If Cameron rules out coalition he rules out being in government after 2015

Interesting news earlier this week from the Telegraph that David Cameron wants to rule out any coalition involving the Conservatives after the 2015 general election.

It would be very strange if the Tories did include such a clause in their manifesto. The average polling in recent months has them on 33% with Labour on an average of 38%. Even if these positions were reversed, the Tories would still likely fall short of a majority because of the quirky way the blue and red vote is distributed across the country under our current electoral system. And very few people think the Tories will go up by 5% and Labour will fall by 5% in the run up to 2015. Far, far more likely is something that falls short of that.

So the absolute best the Conservative party can realistically hope for is that they will be the largest party in a hung parliament. If this good fortune were to befall them and they then refuse to form a coalition with the Lib Dems the government would collapse shortly afterwards as there would be no impetus for Nick Clegg's party to support a Queen's Speech from a minority government. Unable to command a majority for his programme Cameron would have no choice but to seek a dissolution.

Were this to then happen it is even less likely that the Tories would gain seats in a subsequent election. The public will have just been through a general election and given its verdict. The Conservative Party will have stubbornly refused to compromise and we all know the electorate do not like to be asked twice in quick succession. The party that will be seen to have caused the problem leading to this second election will be the one refusing any deal.

In other words Cameron would be effectively ruling his party out of being in government after 2015.

Given how well he played the original hung parliament game it seems very unlikely he would paint himself into a corner like this.

Another reason why it seems unlikely he would go down this road is that refusing to do any deal after 2015 goes so strongly against what he told us in the early part of this government about "coming together in the national interest" and everything being couched in terms of his "open and generous offer" that it would very much jar with the electorate. Cameron would find it extremely difficult to reconcile the two positions and could easily be painted as unprincipled and being driven by the most extreme elements of the right wing of his party.

This story would seem bizarre in many other countries where coalitions are the norm. The idea that a party should dig its heels in and insist on all the power (or effectively none of it) would be very alien indeed. The only reason this seems even vaguely plausible in this country is because of the history of majority governments we have seen in recent decades (almost always on the back of a minority of votes incidentally) under first past the post. But many psephologists now think with the breakdown in traditional voting patterns and more and more people willing to vote for smaller parties the days of regular majority governments are gone.

Cameron would be far better off reconciling his party to this new reality rather than stamping his feet and insisting he wants all the power to himself.

It simply isn't going to happen.


This post was first published on The New Statesman Online

Will the public ever accept coalitions?

Over the last couple of years I have had a few comments from my non-political friends (yes I have some!) along the lines of the Lib Dems cannot be trusted. When people who are usually not really that into politics say things like that it makes my ears prick up because it demonstrates that something about the subject has "cut through". Unfortunately in this case it is something pretty negative about the party of which I am a member.

It should probably not be surprising that that message has resounded in this way, after all much of the media and the entirety of the Labour Party (and mischievous elements of the Tory Party) have been saying as much ever since the Lib Dems entered government. And of course there is a kernel of truth in it. The party said one thing before the general election and then in a number of key areas did something different after the election.

But the third party was never going to be able to do anything except that if they were to go into government. They were never going to get a majority and therefore they were always going to have to compromise in all sorts of areas.

That the Lib Dems have "broken their promises" and "Clegg cannot be trusted" has become as much of the background mood music of the body politic of this country as "Blair lied about Iraq" or "Thatcher did not care much about society" were during their respective eras. As much as I might want to bang on on here about how the party had to compromise, I might as well be micturating into a tornado.

But this fact really does raise a much wider issue. Will the public ever accept coalitions? Because it is far from clear that what they are annoyed about is that Clegg et al made "the wrong compromises". It actually seems like the fact that any compromises were made at all is what has damaged the party (and that would likely have been true no matter what the compromises and who the political partner was). This would apply to any parties forming a coalition in the future.

Perhaps we have just had single party government in this country for so long that, despite the talk before the election about the public wanting politicians to "get along" the truth is that they are so used to one entire programme being enacted that when the electoral arithmetic requires parties to work together the damage caused, especially to the junior partner is just simply too great.

I wish I was wrong about this but I fear I am right. Maybe the last two years shows that the UK is simply not interested in parties compromising? And if the polls are correct we might well end up with at least another decade of single party government again after 2015.

I suspect the electorate might prefer to be back on the surer ground such a government would afford.