats, Plaid Cymru, the Green Party and the Alliance Party, without a need for the SNP.

Am I missing something here? Is Plaid Cymru as anti-Westminster as the SNP? Or is just that this proposed alliance has too many interlocking parts?

31

The point has been made before that, while the magic 326 is often quoted, what the P.M. must do is not “get a majority vote in the House of Commons on every important bill” but rather “command the confidence of the Commons”, that is, avoid being voted down on confidence matters (including the Speech from the Throne and ‘supply’ [budget bills]).

One way he can do this is by negotiating for abstentions. For example, Cameron takes office with a minority government and the LibDems in opposition. But he says to Clegg, “Okay, here’s a proposition. I’m going to push forward these four bills. In exchange for your sodding referendum on proportional representation, I want the following: Bill A, which is close to what you guys claimed to favor during the campaign, the LibDems vote for. Bills B, C, nd D, which are pretty much odious to your constituent base, you can make speeches to oppose. But when second reading comes around, I’ll let twelve of your people who have to prove something to their constituents vote ‘Nay’ – but all the rest of you abstain. With a three-line whip out to my party and the D.U.P. promise to support, that will give me a majority of votes cast which will get them passed. You’ll be on record as opposing them, individually and as a party. Izzit a deal?”
Added in edit. Also remember that with the five Sinn Fein and the Speaker not voting, the effective majority is 322 out of 644 actual possible votes. If a matter ties at 322-322 with everybody voting, the Speaker’s casting vote will go with his party, which is the Government.

32

Well that’s roughly the line advocates are taking: that when you combine Labour and the Lib Dems, it means that more votes were cast for “progressive” parties than for “conservative” parties, and that gives progressives the mandate to govern as a coalition. But I can’t see it working. We don’t have a system that tends to produce coalition governments, and it has almost never happened before, so voters don’t expect it like they do in countries with different voting systems. Plus it’s more complicated than “progressive vs conservative”, because Gordon Brown and the Labour government are unpopular, Labour and the Lib Dems are very different on a number of big issues, and a lot of those who voted for the Lib Dems were decisively rejecting Labour in doing so. Nick Clegg, leader of the Lib Dems, has already said that the party with the most votes and seats has the mandate to govern, and I think the public simply wouldn’t wear a result that excluded the Tories entirely.

33

If the tradition is the same in the UK as in Canada, which it probably is, the Speaker must vote in order to “continue the debate” on the bill in question. I believe this usually has the effect of him voting for, at least in second reading (in order to send the bill to committee) but I suppose there may be cases where continuing the debate would mean voting against and having the MPs draft a new bill.

A few years ago, Peter Milliken, the Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons, had to vote to end a tie on a budget measure. It was the first time in Canadian history that the Speaker voted on a confidence measure, and as it was a second reading vote, he voted for and allowed the government to survive. I’m not sure what he would have done had it been the third reading.

34

Here, the Speaker will always break a tie by voting with the Government.

35

Nitpick - maybe I’ve been mistaken all these years, but my understanding of the term “government” in the British sense is that it refers just to the ministers - that is, the Prime Minister, the cabinet, and the non-cabinet ministers. MPs and peers are said to join the government when they are appointed to a ministerial post, even though they would almost always already be members of the majority party (or “parties”, as I suppose we should get used to saying).

36

The government is the totality of the party (parties) that command the confidence of the House.

A backbench MP can be promoted to a ministry or promoted to Cabinet or demoted all the way back again. But they’re all part of the government.

Just because an MP isn’t in Cabinet doesn’t mean they only have constituency responsibility. Backbenchers make up major portions of the various joint, standing, investigative and review committees of the Parliament.

37

In that case, I wonder what they mean when they say that such-and-such an MP has “joined the government”. This page from the UK Parliament website, http://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/government/ , seems to support the idea that the government is something separate from the party or parties that have a majority in parliament. Essentially, government is the executive, parliament is the legislature. The thing about Westminster systems is that the executive and the legislature overlap.

38

Agree that “joined the government” would certainly apply in the case of a non-MP being given a Cabinet post.

I’d think the phrase for the promotion of an MP would more commonly be that they had “joined the government front bench” but YMMV.

Equally if an MP without ministerial responsibilities gets caught in some scandal or impropriety they are referred to as a government (or opposition) back bencher.

39

I’ll have to disagree. ‘Joining the government’ means being on the payroll vote, (which includes PPS’s who are paid nothing).

40

Seeing as there were almost as many who didn’t vote as any two parties put together, why are the LibDems so important all of a sudden?

Shouldn’t those 15 million be told to get off the fence and get some balls?