Hanging in the balance

It has only happened once in the post-war period and that was over thirty years ago. Yet now there is much talk that this year’s general election will produce a ‘hung parliament’ in which no one party has an overall majority. Why all of a sudden does such a parliament seem possible — and, if it does happen, what kind of government might emerge?

The first-past-the-post electoral system is not supposed to produce hung parliaments. Advocates of the system argue it gives the party with most votes an overall majority of seats, thereby ensuring that who governs Britain is determined by the verdict of the ballot box rather than in secret negotiations conducted after the polls have closed.

Never was this quality apparently more in evidence than in 2005, when Labour secured an overall majority of 66 seats despite winning just 36 per cent of the vote (in Great Britain) and only three percentage points more than the Tories.

However, underneath this façade, the foundations that have helped ensure that hung parliaments are rare events have been severely eroded. For a start the system is proving increasingly ineffective at denying representation to smaller parties, including not least the Liberal Democrats. When in 1983 the Liberal/SDP Alliance won 26 per cent of the vote, it secured just 23 seats. Yet in 2005 just 23 per cent of the vote was enough to bring the Liberal Democrats a dividend of no less than 62 seats. Overall, no less than one in seven MPs in the current parliament represents a party other than Conservative or Labour.

The explanation for this change is simple. First-past-the-post is only effective at denying representation to smaller parties whose votes are geographically evenly spread. The Liberal Democrat vote has become more concentrated. And if nearly 100 MPs come from third parties ‘hung parliaments’ are bound to be more likely.

Two further changes have also occurred. One of these was actually first in evidence in the 1970s and helps explain why a hung parliament arose in February 1974. At recent elections, around a third fewer seats have been closely fought between the Conservatives and Labour than was the case in the 1950s. And the fewer seats that readily change hands as a result of a small swing of the national pendulum, the less likely it is that first-past-the-post will deliver a majority to whoever comes first.

Still, if all this is true, how did Labour manage to win such a large majority in 2005? The explanation lies in yet another change. Until the 1990s first-past-the-post was relatively evenly handed in its treatment of the two largest parties. If it gave, say, Labour an overall majority of 40 for securing a two point lead over the Conservatives, there was every prospect it would do much the same for the Conservatives. Now, however, the system treats Labour far more favourably.

In part this is because the constituency boundaries are always out of date. Even the ‘new’ boundaries that will be introduced in England and Wales in this year’s election have been drawn up on the basis of figures that are now a decade old. As Britain’s population is still tending to move out of the Labour voting inner cities to the more Conservative suburbs and rural areas, this means the average Labour constituency is persistently smaller than the average Conservative one. It does not help either that Wales and (even still to some extent) Scotland are over-represented in the Commons.

But the reasons for the ‘bias’ against the Conservatives go beyond this. A large difference between the turnout recorded in the average Labour seat and that in the typical Conservative one has opened up. Meanwhile, the Conservative vote (much like the old Liberal vote) is too evenly spread. When the party’s vote collapsed in 1997, it did so most heavily in seats where it was previously strong — with inevitably dire consequences. Lord Ashcroft’s efforts in marginal seats might help to reverse this pattern, but so far there is little consistent evidence in the polls that this is happening.

The effect of the anti-Conservative ‘bias’ is stark. A three-point Conservative lead this year is unlikely to produce a majority of 66. It would probably even be insufficient to give the party more seats than Labour. Most likely the parliament would be well and truly ‘hung’.

Indeed thanks to the extent of the changes that have occurred, a large number of (apparently good Tory) results could well produce such a parliament this time. The better the Liberal Democrats do, the wider the range becomes, but anything between a dead heat and a Tory lead of no less than 11 points could potentially produce a situation in which no single party has an overall majority. Given that, since the announcement towards the end of January that the recession is finally over, the average Tory lead in the polls has been just nine points, the speculation about a hung parliament becomes explicable.

However, not all hung parliaments are the same. And the kind of hung parliament that emerges is likely to make a big difference to the kind of government that emerges. Three are three key scenarios to be distinguished.

First, the largest party might be only a few seats short of a majority. In that event a minority Conservative or Labour government is likely to be able to sustain itself reasonably easily. After all, up to half a dozen Sinn Fein MPs will fail to take their seats. Labour could expect the loyal support of any SDLP MPs that continue to be elected. David Cameron has entered into an alliance with the Ulster Unionists and, in any event, might well be able to make overtures to the DUP.

In these circumstances the Westminster game could well continue largely unchanged. Discontented government backbenchers would have to be listened to more closely than usual, but there would be little need to pay much heed to the Liberal Democrats. And doubtless if an apparently favourable opportunity arose, the government would soon call a second election in the hope of securing an overall majority.

But perhaps no single party will get close to 326 seats, or will even have as many as 310. At the same time, however, one of the parties is still considerably bigger than the other — and is the only party that would be able to secure a majority with the support of the Liberal Democrats.

In these circumstances some account will have to be taken of Mr Clegg’s feelings. But the Liberal Democrats would not be in a strong bargaining position. Their only option would be to allow what is clearly the largest party to form a government — or run the risk of precipitating another election.

Meanwhile there would likely be little enthusiasm in either Labour or Conservative ranks for offering Mr Clegg a coalition. At most there might be some arrangement like the Lib-Lab pact of the 1970s, accompanied by some limited policy concessions to the Liberal Democrats.

Only under our third scenario are the Liberal Democrats likely to have anything approaching a strong hand. This would be when both Labour and the Conservatives are a long way short of 326, neither has many more seats than the other, and both could compile a majority with the support of the Liberal Democrats. In those circumstances trying to sustain a minority government might seem too perilous, while Mr Clegg might hope to be able to drive a hard bargain in return for his support.

The range of results under which such an outcome is likely to occur is, however, relatively narrow. Even if the Liberal Democrats perform as well as they did in 2005 it is, even on a generous interpretation, no wider than a Tory lead of between four and seven points, far narrower than the 11-point range of results that might produce some kind of hung parliament. Mr Clegg’s chances of emerging in the position of potential kingmaker are in fact rather low.

However, what kind of government emerges as a result of a hung parliament will not just depend on the arithmetic. It will also depend on the willingness of the parties to strike a deal with each other.

When there was last significant speculation about the possibility of a hung parliament, in the 1990s, Labour and the Liberal Democrats seemed to be potentially comfortable bedfellows. The then Liberal Democrat leader, Paddy Ashdown, pronounced that his party was closer to Labour than the Conservatives, while Mr Blair even had Liberal Democrats sitting on a cabinet committee after the 1997 election.

More recently, however, Labour and the Liberal Democrats have rather grown apart. Disagreements about Iraq, identity cards, and detention without charge have all helped to sour the relationship. Meanwhile some of Mr Clegg’s distinctive tunes, such as an emphasis on tax cuts, do not seem to sit easily with Labour’s predilections.

Nevertheless, in a potentially significant move, Mr Brown has proffered a potential olive branch on the issue that is central to the Liberal Democrats’ future prospects of power — electoral reform. His proposal may be no more than a referendum on the alternative vote — not a form of proportional representation at all, but a system that does hold out the prospect of more Liberal Democrat seats —but it does at least provide the basis for talks between the two parties.

The Conservatives, however, remain wedded to first-past-the-post, despite the way in which it now treats the party. Yet, as we have seen, the parliamentary arithmetic might dictate that the only possible deal or understanding is one between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.

In that event, will Mr Clegg be willing to keep Mr Cameron in power on the basis of an understanding that excludes electoral reform? Would Mr Cameron be willing to trade principle for power? Or might they be unable to agree and plunge the country into a second election?

An awful lot may yet rest on the answers to these questions.