Westminster must not become a house with no windows | Vernon Bogdanor
Coalitions are the future, so reform is vital if they are to serve the voter and not the political classes
'England," Disraeli famously said, "does not love coalitions." The Westminster model is geared to single-party government. Yet the growth in support for third parties and the decline in the number of marginal seats mean that hung parliaments and coalition governments have become more likely. They will be even more likely if the alternative vote, a preferential electoral system likely to help the Liberal Democrats, the second choice of many voters is endorsed by voters in the forthcoming referendum.
There have of course been peacetime coalitions before from 1918-22 under Lloyd George, and Ramsay MacDonald's national government in 1931. But these coalitions differed from the 2010 version in that they were formed before general elections rather than after, and thus endorsed by the voters.
Before the 2010 election, David Cameron warned that with a hung parliament "the decisions that really matter to people are taken behind closed doors. Instead of people choosing the government, the politicians do. Instead of policies implemented on the basis of a manifesto, there will be compromises and half-measures."
In every postwar election, with the exception of that of February 1974, which resulted in a minority government, the voters decided which party was to form a government and who was to be prime minister. In 2010, no one voted for the coalition; and its birth, although partly the result of the electoral arithmetic, was not wholly determined by the outcome of the election. With a hung parliament there are stage! s, rathe r than one, in the formation of a government the election and the post-election negotiations. The function of a general election alters. Instead of directly choosing a government, it alters the power relations between the parties in post-election negotiations. A series of hung parliaments will introduce a system of indirect election in place of the direct election of a government.
But it is not only the government that is chosen after the election. It is also the policies. As the 2010 election showed, the party manifesto is no longer a reliable guide to what will happen afterwards. It is superseded and in part jettisoned by the coalition agreement, drawn up in post-election negotiations. That coalition agreement, however, has not been put before the vote.
The danger with a series of hung parliaments is that government and parliament come to be insulated from the people. A government may enjoy a secure majority in the Commons, but lack a mandate from the people. There is a gap between the principle of parliamentary government that a government is responsible to parliament and the principle of democratic government, that a government is responsible to the people.
The fixed-term parliaments bill could widen the gap by making dissolution more difficult and enabling parties to change coalition partners without having to appeal to the voters. Westminster is in danger of becoming a house without windows, dominated by political manoeuvring which excites the political class but alienates the voter. That would be an unfortunate paradox, since the movement for constitutional reform, which gathered force after the expenses scandal, emphasised the need for the popular control of government and the strengthening of accountability.
If we are to have a series of hung parliaments, parties ought to be required to signal their intentio! ns with regard to coalition partners before the election, and also the terms on which they are prepared to agree to coalition. The Lib Dems no doubt gained electoral support by keeping their options open before the 2010 election.
Cameron has suggested that we are moving into a post-bureaucratic age. The politics of a post-bureaucratic age must become more fluid, more open to the voters, more open to popular control. So parliamentary government must be counter-balanced by reforms designed to open up the political system, not insulate it further. That counter-balance is best secured through instruments of direct democracy such as primary elections, referendums, and an electoral system such as the single transferable vote enabling voters to exercise a wider degree of choice.
Tony Blair's 1997 government inaugurated an era of constitutional reform. The further changes made by the coalition show that constitutional reform is a continuing process, not an event. The aim of reform must be a political system congruent with the philosophy of a post-bureaucratic age, whose watchword is fluidity and whose leitmotif is the sovereignty of the people the only sure foundations for a new British constitution.
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