When David Cameron and Nick Clegg signed the coalition agreement on 10th May 2010, they were driven by complex motives. Ideological sympathy played a part; parliamentary arithmetic an even greater one. Whatever their reasons, the coalition is already having a dramatic effect on politics and the constitution. Some of that is healthy—but not all. For a start, the government faces real pressures to justify its legitimacy in response to cries that no one voted directly for it. Second, British electoral laws and principles of cabinet government must adapt even further to the deep social changes occurring in the country. Can the coalition deliver this?
An end to the realignment of the left
Even if the Clegg-Cameron government does not last, it has already had a profound effect on politics. Its immediate impact has been to call an abrupt halt to the project of a realignment of the left. That project was begun by Liberal leader Jo Grimond in the 1950s, and continued by his successors David Steel in the 1970s and Paddy Ashdown in the 1990s. Today, it is difficult for the Liberal Democrats to maintain that they are a party of the left, or that they could now become part of a new progressive alliance. Perhaps they will once again become not an anti-Conservative party but an anti-Labour party, as in the immediate postwar years under Liberal leader Clement Davies.
Yet, for that to happen, the two parties would have to fight the next election together—as some Conservatives have argued that they should. One newly elected Conservative MP, Nick Boles, published a book late last year, Which Way’s Up?: The Future for Coalition Britain and How to Get There, in which he argued there has been some ideological convergence between the two parties. This, he thinks, should be cemented by an electoral pact. His call was echoed by John Major in his Churchill lecture at Cambridge on 26th November 2010. The former prime minister hoped that “some way can be found to prolong co-operation beyond this parliament. It may be,” he mused, “that a temporary alliance will turn into a mini realignment of politics. After all, in a world that is changing so comprehensively, why should not politics change too? Neither party will admit that possibility at present, not least because it would upset their core vote but—if events turn out well for the coalition—I, for one, would not be surprised at that outcome.”
Major then drew an explicit comparison with 1951, when the Liberals had been “saved as a parliamentary force -by the Conservatives not opposing five Liberal MPs.” Co-operation, he noted, “is nothing new. It can be done. If it is in the interests of the country, it may need to be done again.”
A Lib Dem-Tory pact to fight the next election?
The Liberal Democrats and Conservatives would, however, face one crucial difficulty in constructing a pact to contest the next election together. Under the first-past-the-post electoral system, a deal requires each party to be prepared to withdraw its candidate in seats where it has no hope of success. But a constituency party cannot be ordered by headquarters not to put up a candidate. Local parties regard selecting a candidate as their raison d’être, their reward for the hours that they spend delivering campaign material and other mundane tasks.
One Liberal candidate asked to stand down in favour of one from the SDP made the following cri de coeur at the SDP’s Council for Social Democracy at Great Yarmouth in 1982. “Seven years ago when I became prospective parliamentary candidate for this constituency, we sold a home we all dearly loved, to move to live in the constituency; our youngest left her school and all three children eventually went to school locally. My wife changed her job to teach in the local comprehensive school and we accepted the upheaval because we both believed that for me the only way to nurse the constituency was to live in it and become part of it.”
If local feelings are strong, an agreement by party headquarters may simply be ignored; or, if the constituency party decides not to put up a candidate, an independent local candidate might appear. The supporters of a political party are not a disciplined army. They will transfer their votes to another party only if they perceive an overriding reason to do so. In the 1895 coalition, it was the urge to defeat Irish Home Rule; in 1918, to block candidates who were seen to have been “unpatriotic” during the war; in 1931, to ensure that the pound was not destroyed by the financial crisis. Pacts, if they are to be successful, must go with the grain both of constituency opinion and of public opinion.
Will the coalition survive?
One of the first announcements by Cameron and Clegg was that they would not go to the country again until 2015. That was an attempt to cement the coalition in office. But the history of past peacetime coalitions shows that the longevity of a coalition depends primarily on agreement at the grassroots. In the past, coalitions have come under pressure from below, not from above; that is also likely to be the case today, as suggested by a letter from 91 Liberal Democrat councillors, who wrote to The Times on 10th February criticising the government’s cuts.
A coalition lasts only so long as its purpose is seen to transcend everyday party battles. When that ceases to be the case, it unravels. It is remarkable how rapidly the Lloyd George government fell after its landslide victory in the 1918 election, when it was difficult to believe that it would prove anything but permanent. So great was Lloyd George’s popularity at the end of the war that Bonar Law, the Conservative leader, said: “He can be prime minister for life if he likes.” Four years later, the coalition collapsed and Lloyd George never held office again. Just one year after winning, in 1931, the largest electoral landslide ever enjoyed by a British administration, the National Government lost the support of the Liberals, the one genuinely independent non-Conservative element in the coalition. In each case, the fundamental purpose animating the coalition had disappeared.
So closer co-operation between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats is by no means inevitable. There is, for the Liberal Democrats, an alternative. They could become a hinge party—serial monogamists as it were—willing to form a coalition with either of the other two parties to achieve their cherished goal of proportional representation. The first step would be the alternative vote, which the Liberal Democrats hope might prove a prelude to a proportional system. If the 2010 general election were to prove the harbinger of a new style of politics, in which coalition government becomes the norm, not the exception, the Liberal Democrats could play a pivotal role similar to that of the Free Democrats, their German counterparts. The Free Democrats have been in power in Germany for all but ten of the 62 years of the Federal Republic’s existence, even though their average vote, at around 9 per cent, is far lower than that of the Liberal Democrats.
Does this coalition lack legitimacy?
If the Liberal Democrats manage to play this role, they will have disproved Disraeli’s famous aphorism that “England does not love coalitions.” There have been three peacetime coalitions in Britain in the 20th century: the Conservative/Liberal Unionist coalition of 1895-1905; the Lloyd George coalition, formed in wartime in 1916, but continuing until 1922; and the National Government formed in 1931, which governed Britain throughout the 1930s. But there is a fundamental difference between those three and the present one. Past coalitions were formed before elections, not after them, and were endorsed by the voters with landslide majorities, giving them clear democratic legitimacy.
In 2010, by contrast, voters would have had to guess which coalition would be formed in the event of a hung parliament. Many of them would have guessed wrong, as the Guardian did, recommending a vote for the Liberal Democrats to create a coalition of the left.
In an interview on the day before the 2010 election, David Cameron claimed that, in 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.”
There is a further complication. In theory, the coalition agreement permits the prime minister to appoint and dismiss ministers after consulting his deputy. But, in practice, David Cameron would probably be able to secure the resignation of a Liberal Democrat minister only if Nick Clegg and other senior Liberal Democrats fully agreed. The early days of the 2010 coalition showed that more latitude was given to errant Liberal Democrat ministers, such as Vince Cable, than to Conservatives. To discipline or dismiss a Liberal Democrat minister without Clegg’s agreement would be an open challenge to the Liberal Democrats and a threat to the basis of the coalition.
The consequence must be a weakening of the doctrine of individual ministerial responsibility. Even if the prime minister believed that a Liberal Democrat minister had been at fault in the administration of his department, or was inadequate in some other respect, he would not be able to secure his resignation as he would in a single party government. The creation of the coalition, therefore, has brought a very significant reduction in the power of a prime minister. The prime minister of a coalition does not have the overweening authority that was alleged to have existed under Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair.
AV and fixed terms make coalitions more likely
These changes are the result of the coalition’s mere existence. In addition, the government has tried to reform the constitution through the fixed-term parliaments bill (which would mean parliaments have fixed five-year terms) and the alternative vote. One likely consequence of the alternative vote is an increase in Liberal Democrat representation, since the party is the second choice of many Conservative and Labour voters. The alternative vote would also make it far easier for the two parties to strike an electoral pact, because it would not require them to withdraw candidates. Each party could put up candidates in every constituency, and recommend that second preferences be given to its coalition partner. In Australia, the alternative vote has been crucial in cementing the coalition between the Liberal and National parties. It could have a similar effect in Britain.
Will parliament be distanced from the people?
The reforms of the coalition, then, may make coalitions more likely. But they will do little to open up the political system. They could even insulate parliament from the people. The fixed-term parliaments bill makes it more difficult for a prime minister to dissolve parliament to break a deadlock, or to appeal to the country on an issue dividing government from opposition. This might serve to entrench a weak government in power. Equally, if a party knows that it can switch coalition partners with impunity—because it will not have to face the voters for five years—there could be changes of government between elections without the voters being consulted.
Meanwhile the alternative vote, if it is endorsed in the May referendum, would make hung parliaments more likely. That could, again, make government less accountable, as coalitions would be formed after elections. Like fixed-term parliaments, it would also make dissolution more difficult. Westminster could become even more remote from people than it was thought to be during the expenses scandal. Parliament could come to be characterised by la politique politicienne, a politics geared to the Westminster village, not the people—the opposite of what the coalition’s reforms intend.
The case for a new British constitution
The constitution now needs to change further because Britain has changed. In the 1960s, around half of voters identified strongly with a political party. Today that figure is around 10 per cent. The result has been greater volatility in elections and more willingness to vote for parties other than Labour and the Conservatives, which are no longer sustained by powerful class and occupational groups. As these blocs have broken up, so have the disciplined parties which they once sustained. Party cohesion is far weaker today than in the 1950s and 1960s, and MPs more prone to rebellion than at any time since the mid-19th century.
We no longer live in the collectivist era with its class-based parties, but in an individualistic age. Our constitution must come to reflect this. The politics of the collectivist age was inspired by the goals of managing the economy and maintaining a welfare state. Modern politics is inspired by the aim of enhancing individual choice and aspiration.
Politics needs to become more fluid to reflect this shift, and more open to popular control. But the coalition and its proposed reforms could well have the opposite effect. There needs to be a counterbalance. Even before the expenses scandal, David Cameron instituted open primary elections in which all voters, not just Conservative party members, could play a part in choosing candidates—a welcome indication that the age of pure representative democracy is over. Yet primaries are not enough. They need to be supplemented with other forms of direct democracy such as referendums and citizens’ assemblies, enabling the people themselves to play a part in legislation.
When Welsh devolution was being enacted in 1997, Ron Davies, the Welsh secretary, declared that devolution in Wales was a process, not an event. That is true of constitutional reform as a whole. The process will not come to an end until our political system reflects a changing society whose watchword is fluidity, and whose leitmotif is the sovereignty of the people: the only sure foundation for a new British constitution.
Coalitions in history
There are three precedents for Conservative/Liberal coalitions. The first is the Conservative/Liberal Unionist coalition of 1895-1905, which included Liberal Unionist Joseph Chamberlain and Conservative Arthur Balfour (right), who succeeded Lord Salisbury as prime minister in 1902. Second is the coalition of 1916-22; Liberal David Lloyd George (right) was prime minister. Third is the National Government of 1931-40; led by the Labour renegade Ramsay McDonald and then Conservatives Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain.
There are no precedents for a Labour/Liberal coalition, although the Liberals have supported minority Labour governments from the outside in 1924, 1929-31 and during the Lib-Lab pact in 1977-78, when Liberal David Steel propped up James Callaghan’s Labour government (far right). Past coalitions have proved to be a stage towards the development of a new two-party system, ruining the Liberals.
The coalitions of 1895 and 1916 were the consequence of a Liberal split. The split of 1931 caused a division in the Liberal party between those remaining loyal to Free Trade and those prepared to accept a tariff—Vichy Liberals, as Lady Violet Bonham-Carter, Asquith’s daughter, was to call them. The latter eventually merged with the Conservatives. Past coalitions have benefited the Conservatives—enabling them to win landslide election victories in 1895, 1900, 1918, 1931 and 1935.
