A favorite old joke about Italian politics back when it was particularly fractured:
Debate is droning on and on in Parliament, and one bored member says to another, “I think I’ll take a little nap.” He crosses his arms and soon dozes off. When he wakes up, he looks at his watch and realizes more than an hour has passed. “Did I miss anything?” he whispers to his companion.
“Not really,” his friend whispers back, “but you were Prime Minister twice.”
Coalitions are the norm in Ireland, which has a bascially Westminster system, and they have not been notably more unstable than single-party governments, so it can be done. Typically, a coalition is founded on something like a negotated “programme for government”, in which parties agree how the government will be composed, what legislative measures they will introduce, what leglislative measures they will not introduce, etc. If new issues arise during the life of the government - and they always do - a common position will usually be hammered out in cabinet. The success with which this can be done depends on a degee of good faith and commitment to consensus between the cabinet representatives of the different parties, but it mostly seems to work.
If you want some real laughs, try reading Hansard. It’s the official transcript of Parliamentary proceedings, and the euphemisms alone are worth the read.
“Cries of shame from the opposition.”
The last British coalition government was during WWII and it collapsed after VE-Day.
Not in Australia. The conservative side of politics is usually a combination of essentially urban conservatives who make up the Liberal Party (yeah, I know) and rural conservatives who make up the National Party. Every national conservative government here for decades has been a coalition, and has been relatively stable. The commonality of interest of the two parties is so strong that they effectively vote together on almost everything, and certainly wouldn’t do anything to bring an end to their government.
Perhaps what Rysto has more in mind is a minority government where the governing party has to treat with others with whom it has a less clear commonality of interest. These tend to fracture and fold with greater regularity.
As to the bunfight in Parliament, there are those who are of the view that being a capable Parliamentary “performer” is a useful metric of a leader’s capacity. I think this argument is oversold, but there is a case to be made for the proposition that a capacity to survive and thrive in the Darwinian environment of Parliament is a metric of such things as “toughness” and capacity to negotiate. People can see how well a leader stares down opposition, and don’t have to rely on third hand reports and self-praise of how great they were in some deal.
Of course, the dignity melt-down involved is a very big price to pay for that. And those that do well as head-kickers in Parliament don’t necessarily prove to be leadership material anyway.
That’s mostly theater as well – legislators posturing for their constituencies way out in the sticks. Rumor has it that legislators on both sides of the aisle will advise one another when they’re planning a big fight, so everybody will be sure to wear soft shoes. (They’re trying to win evening news clips of themselves whaling on their opponents with their shoes, you see.) But I haven’t heard of any real injuries, at least not for a long time.
I thought that profanity and certain accusations (e.g., “The honorable Member is a fucking drunk!”) were still strictly verboten?
Not verboten, just uncommon - but Hansard, for reasons unbeknownst to me, has to be suitable for your grandmother’s perusal, so they “edit” even slightly offensive stuff.
Yes, it does go on all the time - for the important matters of the day, at least. The two sides of the House - the governing side and the opposition - were, after all, seperated by a distrance equal to two swords. (If this is a myth, someone on here will undoubtedly enlighten me, but the fact that it makes sense says a lot in itself).
It’s theatre masquerading as politics. The real politics goes on behind closed doors, and this is just the performance of what has already been rehearsed. However, it’s still partly improvised, so it can be great fun to watch. ‘The honourable member’ can be delivered with much more disdain than any vulgar insult.
It’s utterly ridiculous to have the leaders of your country quite literally baying at each other across the room, but that’s the way it works. On an exchange course in Germany, my British coed and I had the other students enact a British parliamentary debate. Most of it was shouting. 
I can’t work out who you were responding to here. Which Liberal Party? Which Libertarian Party? Neither of those are big players in the UK, if they exist at all.
Coaltions are very rare in UK politics. They have nothing to do with the thread topic. I’m really confused by your question, sorry.
I’m pretty certain that this is a myth. Or perhaps more accurately, a myth that may have become true. The size and configuration of the pre-1834 Commons Chamber was very obviously determined by its origins as St. Stephen’s Chapel. So, although over time the original seats were replaced, the space between the frontbenches probably remained much the same and so had nothing to do with the length of swords. However, it is I suppose possible that the spacing in the current Chamber (both pre- and post-Blitz) was determined by two-swords lengths on the basis that there was now this myth claiming that they ought to be. It sounds just like the sort of ‘tradition’ the Victorians would have loved.
And I rather think that this does connect to the issue of parliamentary yelling. It’s often said that it is the fact that the Commons has parallel benches along either side that determines the character of Westminster politics. Perhaps. But I suspect it has more to do with the size of the Chamber. Rumbustiousness surely comes more easily in a small, crowded Chamber with everyone crammed together on benches.
One effect of this is that MPs need to be particularly skilled at reading the mood of the House. Unless that is, as is usually the case, the House is almost empty.
No, the concept of ‘unparliamentary language’, including accusations of drunkenness, is alive and well.
I suspect the right hon. Gentleman Mr. Bright was “tired” when he wrote that.
You think British political debate is lively, you should see Australian ones.
Most of the time H of C debates are very sparsely attended, and only a few MPs with a particular interest in the subject will turn up. Unless there’s a division vote, in which case they pour in from all over, vote the way the Whips tell them to, and clear off again. PMQs is a piece of street theatre which seldom elicits any useful information, and isn’t really intended to.
It depends on two factors, which can vary tremendously within the governments based on the Westminster system: the strength of party discipline, and the conception of a confidence vote within that particular Parliament.
For party discipline, the question in any system is how much authority the party has over individual members. By and large, party discipline tends to be stronger in parliamentary systems than in congressional systems, because party discipline is essential to obtaining power. An MP who does not consistently vote with the party not only weakens his/her own chances of gaining office, but also weakens the party’s chances as a whole. So an MP who does not support the party might find him/herself no longer in the party, or not favoured with party funding during an election, and so on. Other factors, such as the way MPs are elected, also may contribute to party discipline. For example, a proportional representation system based on a list of candidates determined by each party immeasurably strengthens party discipline.
The other factor is the concept of confidence. In Westminster systems, the budget, the Debate on the Speech from the Throne, and confidence motions are invariably confidence matters - if the government doesn’t carry those matters, it falls. But how broadly do you cast the definition of “confidence matters” outside those issues? In Canada, in the past century there has been a very wide definition - almost everything has been considered a confidence matter, so the government imposes the whip on all votes. That’s not always been the case - in the early years of Confederation, there was a much looser definition of confidence matters, which in my opinion led to a more effective public debate in the House - the fact that the government might be defeated on a bill did not automatically lead to an election, unless it was a bill on a subject that was so important to the government that they decided the defeat was a confidence matter.
In the case of minority governments, it’s very fluid and can vary tremendously, based on the political situation. Some minority governments try to “govern like they have a majority” - that is, just press ahead with their platform and essentially dare the Opposition to vote them down, triggering an election. There’s no formal agreement between the parties. That sort of situation is most likely when the government party is already close to having a majority of the seats in the Commons.
But in other cases, where there are three or more parties in the House, there may be a formal agreement between two of the parties - one will form the government, and the other will agree to support the government’s budget and Speech from the Throne (i.e. - the outline of the government’s policy), provided the budget and Speech contain certain policies and spending programmes that the second party wants to see implemented.
A good example of that occurred in Ontario in 1985. The Progressive Conservative government called an election. The results of the election were: PC, 52; Liberals, 48; NDP, 25. Although the Liberals had the second largest number of seats, they were able to reach an agreement with the NDP. The Conservative government met the House after the election, and the Liberals and the NDP together voted non-confidence. The Lieutenant Governor then called on the Liberals to form the government, and the NDP supported the Liberals in office for the term of their agreement (two years), in exchange for certain policies that the NDP had campaigned for. But on other matters, the NDP felt free to vote against the government, and the NDP and the Liberals agreed that those matters, not covered by their agreement, didn’t count as confidence matters, so a defeat on one of those votes in the House did not trigger an election.
Even more formal is the coalition government, where two or more parties agree to form a joint government. When the two parties form a joint government, then all the members of the parties are normally committed to supporting the coalition on all major issues, but again, there may be political agreements between the coalition partners as to what matters will be brought forward, and whether they will be considered confidence matters. (The 1985 situation in Ontario was not a coalition agreement, since the NDP sat on the Opposition side and did not have any representation in the Cabinet, which was purely Liberal.)
One key point as to whether coalitions are frequent in a particular parliamentary system is the manner in which the MPs are elected at the general election.
If the election is “first past the post” - i.e. the candidate with the most votes wins, even if it’s just a bare plurality, the system favours majority governments, since it is possible for one party to win a majority of the seats on a regular basis. That system also tends to make it difficult for small parties to win seats. That’s why coalitions are rare in countries with first past the post, such as the U.K. and Canada, and majority governments are the general rule (except in Canada for the past while, where regionalism has made it difficult for any one party to win a majority).
However, if it’s a PR system, it’s very difficult for one party to win an outright majority, and the system allows smaller parties to flourish - the recipe for minority governments and coalitions. Ireland uses a form of PR, correct? (Single Transferrable Vote)?
Till fairly recently, in the U.K., wasn’t every Government proposal considered a matter of confidence? I know it is not now, which I guess has lent backbenchers some incremental degree of independence in their votes, but it seems the whipping in is still pretty restrictive.
I don’t think I would agree with that assessement. Coalitions are rare, but they tend to occur in times of national crisis, where the elected members are willing to put aside partisan differences to meet the crisis. While the crisis is on, they can be very stable.
For example, in Britain, there were four coalition governments during the 20th century:
[ul][li] Asquith’s coaltion government of 1915-1916;[/li]
[li] Lloyd George’s coalition government of 1916-1922;[/li]
[li] the National Government, in office under Macdonald, Baldwin and Chamberlain during the Great Depression, 1931-1940;[/li]
[li] the war government of Winston Churchill, in office 1940-1945.[/ul][/li]
Four years, actually. The Unionist Party was a WWI coalition of the Conservatives, Liberals who supported conscription, and a few others. Prime Minister Borden formed it in October 1917, and it stayed in office until the general election in December, 1921, when Mackenzie King’s Liberals defeated the remnants of the Unionists, which had pretty much split back into Conservatives and a few Liberals.
At the provincial level, there was also a formal coalition government in Saskatchewan from 1999 to 2003.
Well, yes and no - Mackenzie King’s government from 1921 to 1925 is a bit hard to assess. In the 1921 election, King’s Liberals fell one short of a majority, and the House had several small parties and groupings. The wiki article summarises what happened over the course of four years:
So overall, even when it was a majority, it was a very fluid situation that King managed to hold together.
APB is better positioned to answer that, but my impression is that it has varied considerably over the past couple of centures. During the 18th century, in the initial stages of the system of responsible government, it was only the main initiatives of the government that were confidence - budget, war, etc. In the 19th century, the system became more formal. I don’t think everything in the 20th century was considered confidence - there was the concept of the one-line whip, two-line whip, and three-line whip.
The Government Whip’s office would distribute lists of upcoming votes. If a matter was underlined once, it mean that the Government favoured a particular vote and encouraged its members to vote that way; a two-line whip meant that the Whip’s office would be lining up members to ensure the vote would go the way the Government wanted; and a three-line whip meant that any MP who was not actually dead or on life-support was required to be in the House.
In the UK there is absolutly no requirement for the Government to resign if it loses any vote. There is a convention which says that a government must have the confidence of the lower house (arising from Sir Robert Peels’ failure to govern without the confidence of the House in the 1830’s). That is why it is a convention that the government must resign if it loses a vote on something that is part of their main agenda; if they lose clearly they no longer have the confidence of the house.
It is much more complicated than that of course, there may be a vote on a particular clause for instance, losing that vote may not be fatal, losing the vote on the basic structure of the bill will be.
“[Actually, they shouted “Bollocks!” - Ed.]”
This thread made me think of Yes Minister as soon as I saw it!
Just wanted to say that this has been extremely informative. Major ignorance has been thoroughly fought. Thanks to all.