I’ve been reading the news and the threads here about the recent UK elections, and I think I’m more confused now than I was before I had any idea what was going on. I’m hoping our UK friends won’t mind indulging me just a bit…
I understand that it’s necessary (required?) for the Prime minister to command a majority, but this raises a couple questions:
It was mentioned in one of the other threads here that if the PM lost a vote (on a non-trivial measure) that he would be forced to resign, since he could no longer command a majority. Is it really that simple? Must the PM (and his party) always ‘win’, or else?
Along the same lines, are all votes strictly along party lines? Do all the Conservatives, all Labour, all the Liberal Democrats, always vote as a bloc? And now that the Conservatives and the Lib-Dems have formed a coalition, does that mean they have all agreed to vote together, always?
If so, is this somewhere mandated, or are the individual MPs bound only by honor to stick to the agreement (much like our Electoral College is bound only by honor to vote ‘correctly’ for the President)?
What happens if the Conservatives try to push through legislation that the Liberal Democrats absolutely won’t stand for? Does the coalition, and therefore the Government, break down?
I saw today (on the Houston (Texas) Chronicle web site) that “the coalition has already agreed on a five-year, fixed-term Parliament — the first time Britain has had the date of its next election decided in advance.” This would imply that elections in Britain, at least on a national level, are not held on any predetermined schedule. So when are elections held? Whenever the ruling party calls for one?
Are there local elections on a regular schedule, but not necessarily national ones?
I hope these questions don’t paint me as an ‘American Idiot’. It all just seems so almost familiar, yet so terribly ‘foreign’. I keep trying to make parallels between the UK Parlaiment/Prime Minister and the US Congress/President, and it just doesn’t make sense. I know that there really are no such parallels, but that’s the only thing I have to try to wrap my mind around at this point.
If it’s an important bill, but only certain bills are “important”; bills like budget bills and important parts of the party platform.
Again, it depends on the bill. Every week, the office of the whip sends out a memo with the bills that are going to be voted on that week and the party’s position on them. The bills are underlined, with one underline, two underlines, and three underlines. These are referred to as “one line whips”, “two line whips”, and “three line whips”.
A one line whip is the party saying, "This is the party’s position on the issue. It would be nice if you could vote our way, but if you have a serious problem with the bill or are too busy to vote, it’s not that big a deal.
A two line whip is the party saying, “This is the position the party is taking. We expect you to vote with the party. If you can’t be there, find a member of the opposition who also won’t be there and pair off with him”
A three line whip is the party saying, “This is our position on the bill. Unless you are dead, you WILL attend the vote and vote the way we tell you to vote, or else.”
The individual MPs are bound by the fact that the party will punish them if they don’t do what they’re told.
In a situation like that; if the Conservatives demand a bill that the Lib-Dems can’t stand, then yes, the coalition would fall apart. It’s in both sides’ interest to maintain the coalition, though.
Pretty much. There have to be parliamentary elections at least once every five years, but the Prime Minister can call elections pretty much whenever he wants to as long as it’s before the deadline.
My knowledge is primarily of the Canadian Parliament, but I think that all of the answers below apply equally well to the UK. (Of course, now that I’ve said that, I’m sure to be corrected.)
Yup. In theory, the Prime Minister is supposed to be the member of Parliament who can best command the respect of the other MPs, and who can lead Parliament in getting things done. If he/she fails to get an important measure passed, that’s taken to mean that the Prime Minister has “lost the confidence of the house”, at which point either the opposition can take a stab at leading Parliament or (much more common) another election is called.
This is one issue where the Canadian system may differ from the UK, but in general most Westminster-style systems (UK, Canada, Australia, etc.) have very strong party discipline. There’s even a position in Cabinet (at least in Canada) called “Chief Government Whip”, whose responsibility it is to make sure that enough MPs in the ruling coalition vote the right way. If a particular bill put forward by the government is wildly unpopular in an individual MP’s riding, he or she can occasionally negotiate with the whip to get permission to vote against his or her party. There are occasionally also “conscience votes”, in which the individual MPs are free to vote as they see fit; however, this usually isn’t done unless (a) the issue is highly contentious (e.g. abortion) and (b) the Prime Minister is fairly certain that the measure will pass anyway. Needless to say, I don’t think this is ever ever done on a confidence measure.
That said, the individual MPs are, in principle, only bound by honour to vote with their party. However, if they vote against their party often enough, they’ll find themselves kicked out of the party come the next election. Since the party brass have a lot of control over who they run in a particular riding (party primaries are not open to the public, at least in Canada), an MP who cheeses off his/her party enough can be forced to run as an independent, losing a lot of funding and organizational support in the process. That said, it’s not unheard of for an MP to lose his or her party affiliation and yet to be sufficient beloved by his/her constituents that they relect him or her as an independent.
Probably, but I don’t think there’s any precedent for this in either the UK or Canada.
Pretty much. The one caveat is that an election must be held within a certain amount of time of the previous one — in Canada, within five years. Beyond that, though, the government can decide when to call an election, which means they generally wait for a moment they think will be advantageous to them.
If a PM loses a vote on a non-trivial measure, the politics of that happening mean that blood is in the water, and that a no-confidence motion will succeed, so it is inevitable that the PM’s position is untenable. If he tries to force a no-confidence vote it looks desperate and may damage his party’s credibility in future, so for all practical purposes he has to go.
Generally voting is strictly along party lines. That is why they have “whips”, MPs whose job it is to get the members into parliament to vote. In reality, there are often arrangements in place so that not everyone has to turn up for every single piece of routine legislation.
On contentious matters it is uncommon for people to “cross the floor”. It does happen, but it comes at a political cost to the person who does it and the party in power. There are also relatively rare occasions where the govt allows a “conscience vote” in which members are not bound to follow party discipline.
Coalitions do not have to agree to vote together always. It depends on the arrangement they make in advance. As long as they agree to support the govt on confidence motions and the like, that is sufficient. Such an arrangment may prove to be unworkable in the fullness of time, but that’s politics for ya. Stronger arrangements add to stability, but they are not legally enforceable anyway and can still break down.
Fixed terms sometimes occur in parliamentary systems, but not always. The tradition has been not to have them. Depending on how they are set up, there can be advantages and disadvantages.
In the traditional arrangement, of course there has to be an election within 5 years (or whatever time frame is spelled out) but exactly when it occurs is a matter for the PM’s discretion. This confers an advantage on the ruling party, because they can set up programs and pork-barrelling in the lead up to calling the election to put themselves in the best possible position to win, and possibly catch the opposition wrong-footed. Of course, fixed term elections have that risk too (apart from catching the opposition wrong-footed, I mean). In non-fixed term jurisdictions, the govt can also surf the mood of the electorate and strike while things are looking good for them.
While it might be thought undemocratic to have that much power, it does contribute to stability, and the benefit of it is often overstated - the public can tell if politicians are pulling an election stunt, and they frequently resent it.
The disadvantages of fixed terms are generally the problem Americans face of being in permanent election mode. When you know when the election will be centuries in advance, the system is cranked up earlier and earlier, like Christmas advertising in July. This is not necessarily a Good Thing.
Further, again depending on how the system is set up, having a govt with a compulsory 5 year term may require the capacity to have recall powers set up to force an election as happened in California prior to Ahnuld. This is cumbersome. In the traditional arrangement, if a government loses the confidence of the House, it is gone overnight. Literally. Sometimes loss of confidence of the House prompts an early election (which under the traditional system can be called any time), but the public tends to resent unnecessary elections and views them with suspicion. The question of whether early elections can be called in such circumstances remains to be seen on the legislation proposed. If the present arrangements prove unstable (a coalition of a left-leaning minority with conservatives doesn’t bode well) then an election is often the best circuitbreaker. It is difficult balancing act to preserve the power to do that without defeating the whole purpose of 5 year terms.
In Australia, the government has the power to resolve deadlocks between the Reps and the Senate by having a “double dissolution” - putting the whole Parliament to election, and if there is still a deadlock, having a joint sitting. (Australia does not have fixed terms, but bear with me - I am illustrating a general point about the power to call early elections).
Tactically, this means that the govt has bills floating around that it knows the opposition will never agree to in a pink fit as dissolution “triggers” up its sleeve in case it wants an excuse to force an election. It may never use them, of course. I give this example merely to illustrate the way any system that has fixed dates for election but leaves exceptions open for early elections in some circumstances can be “gamed”.
In Canada and Australia the maximum length of a parliament is set by the constitution (5 yrs in Canada, 3 yrs in Australia). In Canada provincial legislatures are also limited to 5 yrs. Both Parliament and the provincial legislatures can extend their terms in case of war or emergency. I think this is also possible in Australia. In the UK & New Zealand, neither of which has a written constitution, the maximum lenght is set by an ordinary act of Parliament (5 yrs UK, 3 yrs NZ) and can be extened in wartime. In the UK this is on time when the House of Lords must approve; the House of Commons cannot use the Parliament Act to bypass them. In New Zealand it would take a 3/4 majority of MPs to do so. During WWII the UK went 10 years without an election; the last pre-war election was in 1935 and their wasn’t a general election until after VE Day in 1945.
The main principles are:
(1) To run government, you must have legislation authorising taxes and government spending. Without that, government would run to a stop – especially since civil servants would not get paid.
(2) Such public finance must originate in and be passed by the lower house.
(3) So the big way that the lower house controls things is by controlling public finance. If it does not approve of the current administration, it can stop the supply of money to the government.
(4) So if an individual MP votes against a tax or supply bill, that’s a vote asking the PM to resign. If you do that to your own party’s leader, that means putting yourself outside the party.
(5) Putting yourself outside the party means that the party will run another candidate in your electorate, and will campaign to defeat you. That makes it very hard for you to win the next election.
One more thing: political parties in the Westminster system do not have primaries in the United States style. The government takes no part in the selection of candidates – it’s a purely internal party matter – and the party has rules under which disloyal members (including disloyal MPs) are expelled from the party, so can no longer be party candidates. There’s no equivalent to “DINOs” or “RINOs”: MPs consistently not following the party line are no longer members of the party. And if you want to have a say within the party about which candidate is run by the party, you need to join the party and take part in its internal organisation: you don’t register with the government as a party supporter.
No, it’s not possible in Australia: you’d have to change the Constitution and that would require a referendum. There were federal elections in 1940 and 1943 (when Australia was under a real threat of a Japanese invasion). In addition, in 1941, two MPs switched their support from the United Australia Party and Country Party coalition government to the Labor opposition, so that Robert Menzies lost the prime ministership and John Curtin became PM.
Thanks for the replies. It’s all starting to make some sense now…and it sounds like it’s really not all that different in practice from what we have here in the States. Our votes are generally split pretty well along party lines as well, although there are almost always a number of Congressmen who will cross party lines. And since we don’t really have a viable third party here, the concept of a ‘coalition government’ just doesn’t come up; there’s nobody for either party to ally with but the opposition…
I think the hardest thing for me to get my brain around is the idea that an elected official not having a fixed term. Of course, I guess the PM is not an ‘elected’ official, but rather an ‘appointed’ one; in that respect he’s more like our Speaker of the House of Representatives (or perhaps Secretary of State) than our President.
One more question regarding Parlaimentary elections: Am I correct that in the recent election, all of the seats in the House of Commons were up for a vote? Here we have Congressional elections every two years; in each election one third of our Senators (who server 6 year terms) are up for election, along with all of the members of the House of Representatives (who serve 2 year terms). With Presidential elections every 4 years, we are pretty much guaranteed ‘fluidity’ in our government. There is enough turnover to keep the ‘ruling party’ on its toes, but we never face the prospect of a wholesale replacement of the government. I suppose the same is probably true in practice in the UK; I would imagine that the incumbent MP probably wins re-election as often as our incumbent Senators and Representatives.
It sounds to me like there’s no reason to actually have people filling the seats at all. Just give each party the number of votes they would normally get, and don’t worry about trying to force people to vote one way. And every time there is an election, you just change the number of votes each party gets.
You’re overlooking what goes on inside parties. Not only does the PM have to face Parliament, and maintain control of the numbers there – he or she also has to face the party caucus, where there will inevitably be different factions and also a significant number of of people who believe they should be the party leader (either right now, or in the not too distant future).
Yes, the PM can use party discipline to keep dissidents in line, but there are limits to how far people can be pushed. In addition, it’s possible for there to be an internal party rebellion against the leader. The last time it happened in the U.K. was in 1990, when Michael Heseltine challenged Margaret Thatcher’s leadership of the Conservative Party. Heseltine did not win the challenge, but out of that internal party dispute John Major emerged as the leader of the party, and so replaced Thatcher as PM.
That would not have happened if Thatcher had been in command of a block of votes, rather than a party containing internal differences (as all parties do).
I don’t think it is all that similar. The Westminster system works on strict party discipline, which is not the case in the US system. That means that what the governing party wants to get passed, will get passed, almost always on the terms decided by the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. That’s not necessarily the case in the US system.
For instance, take the recent health care debate in the US. The Democrats control the House of Representatives, and they have close to a super-majority in the Senate, and the President is a Democrat. And yet, it was touch and go whether the health care package would pass, and the final version was apparently not the one that President Obama originally favoured - and to get that, he had to put in a lot of politicking within his party.
That situation simply wouldn’t arise in a Westminster system. If a party campaigns on a particular policy, and wins a clear majority in the Commons (or equivalent), then they will be able to pass that policy into law. Any MP who is a member of the government party and yet votes against a major measure of the government’s platform would cease to be a member of that party and would find him/herself sitting as an independent backbencher on the Opposition side of the House.
In form, the Prime Minister is appointed by the Crown; in practice, he/she is elected by the people (if they elect a majority of his/her party), or by the Commons, when the people do not give any party a clear majority, which is what has happened in the UK this week. Because the PM’s tenure depends on commanding a majority in the Commons, I suppose you might analogize it to the Speaker, but really, there is no close analogue in the Congressional/Presidential system. As long as the PM retains a majority in the Commons, the PM is much more powerful than either the Speaker or the President in the US system.
That’s correct - in the Westminster system, the lower House is dissolved and every member seeks re-election at the same time. In some systems, such as Australia, the upper house may be elected on staggered terms, but since the government is responsible to the lower house, it’s the general election to the lower house which is more significant.
There is much more fluidity in the Westminster system than in the US system. You have to remember - if I don’t like the Prime Minster and want someone new, there is only one way I can do it - by voting for a candidate for a different party in my local constituency at the general election. I can’t split my vote, and vote for one party for the local district and another for the Prime Minister.
So if the local MP is a supporter of the Prime Minister, and I want a new government, I have to vote for someone else in the local election - doesn’t matter how good a job the local MP might be doing. That’s the only way I can try to change the government.
That means that every election, there are high-ranking incumbents who are defeated, MPs who have been in Cabinet and have considerable power within the government. And, if enough voters are dissatisfied with the government and vote for a different party, a lot of incumbents will lose their seats - because that’s the way we change governments, by changing the local MPs.
The most extreme example happened here in Canada in the 1993 election. Going into the election, Prime Minister Kim Campbell and the Progressive Conservatives had a solid majority in the Commons: 151 seats in a Commons of 295 members.
At the general election, the Progressive Conservatives were reduced to 2 MPs. Two. Prime Minister Campbell herself lost her seat, and ceased to be a member of Parliament. It was the most spectacular melt-down of a governing party in modern parliamentary history, and it demonstrates just how fluid the parliamentary system can be.
I don’t have the cite handy, but I’ve seen surveys that indicate that the turn-over in the US Congress is the lowest of any major western democracy. In a parliamentary system, there is no discussion of term limits, because the electoral system itself functions to ensure high turn-over of representatives; if the people want to change the government, incumbency is no protection.
And who would be running the government, and making the policy decisions? That’s what the MPs do - they compose the Cabinet and decide what the government will do, with the support of the caucus members who aren’t in the Cabinet.
In addition to what others upthread have said, the backbenchers who fill the seats also work for their constituents. Mrs Jones brings a complaint about how she’s been dudded by the welfare department and is getting the bureaucratic runaround, and the local MP can take up her cause. Mr Smith wants to moan about aircraft noise, he can take it to his local member. These “parish pump” issues consume a lot of the time of MPs, and they have to keep the punters happy (in the sense of going in to bat for them where appropriate) in order to get re-elected. Some local members can become so popular for that reason that they can get re-elected over and over again even outside the party system, just on the strength of their local popularity.
But the point is, MPs have a function to perform in representing their electorate - they have a vested interest in drawing the government’s attention to any unpopular or disfunctional things drawn to their attention by their constituents, so they represent a (sometimes very aggressive) feedback loop. They are generally not merely cyphers for the party in the numbers game in Parliament.
Unlike the US House, districts are not gerrymandered to keep the incumbent in office here and changes in boundaries (which occur about every ten years and are now overdue) may render previously safe seats marginal or even unwinnable. In this instance even prominent politicians may lose their seats, e.g. Jacqui Smith and Charles Clarke of Labour.
A source of grievance with many local party organisations is the party’s central office parachuting its favoured candidate into the district over the local choice, or bluntly telling them that they must select from an all-woman shortlist imposed on them ‘because those pesky voters haven’t been electing enough women into the House’.
At which point, the local electorate basically tells the party what they think of that plan.
Am I right in thinking that despite the terms of the coalition – that there will be a fixed term, 5-year parliament – if either the Queen’s Speech or the Budget are not passed by the Commons, there will have to be another election? I know that’s how it would work normally (as its essentially a no-confidence vote), but how would it work under the coalition?
Leading to the recurring gag in The Goon Show - whenever there was a scene set in Parliament, a backbencher would be heard to shout “What about the drains in Hackney?”
Right now I can’t see how they can reconcile fixed terms with the House’s power to turn the government out of office on a confidence vote. You might end up with revolving door governments like Italy or Fourth Republic France.
Yeah, that’s the big worry. I haven’t seen the text of the coalition agreement, but I believe that there’s something in there about abstention of the Liberals for bills that really go against their policies. It wouldn’t surprise me that as part of the agreement there’s a clause about voting as a bloc for the Budget and Queen’s Speech.
Just a note – Canada and the U.K. also have an upper house (the senate and the House of Lords respectively), but they are not elected positions. They also have less power to block legislation than the U.S. senate has (at least the Canadian senate does).
That’s what the MPs do - they compose the Cabinet and decide what the government will do, with the support of the caucus members who aren’t in the Cabinet.