The next Great Reform Act? Pull the other one, Nick.

"...for someone who says he has embraced a new way of doing politics Clegg’s grand rhetoric bears all the hallmarks of the spin and over-selling which the previous Labour administration was said to be guilty of..."

Nick Clegg has called the new government’s measures to reform politics ‘the most significant programme of empowerment by a British government since the great reforms of the 19th Century’, indeed since the Great Reform Act of 1832.

The new Baldwin?

"I for one think that the past is as much of a guide to the future as our current neophilia. On that basis, LibDems beware!"

Few Liberal Democrats have put their coalition with the Conservatives into historical perspective. This is partly due to all politicians’ intoxication with the supposed novelty of any situation these days, something they share with most of their fellow citizens. How many times did Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg assert their embrace of a ‘new politics’?

And the election should be called....

"The election battle will be succeeded by the battle of the election books..."

Philip Cowley has asked us what we would call the last election? I think we should name it the Don’t Know Election.

Forget the 55% rule. This is what will really limit Parliament

"...the routine defeats of the government by the upper House, and the subsequent negotiation and compromise between the two – could still be seriously limited..."

Leave aside for now the fuss about the 55% rule and its impact on parliament. For all the talk about preventing votes of no confidence from dissolving parliament, defeats on votes of confidence are already extremely rare. The truth is that most votes of confidence are dull affairs, in which all the MPs of each party simply rally to the flag, and the government survives.

An end to New Labour...

"Would either Tony Blair or Gordon Brown want to claim the paternity of the Lib-Con coalition..."

The New Labour government is now, finally, at an end. After thirteen years, it passes into history – and in a strangely anti-climactic way. There was no sturm und drang, no (with the greatest of respect to Jacqui Smith) cathartic Portillo moment for its opponents on election night, no flag waving on Downing Street for the incoming government, although I am sure plenty of Bolly will be spilt in the pubs and clubs of Notting Hill over the next few days.

One reason for this lack of drama is that the end has been so long in coming. Since 2008 few could have had any expectation that Gordon Brown would win a fourth victory for his party. How he must be regretting not holding that much-trailed election in the autumn of 2007. The other reason is that – apart from the brief flurry of hope yesterday – since the results were confirmed on May 7th there was really only one game in town, and it wasn’t one to which New Labour was invited to play. And finally, there is the context for the election itself – continuing financial instability and the generally agreed need to cut government spending on an unprecedented scale. Things can only get better? Not until they get very much worse.

When Tony Blair became Labour leader in 1994 he talked of making sure the twenty-first century would be the ‘progressive century’ in the same way as the twentieth century had been the ‘Conservative century’ given how long that party held national office. The basis for this progressive century was to be a new relationship between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. For division between these two parties Blair – following David Marquand and many others – claimed had allowed the Right to rule.

For a time Blair brought the two parties together – and even offered Paddy Ashdown a place in his Cabinet and created a Cabinet sub-committee on which Labour ministers and leading Liberals discussed policy. There was also, most crucially, Lord Jenkins’ Independent Commission on the Voting System, which proposed AV plus – a half way house between Proportional Representation and the Alternative Vote. Blair however backed off from putting this to a referendum as he had promised, in part because his Cabinet – where Gordon Brown had a very loud voice – rejected the need for electoral reform. At the time Labour had a majority of 179 and was confident of at least two more election victories under the old system.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but there is an irony, then, in the events of the last few days. New Labour leaves office with the Liberals in coalition with the Conservatives, a party now led by a man who has described himself as ‘progressive’ and has said his government will be, above all things, ‘fair’.

Margaret Thatcher has claimed that one of her greatest achievements was – by destroying socialism - the creation of New Labour. As Thatcher also said on the verge of leaving Downing Street for the last time as Prime Minister: ‘It’s a funny old world’. Would either Tony Blair or Gordon Brown want to claim the paternity of the Lib-Con coalition? Probably not; not just yet anyway.

Professor Steven Fielding

The Alternative Vote, why bother?

The campaign for and the outcome of the General Election has put electoral reform firmly on the political agenda. Somewhat surprisingly the alternative vote (AV) has become the most discussed option for replacing the current first-past-the-post system (FPTP), embraced by Labour, and even allowed by the Conservatives to be voted upon in a referendum. This potential acceptance by the two major parties is understandable, as AV is for them the safest option, and least likely to break their joint hegemony over British politics.

When thinking about the different ways in which elections can be organised, the first question to be answered is whether one wants each constituency electing only a single MP, or multi-member constituencies.

Elections for single member constituencies can be organised in three fashions: first-past-the-post, alternative vote, and approval voting. But irrespective of which of these is used, all single member constituency systems are prone to disproportional outcomes, which means that the shares of votes and shares of seats can diverge widely.

AV thus does not solve the problem of dis-proportionality that lays at the root of many demands for electoral reform. It may even turn out less proportional than FPTP. In other words, it is also likely to yield parliaments where a vote share of only 35% yields 55% of the seats (as was the case for Labour in the previous parliament). because Labour and the Conservatives are most likely to be in a position to benefit from this, it is quite understandable that they favour AV if the call for electoral reform cannot be stifled any more.

What is ‘solved’ by AV is a ‘problem’ that hardly anyone cared about, namely that an individual MP be elected with fewer than 50% of the votes in his/her constituency. AV changes this by asking voters to rank their preferences for the candidates. If no candidate has an absolute majority of first preferences, then the one with the fewest first preference votes is eliminated, and his/her votes are allocated to the other candidates on the basis of the 2nd preferences on those ballots. Applying this, if necessary repeatedly, will guarantee that the eventual winner will have been supported by a majority in the constituency (a ‘majority’ that then consists of a mixture of 1st preferences, plus added 2nd preferences, possibly 3rd preferences, and so on). But this does not do anything to diminish the discrepancy between vote shares and seat shares across the country as a whole, and which motivates much of the support for electoral reform.

AV may even prevent a party that is more preferred than any of its competitors from winning in a constituency. Take, for example, a constituency with three candidates on the ballot, let’s call them Harriet, Chris and William. Voters are asked to rank their preferences for these on their ballot papers. A possible outcome would be the following:

40 % of the voters give 1st preference to Harriet, 2nd preference to Chris, and 3rd to William.;

35 % give 1st preference to William, 2nd preference to Chris, and 3rd to Harriet;

25 % give 1st preference to Chris, 2nd preference to William, and 3rd to Harriet.

Because none of the candidates has more than 50% of the 1st preferences, Chris is eliminated because he got the smallest number of 1st preferences. The 25% of the ballots which ranked Chris first are now allocated to William and Harriet, depending on the second preferences. In the example above, everyone who ranked Chris first ranked William second, so all these votes are transferred to William, who thus obtains a comfortable majority of 60% (35% + 25%) and wins the seat.

But actually, Chris, who was eliminated, was more preferred than either Harriet or William! 65 % of the voters prefer Chris over William (40% + 25%), while 60% prefer Chris over Harriet (35% + 25%). All that this shows is that the ‘majority’ with which William would be elected under the AV system, is an artificial one.

All in all, AV does not solve the biggest problem that leads to the call for electoral reform. It does not yield more proportional outcomes than the current FPTP system, which is exactly why both Labour and Conservatives can conceivably live with it without giving up their dreams of an absolute majority of the seats. And finally, AV can easily lead to the elimination of a candidates who is more preferred than any of his or her competitors.

In a next contribution to this blog more about other alternatives to FPTP.

Professor Cees van der Eijk

Clingendael 1 LibDems 0

"Would you buy a second-hand car from Mr. Clegg? In the end, it depends on how desperate you are to get on the road..."

With a group of eager-to-learn postgraduate students on an MA Programme in International Relations, I recently undertook a one-day crash course in negotiation at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations at Clingendael.

Here’s what I learnt.

First, zero-sum negotiations are hard. What you gain, I lose - and trust is a problem. It’s like buying a second-hand car from a stranger. What we really want is positive-sum or ‘integrative’ negotiation. I trade what I value less for what you value less and vice versa. We package different issues so that we can both win. That’s all pretty straightforward.

Slightly less intuitive is the route to optimising the outcome when the negotiating partners have unequal resources. The weaker party may maximise their own benefits by allowing the stronger party to take more. Looking for equality may be sub-optimal for the weaker party.

For all of this to work, however, there are some background conditions that need to be secured: a clear negotiating mandate, clear priorities, commitment to a relationship that extends across time, measurable outputs. Could any of this help Mr Clegg on the neatly-chiselled points of his painful dilemma?

It’s clear that the junior partner in any negotiation can overplay his hand – and end up with nothing (or, rather, nothing more than he began with). But, of course, the senior partners also have a very great deal to lose in walking away.

Uncertainty has a place in any real world negotiation but in Mr Clegg’s circumstances this is multiplex almost to the point of bewilderment. It’s possible to lose and the stakes are very high but the value of a win may justify some very high-risk behaviour.

Would you buy a second-hand car from Mr. Clegg? In the end, it depends on how desperate you are to get on the road.

Professor Chris Pierson

ConDemnation?

"But what was it that Karl Marx said about History repeating itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce?"

Amidst all the speculation regarding negotiations about the creation of a post-election arrangement between the Conservatives and LibDems I haven’t seen any reference to the last time the Liberals (as they were then) put in a minority government.

Actually, they did this twice in the 1920s, first in 1923 and then in 1929. Neither time will give Nick Clegg much comfort.

After the 1923 election Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin resigned as his Conservative government had lost its majority, although with 258 seats (and 38.5 per cent of votes) his remained the largest party in the Commons. After some hand wringing Henry Asquith decided that his 158 Liberal MPs should allow Ramsay MacDonald to hold office, the two parties sharing a common position on free trade. They supported Labour on a supply and confidence basis. The MacDonald government however lasted just ten months, after losing a vote of confidence, having achieved very little of substance.

The resulting 1924 election saw Baldwin return to power with a working majority. The Liberals, having angered many of its supporters for enabling Labour to hold power for the first time, lost 118 seats and its share of the vote collapsed from 29.7 per cent (and virtual parity with Labour) to 17.8 per cent. They would never again enjoy such a strong position as that held in 1923.

After five years as Prime Minister Baldwin lost the 1929 election. This time Labour had become the largest party in the Commons but at 287 seats MacDonald was still short of a majority. The Liberals, by now led by David Lloyd George, had 59 MPs (albeit elected by 23.6 per cent of voters) and again allowed Labour to take power. This time, however, there were some strings attached – specifically a royal commission on electoral reform. Unfortunately for the Liberals by the time Labour left office in 1931, amidst a grave financial crisis, it had failed to pass any legislation.

Of course, just because this earlier Liberal experience of supporting minority governments was so miserable does not necessarily mean it will be in the future. But what was it that Karl Marx said about History repeating itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce?

Professor Steven Fielding

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

This has been, without question, one of the most intriguing and unpredictable of elections in living memory. For political scientists and media commentators alike, it generated huge anticipation and a real sense of excitement about the outcome.

Blog sites like this one have attracted much attention, particularly from journalists looking for insight and new angles.


The television debates also injected a sense of dynamism and freshness to the well-worn routine of election campaigning, which used to be dominated by morning press conferences, poster launches, and carefully stage managed events.

However, for all the excitement amongst the commentariat, academics and other assorted anoraks, it appears that the wider public has not been so engaged. When I talked recently to BBC East Midlands chief political correspondent, John Hess, we both noted the lack of posters in windows and the absence of car-stickers compared to what was once commonplace in previous elections.

Highly impressionistic, of course, but there did seem to be a mismatch between the way the election was generating interest amongst analysts and the lack of visible evidence of much popular engagement. This was probably reflected in the very high number of 'don't knows', ‘not quite sures’ and ‘might change my minds’ right up to the eve of voting.

Vindicating that lack of connection between people and politics, turnout looks like it will be about 65 per cent. This is better than the 61.4 per cent in 2005 and the even poorer 59.4 in 2001.  But those were elections where the outcome was never really in doubt. 

This time round, we expected that electoral uncertainty – combined with the interest generated by the TV debates - would lead to a much higher figure.  In some places, turnout did exceed 70 per cent – people were turned away from the polls in the end - but the overall figure looks much worse than in every other election since 1945, none of which saw turn-out drop below 71.4 per cent. 

The campaign, then, has not reversed the deep-set popular disillusionment with the political class, one made only worse by the 2009 expenses scandal.  Only time will tell what effect the parties ongoing attempts to resolve the present Parliamentary stand-off will have on this continued sense of disenchantment with those who exercise power in our name.

Professor Paul Heywood

“A Nation Divided ..”

This blog, which has offered something for everyone, from the anorak to the anarchist, has come in for some criticism for its neglect of the smaller parties. Here’s nearly a last chance to put this right.

The Scottish Jacobite Party stood two candidates in the General Election and mustered a grand total of 290 votes. Following the party’s strategy for government is not entirely straightforward (no pledge card or contract with the voters here) but its proposal to re-draw the boundaries of Scotland to include much of northern England (allowing for the inclusion of four additional clubs in the Scottish Premier League) is surely an interesting and innovative move.

It’s clear following the results across the U.K. that there is a swathe of non-metropolitan England that wishes for ever to be ruled by Tories. The rest of the island would seemingly be happy to be under the governance of almost anyone else. Rather than reform the voting system, why not just re-draw the national boundaries? The few disaffected Scottish Tories can move to Witney or Henley. Marooned Lib Dems and Labour supporters could just head north. The South-land could become Victoria and the north country could become, well, how about Sweden II - or maybe just Utopia.

As they all say, it’s time for a change.

Professor Chris Pierson

Election of losers

This has been an election of losers. David Cameron failed to seal the deal and Gordon Brown has seen Labour lose over 90 seats. The biggest losers however are the LibDems. Yet while the high hopes of Cleggmania have taken a very hard knock, they still have a chance to clutch victory from defeat.


During the campaign Clegg made some very unwise pronouncements – about not dealing with Gordon Brown and how the party that won the most Commons seats and most votes should be given the chance to govern. The logic of what Clegg said means that the LibDems now have apparently no option but to rebuff any overtures from Labour and support the Conservatives who will not deal with Gordon Brown. Maybe Clegg will decide his personal credibility rests on living up to his words. Maybe his fellow MPs will decide otherwise when they meet on Saturday.

For – poorly though they performed on May 6th – the LibDems have a once-in-a-generation chance to get electoral reform – and the only party offering that at the moment is Gordon Brown’s Labour party. As projections stand Labour and the LibDems together still fall short of a Commons majority – but one wonders how the SNP and Plaid look upon a return of the Conservatives to power.

The Daily Mail and the Sun will all scream that Cameron has won. He hasn’t. No-one won the 2010 election. But do the LibDems have the political fortitude to ensure they win the post-election campaign? It will be an interesting meeting on Saturday.

Professor Steven Fielding

What counts as a majority?

In all the pre-election discussion, much attention focuses on the number 326. It’s half of 650 (which is the number of seats in the new House of Commons), plus one. And anyone who reaches 326 is therefore guaranteed of a majority in the Commons.

But there’s good reason to be sceptical about 326 being the target number.

For one thing, the election in Thirsk and Malton is not taking place today – because of the death of the UKIP candidate. It is, or should be, a safe Tory seat. But until it actually counts, who knows? (I mean, who knows what it would be like were it be contested in by-election-like conditions, as the difference between a hung parliament and a Conservative government?). As of today, 649 seats are up for grabs.

Then there’s Sinn Fein MPs, who don’t take their seats. At present, there are five of those. If we assume they hold all five seats, and make no gains, that makes 644 seats actually up for grabs. (It’d be one of the ironies of a really close election that Sinn Fein gains would actually be good for David Cameron...)

And then there’s the Speaker and three Deputy Speakers, who don’t vote (except in tied votes). Assuming John Bercow is returned in Buckingham and continues as Speaker. That leaves three Deputy Speakers, two of whom have retired. Assuming the one remaining Deputy Speaker, the Conservative Alan Haselhurst holds his seat and continues in office, that leaves two to be filled. The Conservatives could attempt to argue that both have to be from the ranks of the Opposition (given that there is normally parity across the four, and that both Haselhurst and Bercow represent Conservative seats, albeit formerly in the case of the latter). That effectively reduces the number of seats in play by another one.

That makes 642, rather than 650. And means a majority of 322 would provide David Cameron with a majority, at least until the end of the month. And figure of 323 would mean he had a majority whatever happens in Thirsk.

In practice, on day-to-day business there’s also the fact that the other Northern Irish MPs often have lowish turnouts in Commons votes, which could also bump up his majority by a handful.

These sort of minor details often go unnoticed. But in an election which is going to be this close, every seat could matter.

Professor Philip Cowley

Would a hung parliament be bad for business?

According to an online survey - run by The University of Nottingham Institute for Enterprise and Innovation (UNIEI) - businesses are worried about the potential impact of an inconclusive election, according to an online survey.

A survey suggests a majority of smaller business owners feel that a hung parliament would be bad for the economic situation.

The quarterly UK Business Barometer found that those who were pessimistic about the situation following a hung parliament outnumbered the optimists by three to one. Out of more than 100 respondents, almost 55 per cent felt a hung parliament would worsen economic prospects ‘somewhat’ or ‘greatly’, compared with 18 per cent who thought it would improve the economic situation.
 
In a parallel survey, the UK Business Adviser Barometer, the split was even more pronounced. Among more than 180 business advisers questioned, 59 per cent felt economic prospects would worsen if there was no outright winner on May 7th, compared with 13 per cent who felt they would improve.


Professor Philip Cowley said; “In comparative terms, there's nothing for business to worry about with a hung parliament or a coalition. There's no evidence that economic performance is any worse in political systems that have hung parliaments, or coalitions.

“Indeed, in the past advocates of proportional representation always used to argue that one reason for Britain's relatively poor economic performance in the 1970s was that we had single party government – and thus saw regular u-turns in key policies – compared to countries such as Germany which had coalition government and were thus more stable. The extended periods of one-party government that we have seen in the UK since 1979 (first under the Conservatives, then under Labour) mean that we hear that argument rather less these days.

“The fear for business is not so much the hung parliament itself, but the reaction of the parties to it. What businesses (especially in the City) fear, is a government unable to take difficult decisions, a period of drift and indecision, caused either by a party trying to govern in a minority administration (and thus looking ahead to a second election) or an unstable coalition. But a stable coalition could be as able to take difficult economic decisions as a single party government.

“It is therefore the reaction of the parties to the result, rather than the result itself which is the problem.

“Moreover, there is a problem in seeing this issue as a clear divide between a government with a majority or one without. A Conservative majority of, say, 10 will not in practice be very different to a Conservative minority government, short of a majority by 10. Neither would be especially stable. A small Conservative majority will be easily hit by backbench rebellions – as happened the last time the Conservatives were in power with a small majority.”

The UKBB and UKBAB surveys, which are completed online, assess current business conditions through a series of topical questions aimed at smaller businesses. The questions change each time the surveys are circulated.

The surveys assess current business conditions through a series of topical questions aimed at smaller businesses and their advisers. The surveys are issued bi-monthly and more information, including results and analyses, can be found on the web at www.ukbb.ac and www.ukbab.ac. Businesses and advisers wishing to contribute as panellists on the project should visit the appropriate barometer website to register.

Looking both ways at once

Last week, we pointed out the interesting finding lurking in a ComRes poll, which showed that on one of the central dividing lines of this election, the public appeared to have contradictory views.

Some 61% wanted the Government to “maintain current public spending plans in order to keep the recovery going”, whilst 57% wanted them to “cut public spending now to avoid higher taxes later”. The public seemed to want both of two completely contradictory stances.

Amusing (or depressing?) as it was, of course, this didn’t tell you how many of the public held such contradictory views, merely that the ‘public’, in the aggregate, did. Thanks to Andrew Hawkins of ComRes, however, who has now supplied some more detailed data, we can identify Britain’s confused voters in a bit more detail.

First, there’s a handful of respondents who refused to answer one or both of the questions, along with 15% of the sample who said that they didn’t know to one or either option.

That leaves four more substantive groups. There were those who a) wanted spending maintained and not cut (26%), and there were those who b) wanted spending cut and not maintained (21%). That makes 47% of the survey who took a logically consistent position.

But a full 31% of the sample came out in favour of both options. That is, they wanted spending both cut and maintained. That is more than came out for either a) or b).

There was also some 7% who rejected both options. In itself, this isn’t illogical (and certainly not as illogical as wanting both options). I might reject both options because in fact I favour increasing spending, an option that wasn’t provided.

Or I could favour maintaining spending but not ‘in order to keep the recovery going’, but for some other reason. Similarly, I might want a cut in public spending, but not ‘to avoid higher taxes later’. So we should assume some of those 7% are answering logically.

Equally, however, we suspect that some are just inconsistent. With no other way of dividing them, let’s split them 50/50.

That makes roughly 50% - just half – of voters who gave consistent answers to those two questions, whilst 35% - or more than a third – who gave inconsistent answers. And remember: this was hardly some minor, trivial, issue, but one of the key dividing lines between the two main parties.

Who’d be a politician faced with voters like that?

Professor Philip Cowley

Philip Cowley in Reuters debate on hung parliaments

Sound quality is iffy for for the first few seconds - bear with it!

Watch live streaming video from ilicco at livestream.com

Hung!

"This brief tour through of Britain’s political past reveals something else: to be Prime Minister you do not need to be a party leader or the leader of the biggest element in a coalition..."

The prospect of a hung Parliament has provoked the Conservatives – along with their allies at the Daily Mail - into trying to scare the living daylights out of us.

Some horror stories have a basis in fact. Does this one?

David Cameron in particular claims to fear for our country’s future should the election not produce a party with a working Commons majority. He also has longer-term concerns should any resulting coalition government abandon the ‘decisive’ nature of the current electoral system.

Cameron asserts that changing first-past-the-post means perpetual hung parliaments. That of course would depend on which electoral system replaced the one we presently have.

But to what extent has first-past-the-post delivered ‘decisive’ outcomes? And when it hasn’t – and even when it has - what has been the result?

How decisive were the governments elected with apparently workable majorities as recently as 1992 and 2005? In both cases internal party divisions often brought the business of government to a halt. Colleagues at Nottingham have in fact made a name for themselves analysing parliamentary rebellions and establishing quite how far the Parliamentary Labour and the Conservatives are often coalitions of the unwilling.

But let’s look further back in history, to the start of the twentieth century. So indecisive was the election held in January 1910 another one followed in December, which saw the Liberals and Conservatives finish on virtually the same number of seats. The Liberals led by Asquith however stayed in power thanks to the support of Labour and Irish Nationalist MPs. Despite that, it was this Liberal government that brought Britain into the First World War – quite a decisive act all things considered.

A wartime coalition was created in 1915. A year later Asquith was unseated as Prime Minister by his erstwhile colleague Lloyd George. The former however remained party leader and many Liberal MPs refused to support the new coalition, which was now mostly composed of Conservatives. Lloyd George = still a the Liberal - led this Conservative dominated coalition to victory in 1918 and continued to govern until 1922.

The 1920s saw the Liberals, Conservatives and Labour contest four elections - 1922, 1923, 1924 and1929 – on relatively equal terms. In fact, only two of these saw a party win a working Commons majority – three party politics is certainly not conducive to decisive outcomes.

The minority Labour government elected in 1929 and supported by the Liberals ended in 1931 after the Cabinet split over how best to balance the budget. Prime Minister MacDonald was however persuaded (by himself more than anybody) that the world recession required him to form a coalition government including all Conservatives, some Liberals and a small number from his own party. This ‘National’ government went on to win the 1931 and 1935 elections. Despite not leading the biggest party in the coalition MacDonald remained Prime Minister until 1935.

It was this government that in May 1940 gave way to the Churchill coalition. Neville Chamberlain who gave way to Churchill after Labour said it could not work under him remained Conservative leader until his death in November: only then did Churchill become both Prime Minister and party leader.

We associate the post-war period with two party politics and decisive general elections. We are right to do so - except for 1950. And 1964. And February and October 1974. Even at its supposed height of effectiveness ‘first-past-the-post’ was unreliable.

Cameron is wrong, then, if he thinks that first-past-the-post invariably delivers ‘decisive’ results and ‘decisive’ governments. Sometimes it does and sometimes – as in 2010 maybe - it does not.

This brief tour through of Britain’s political past reveals something else: to be Prime Minister you do not need to be a party leader or the leader of the biggest element in a coalition. Nick Clegg the next Churchill? Ramsay MacDonald more like.

Professor Steven Fielding

Queen sacks PM: You Heard it Here First

"...not everyone is aware that there is a precedent for the Crown to sack a sitting Prime Minister..."

Whenever the prospect of a hung parliament comes to mind (and given the many column inches and acres of cyberspace that must be filled in the run-up to an election, it always does), the question of the Queen’s constitutional role is never far behind. If there is no outright winner, must she summon the leader of the single largest party? Or (if it is not one and the same person) must she allow the sitting Prime Minister the opportunity to seek to form a government (of all the persuadable talents)?

But not everyone is aware that there is a precedent for the Crown to sack a sitting Prime Minister, despite his being duly elected and able to command a majority in the lower house, and to install the leader of the opposition in his place. The luckless victim of this manoeuvre was the venerable Gough Whitlam (then Prime Minister of Australia and Leader of the Australian Labor Party) and the lucky beneficiary, Malcolm Fraser, leader of Australia’s Liberals (i.e. Conservatives) and one of a small but distinguished band of politicians to have lost his trousers in mysterious circumstances.

The story is one of labyrinthine complexity, bad timing and enough duplicity to make even Machiavelli blush. Following a death and a resignation in the upper house (the Senate), Whitlam’s government no longer had control and the opposition was refusing to vote supply. Whitlam had already lost his Treasurer, Jim Cairns, who was accused of trying to negotiate an off-the-books loan of petro-dollars from the Middle East and of having an affair with his outrageously glamorous private secretary, Julie Morosi. The Queen’s representative in Australia then (as now) was the Governor-General; at that time, Sir John Kerr. On 11th November, 1975, at the beginning of a meeting requested by Prime Minster Whitlam and held at the Governor-General’s residence (a few minutes drive from the parliament building in Canberra), Kerr dismissed Whitlam. Fraser was waiting in an adjoining room. He was immediately commissioned as Prime Minster, returned to parliament, had supply voted through the Senate (before the Labor Party knew what had happened), secured the dissolution of parliament and the calling of fresh elections which his party duly won. On the steps of Parliament House, Whitlam delivered (entirely off the cuff) the most famous speech in Australia’s political history: ‘Well may we say “God save the Queen”, because nothing will save the Governor-General'. Kerr was indeed left a broken man. He resigned in 1977 and died in 1991.

Could it happen here? Probably not. Although Fraser’s tactics were unconventional, the Senate had a sort of popular mandate that the House of Lords could never claim. Did it change anything? Well, it certainly brought to a close what was by some way the most exciting period in Australia’s political history. It made Gough a folk hero (for some at least) and Fraser a pariah (for the same folk). Many thought it would hasten the coming of the Republic; but that is still awaited. Above all, it gave Labor the will to play as hard and dirty as its opponents. Under Hawke and Keating, Labor was to turn Fraser out of office (in 1983) and to go on to win five consecutive general elections. There’s a lesson Labour would like to have learned.

Professor Chris Pierson

The most rebellious parliament ends

"...the 2005-2010 Parliament easily goes down as the most rebellious in the post-war period..."

The 2005 Parliament which was prorogued this week – formal dissolution comes next week – will probably be remembered as the expenses parliament. But it holds one other distinction: as the most rebellious parliament of the post-war period.

The session that just ended, that of 2009-10, saw a total of 48 Labour rebellions, out of 135 divisions, a rate of 36%. In itself, this is the third highest final session since 1945, beaten only by the 39% achieved in 2004-05 session and the 36% (but marginally higher once you examine the decimals places) of the 1978-9 session.

But when you add those 48 revolts to the 300+ that had occurred in the preceding four sessions, it means that the 2005-2010 Parliament easily goes down as the most rebellious in the post-war period, whether measured in absolute or relative terms. In absolute terms, there were 365 Labour revolts between 2005 and 2010, more than in any other parliament since 1945, and easily more than what had been the record (the 309 between February 1974 and 1979). In relative terms – a more meaningful comparison, given that the parliament was shorter – there were Labour rebellions in some 28% of divisions. Again this easily tops the 21% achieved in the second Blair Parliament, 2001-2005 (and recorded here, in loving detail), which was itself a post-war record. There were also, just for the record, more Labour rebellions in this parliament than in 1997-2001 and 2001-2005 combined.

The most rebellious Labour MP was Jeremy Corbyn (with a total of 216 votes against the party whip). He was also the most rebellious between 1997-2001 and 2001-2005. He was closely followed by John McDonnell (192), Alan Simpson (144) and Kelvin Hopkins (131). More surprising are some of the names at the bottom of the list. The 2009-10 session saw Megg Munn, James Purnell, Eric Joyce and Tom Watson defy their whips, all for the first time. Who would have expected those names? Taken as a whole, 174 Labour MPs rebelled in the Parliament, 142 of them under Gordon Brown’s leadership. Between them, they cast a total of 3318 votes against their whips.

We’ve recorded all of them – plus the thousands in the 1997 and 2001 parliament – as part of a long-running research project, which is now coming to an end. The first ever rebellion of the New Labour era came in November 1997, when Jamie Cann was the only MP to defy the whips, over the Second Reading of the European Parliamentary Elections Bill. A total of 13 years and 719 rebellions later, the last one we monitored came over the Digital Economy Bill, just a day before Parliament prorogued.

Professor Philip Cowley

David Owen on hung parliaments

He may, as Ben Brogan argues, have been rather over-selling it, but news that Vince Cable has discussed Lib Dem policies with Treasury civil servants to help them prepare in case he becomes Chancellor in a post-election coalition government has added fuel to the current bonfire of speculation about the likelihood of a hung Parliament. The latest polls suggest that Labour and the Conservatives are currently both short of winning a Commons majority.

Lord Owen knows a thing or two about hung Parliaments and the politics of cobbling together agreements with third, fourth and even fifth parties. Owen was a member of the Cabinet during Jim Callaghan’s 1976-9 Labour government, when Callaghan fought to balance the budget during a severe recession while depending on deals with the Liberals and various Nationalist parties to retain a Commons majority.



In this interview, given at Nottingham’s Centre for British Politics, Lord Owen (now a cross bencher) reveals that this experience has led him to support the creation of Charter2010. This seeks to promote a ‘stable and more representative government capable of dealing with Britain’s economic plight’ should the country fail to give either of the main parties a Commons majority, one which they will need if they are to deal with the deep dark hole into which the recession has thrown government finances.

History never repeats itself, but sometimes it has a damn good try, and historians have already examined this period in detail. If the 1970s have any lessons for our own times, Owen believes one of them is that should there be a hung Parliament then politicians have to work together over a sustained period to reduce the deficit. How likely is this? History cannot predict the future but it suggests we might be in for a bumpy ride.

Professor Steven Fielding