So far Nelson Pike’s answer appears to be as close as we can get. That appears to be more or less a case of the leader of the Government crossing the aisle, but still . . .
It’s an interesting question, and honestly, Northern Piper, barring the lessons from a Texan on how the Parliamentary system operates, I’m finding most of the responses to be honest and interesting comparisons, even if not actual answers to your question. Though the more such responses appears, the more it seems that me that the answer is, “No, it has never happened before.”
Likewise in Singapore the ruling People’s Action Party held every seat in Parliament between 1968 and 1984. They still hold a supermajority of seats, and Singapore doesn’t have a Shadow Cabinet.
The term “crossing the floor” applies to voting against your own party, usually on a matter of conscience. Whether that action leads to them, or even forces them, into changing party may be a separate question.
Hugh was leader of an opposition party that fragmented at a time when parties were much more ephemeral and in the aftermath he joined the government. On a technicality I don’t believe the term Leader of the Opposition applied at that time.
In Feb 2004 in the Solomon Islands, Patteson Oti was leader of the National Party and Leader of the Opposition when he joined the government of the People’s Alliance Party a as communications and aviation minister.
Just last week (Dec 11th 2014) the former Sri Lankan opposition leader of the United National Party Tissa Attanayake joined the government as the new health minister.
This thread has proved that Canadian parliamentary system is really really weird. Party leaders voting against their own parties, one party winning all the seats. Didn’t they also have an election where one party won a majority of votes but no seats?
No, there’s never been an election where a party has won the majority of votes but no seats. I don’t believe, realistically, that could happen in Canada. It is theoretically possible but practically impossible, like trillions-to-one.
A party winning the plurality of votes but not winning a plurality of seats certainly does happen but is hardly noteworthy. It happens in most countries from time to time. In fact, in the 2012 election, the Democrats actually won a plurality of votes in the House of Representatives election, but the Republicans easily won the most seats.
I’m Canadian and I have never heard it used in that sense. I have always understood it to mean an MP or MLA (or MPP or MNA where applicable) switching parties while in office, i.e. quite literally crossing the floor to sit with his new party.
A party winning a majority of the votes nation-wide must win at least one seat. That’s because, if a party has less than a majority in every seat, it will have less than a majority nation-wide.
As noted by Giles, it’s impossible for a party to get a majority of the votes without getting at least one seat. It could, however, be possible for a party to get a plurality of the popular votes and get zero seats. Imagine, say, 10 ridings of 10 voters each. Party A gets 4 votes in each riding; Party B gets 6 votes in each of 5 ridings; and Party C gets 6 votes in each of the other 5 ridings. The parliament is split between parties B and C, even though Party A got 40% of the popular vote and the other two parties only got 30%.
That said, I don’t recall this ever happening in Canadian politics, and I’d be interested to learn if it had happened anywhere else.
Just out of curiosity, what is the Canadian term describing a member who votes against their party for a particular piece of legislation without changing party?
I don’t know of a specific term, but there is a good chance (unless it’s a free vote, which is rare) that the MLA/MP in question will get booted out of caucus and will have to sit as an Independent.
Forgot to give an update: last month, the former leader of the Wildrose who crossed the floor to the Progressive Conservatives failed to win the PC nomination in her local riding, so she’s out of politics. The general election is next month and she’s not running. Two of the other floor-crossers were also rejected by the local PC riding organizations; two were successful in seeking the PC nominations; and three chose not to run in the election at all.
Of course, that’s a long-running matter of debate. Every so often the powers-that-be try to float the idea that a member who crosses the floor or votes against the party should instead resign and allow a by-election. This idea is usually pushed by the losing party. However, it is the nature of the parliamentary system, no matter how it’s been perverted by party politics, that you elect representatives, party affiliation is/should be incidental, and members vote their conscience. Joe Clark, probably the best Prime Minister Canada never had because he was “too nice”, pushed the idea that members should have more individual power. He was pushed out by returning PM Pierre Trudeau, famous for the quote “backbenchers are nobodies 100 yards from parliament hill.”
The PM’s Office and the party bosses would prefer their members be good boys and girls and do what they are told; they use intimidation and other pressure to ensure they do. Dissenters, even private dissenters, can be assured that only team players get promotions and career advances, and public dissent means you don’t get the party approval of your nomination. Since a majority in Canada is 160 members give or take, that means that the backbenchers are a minority in the party and easily controlled. I like the idea of the British system, where a majority is over 300, so once you subtract ministers, assistants, committee heads, and even those who are hoping to get such positions next time - you have a HUGE collection of government backbenchers with nothing to lose by voicing dissent.
There is one exception. Some bills are matters of “confidence” - finance bills and bills declared as such. A member voting against those is effectively saying they have no confidence in the government and it should resign. That’s a drastic step for a party member. Even abstaining when every vote is needed is seen as extremely disloyal.
But the original concept of parliament was that there were a collection of representatives and not parties. A government ran as long as it had the confidence of a majority of those representatives. What they called themselves, whether fixed parties or temporary factional groups, did not really matter.
The closest example meeting the OP’s criteria which I can find is Alim Mohamed Hisbuulla, founder and leader of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC). The SLMC, along with a few other parties in coalition, formed the Opposition in the Parliament of Sri Lanka. Just before the 2008 election, Hisbuulla crossed the floor to join the ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance.
Here are some further cases of interest, though they’re all near-misses or ambiguous in some way:
[ul]
[li] Uraz Dzhandosov was the deputy prime minister of Kazakhstan. After a falling out with president Nursultan Nazarbayev and his ruling Nur Otan party in 2001, he resigned his government post (but not his seat in the lower house of the Kazakhstani parliament) and co-founded the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan. DCK was not at first a registered political party, though it was the largest anti-Nazarbayez opposition group in parliament. In 2002 Dzhandosov left DCK to co-found a new opposition party, Ak Zhol, of which he became leader. However, in 2003 he was appointed a presidential aide to Nazarbayev. Dzhandosov didn’t resign his seat or formally switch parties, though his acceptance of the position betrayed his reversion in loyalty.[/li]
[li] Another example from Kazakhstan, this time from the upper house: In 2007 Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was appointed to the Senate of Kazakhstan, and was subsequently elected its Chairman. It was only after this that he joined the Nazarbayev’s Nur Otan party. I don’t know which party (if any) he belonged to before that. Like Dzhandosov, he’d previously held high-ranking positions in Nazarbayev’s governments; possibly Tokayev was another returning dissident (in which case he really did cross the floor, though he must have formed his intention to do so before Nazarbayev appointed him to the senate). However, it’s more likely that he had always been a friendly independent or in a cooperating party.[/li]
[li] David Campbell Bannerman was a former chairman and deputy leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP). In 2011, while sitting as a UKIP MEP, he defected to the Conservative Party. Though the Conservative Party’s group didn’t hold a majority in the European Parliament at the time, they did form the UK’s national government. (UKIP, however, had no national MPs, as so wasn’t the official Opposition.)[/li]
[li] Choudhary Rakesh Singh Chaturvedi was a member of the Indian National Congress and deputy leader of the opposition in the Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly. In 2013 he crossed the floor to join the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Apparently he didn’t bother formally resigning from the Congress first, as they later voted to expel him.[/li][/ul]
Party leaders voting against their own parties, one party winning all the seats. Didn’t they also have an election where one party won a majority of votes but no seats?