I believe he resigned after the prospect of a Labour-LibDem coalition had fallen through but before the Tory-LibDem one was agreed. Which is part of the reason the LibDems ended up with such a raw deal - they’d burned a major bridge behind them.
That is not what the Cabinet Office guidance written in 2010 says.
This was discussed last night on either Newsnight or Scotland 2015 and the author Gus MacDonald was interviewed about the subject over the weekend.
IIRC the rules are
The sitting PM has the first opportunity to form a government. The PM needs to be in a position to get a Queen’s Speech through Parliament. If there is an obvious group of MPs opposed to such a Queen’s Speech he should resign because he is unlikely to get the Queen’s speech passed. Then any other person may be asked by the Queen to attempt to form a coalition, and tat should be the person with the most apparent support in Parliament. Hanging on to an inevitable defeat would be at best immoral and possibly unconstitutional.
If the LibDems cannot form a coalition with the Tories with or without the DUP and then Labour, Greens, Plaid, SDLP and SNP separately say they would vote down the Queen’s speech and together have enough seats to do so, then it would be almost impossible for Cameron to try to bring in a Queen’s speech.
They got a raw deal? I recall at the time many pundits saying the tories had been oddly generous giving the lib dems the deputy prime minister and 5 other cabinet positions, given how few seats the lib dems had won.
…in return for abandoning the tuition fees position, a major plank in the LibDem platform, and indeed pretty much everything else except an AV referendum which the Tories ruthlessly undermined, all the while acting as the whipping boys for the worst excesses of the Conservative Party. That’s a pretty raw deal.
No-one forced the LIb Dems to paint themselves into a corner on the tuition fee issue. I really can’t see what’s wrong with the Tories “ruthlessly undermining” the AV referendum. If a Party doesn’t believe in AV then they should rightfully campaign against it. That’s what a referendum is all about, both sides arguing their point. Nevermind, the Lib Dems got there own back by preventing any boundary changes. This means the Tories are fighting an uphill struggle to keep parity with Labour. The Lib Dems can be a nasty Party too.
Unfortunately they can only offer what’s on their computer screens - they won’t even ring up HQ and ask for odds.
I know that people think it a Scottish view, but if there is a badly hung Parliament then whichever government we get will be limited in how much legislation it can pass, especially as the SNP has asked questions of the right of a minority government to govern by orders in council.
The most important result will be the over representation of SNP MPs and the under representation of UKIP MPs. Under four per cent will give the SNP possibly fifty seats and over eight per cent will give UKIP only a handful, severely distorting the left-right balance.
The only thing that will change this position is electoral reform because both the SNP surge and the UKIP surge are for different reasons unlikely to reverse and may actually increase. Should electoral reform or even a federal solution be sought, there is reason why both main parties might support it to ‘get their vote back’.
You’re starting to get it now, well done.
To make it very clear: Scotland is being played like a fiddle by the Tories and it is all going according to plan. The Tories couldn’t be happier with what is going on up there.
Why? Well the Tories realise they can’t win over Scotland. They’re toxic up there and have been since the eighties. They also know that Labour has said that they don’t want to to work with the SNP. So what is best for the Tories in Scotland? If they are going to not get any seats then they damn well want to be sure that Labour doesn’t either.
So how do they do this? They piss off Scotland as much as humanly possible but make it look like it is England that’s the issue, not the Tories. So the SNP takes Labour’s seats leaving Labour in a much weaker position in comparison to how they would have been.
You want proof of this? Ask yourself why The Sun is happily backing the Tories everywhere in the UK except for Scotland, where they are backing the SNP.
You are being played.
Orders in Council can be blocked by Parliament, and a minority government would be heavily exposed to having such measures blocked. Significantly, either House can veto them - not just the Commons.
Same goes with Orders of Council, and both have narrow fields in which they can be exercised.
Statutory instruments and Public Bodies Orders can also be used, but again, these are all blockable by Parliament, and it would be risky for a minority government to attempt to pass anything controversial through them.
I think you’ve got it the wrong way around: the rest of the UK is being played by the SNP. The only rational vote for a Unionist is to vote for the candidate most likely to defeat the SNP, be they Labour, Lib Dem, or Tory.
I disagree.
The Tories care more about power than the Union.
No one up here is ‘being played’. The SNP vote has been over fifty per cent since before the Tories and the Sun started their campaign.
People here are voting because of a total loss in faith with Labour, partly but not entirely because of their alliance with the Tories in better together. Added to that is a growing despair that the extra powers believed to have been promised post referendum do not seem close enough to the level of devolution followed.
In my constituency SNP used to be a poor third in a Labour Conservative marginal. The SNP IS now two percent ahead.
There is a distinct feeling of revolution up here.
The problem for the Union is the Tories decision to can the flames of both English and Scottish nationalism in support of party political advantage.
This will continue for weeks as they try to talk down the legitimacy of Scottish MPs.
Interesting times.
Exactly what I was saying.
The difference is that the Tories are a unionist party putting the union at risk whereas the SNP are a separatist party putting the union at risk.
So I’m calling it ( 
):
A Labour/Lib Dem coalition, with the Krankies doing whatever but abstaining/supporting on key votes (for fear of implicitly supporting the Etonians).
I thang yew.
I would say close but no cigar.
My guess Labour minority government, LibDems confidence and supply, SNP usual channels.
Labour are too pig headed to change any of their policies unless forced to. They will try and be rebuffed by a Lib Conservative DUP UKIP bloc on its right and a Lib SNP Green SDLP Plaid bloc on its left.
I can easily see that as well.
I don’t think he will, but if Cleggy loses it adds another layer …
Your post implied that a minority government would bypass Parliament with Orders-in-Council. Sorry if I misread, although it still appears that way to me.
Otherwise I think your view of the next government is correct. Labour proposing not to coalesce with anyone doesn’t harm their chances of power, as the consensus of all the other parties, with the exceptions of DUP and UKIP, are that they will not do any business with the Tories.
For the silly hay the Tories have been making about how ‘wrong’ it is for SNP MPs to influence a Labour government (which has disgusted many down here), I think they would deserve opprobrium if they then decided to shack up with the DUP.
No. You interpreted it that way.
What I said was that the SNP had been asking questions about minority governments and their rights to use non legislative power.
They have been doing this to seek to deny Labour this opportunity.
Go back and read the original:
“Originally Posted by Pjen View Post
I know that people think it a Scottish view, but if there is a badly hung Parliament then whichever government we get will be limited in how much legislation it can pass, especially as the SNP has asked questions of the right of a minority government to govern by orders in council.”
I think this is a good call.