Monthly Archives: June 2017

Following the general election, where now for Northern Ireland?

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The general election result has done little to halt the steady unravelling of the political situation in Northern Ireland, and may accelerate it. In this post Alan Whysall discusses the implications of the confidence and supply agreement between the Conservatives and DUP, expected to be agreed in the coming days, and what might happen next.  

As Theresa May reaches out to Northern Ireland for support, the political situation there has been steadily unravelling. A pact with the DUP – which has been on the point of emerging for several days, and may appear today, or may not – is unlikely to stop the unravelling. It could accelerate it – not necessarily, but unless there are changes in outlook in Northern Ireland politics, not least from the British government, we risk losing many of the gains that have followed from the Good Friday Agreement.

The unravelling started a while ago…

Earlier blogs have outlined the increasing disarray in Northern Ireland politics since the turn of the year, here, here and here. The following is a brief summary for those who have not kept up.

Sinn Féin, which along with the DUP had constituted the power-sharing government in Northern Ireland, pulled the plug on it in January. Ostensibly this was because of financial scandal involving the First Minister, Arlene Foster of the DUP, in an earlier ministerial life. But the underlying causes had more to do with the way that the DUP treated nationalism, and Brexit.

An election to the Northern Ireland Assembly followed in March. It was highly polarising. Although there have been existential crises in the life of the power-sharing government in Northern Ireland, elections have generally been conducted in a spirit of renewed commitment to work together. And voters increasingly came to like and expect that language – even if there was increasing disillusion at the performance of the devolved institutions.

There was little talk of working together in this Assembly election, however. The reversion in recent months to rhetoric redolent of the days before the Agreement has been marked. Arlene Foster’s spirited attacks on Sinn Féin in fact contributed to a strengthening of its vote – the overall nationalist vote had been flagging in recent elections, but now dramatically bounced back. There was also some strengthening of the middle ground, but the more moderate Unionist and nationalist parties the UUP and SDLP did less well.

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The performance of the electoral system: strengthening or weakening the case for reform?

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In this post Alan Renwick assesses the performance of the first-past-the-post electoral system at last week’s general election. Focusing on eight criteria, he concludes that the problems generally associated with FPTP were milder in this election than in other recent elections. However, by failing to produce the single-party majority government that its proponents argue is a major advantage over proportional alternatives, the case for FPTP was nonetheless weakened.

Amidst all the profound issues affected by the election results – not least Brexit, the governance of Northern Ireland, and the sovereignty question in Scotland – the performance of the electoral system is not perhaps the most pressing. Nevertheless, a routine health check is in order. Did the electoral system perform better or worse this time than in other recent polls? Did this election strengthen or weaken the case for reform?

Any analysis of performance requires some assessment criteria. Many criteria could be used. In this post, I shall focus on eight of the most important.

1/ Single-party majority

The House of Commons is elected by first past the post (FPTP). While acknowledging its imperfections, supporters of FPTP argue that it has at least one crucial advantage over its proportional rivals: it generally produces single-party majorities, which, they say, help deliver (to coin a phrase) strong and stable leadership.

Clearly, that did not happen this time. Indeed, this was the second election in three that failed to perform as FPTP backers expect. Political scientists pointed out long before the first of those elections, in 2010, that the decline of the UK’s traditional two-party system since the 1970s had made such outcomes more likely. It is noteworthy, therefore, that this time we have a hung parliament even though two-party politics appears resurgent: the vote share of the two largest parties, at 82.4 per cent, is higher than at any election since 1970, and 17.4 percentage points up on the low of 2010. But though multipartism has declined, it has not disappeared: the minor parties still hold over 10 per cent of the seats – a higher proportion than at any post-war election before 1997. Unless things change dramatically, results such as this are likely to become fairly normal.

2/ A government with popular support

The flipside of the coin of so-called ‘manufactured’ majorities is the possibility that FPTP can give power to a government that commands only minority support among voters. Concern about this possibility reached its height in 2005, when Labour secured majority power on only 35.2 per cent of the votes cast and, given low turnout, just 21.5 percent of the eligible electorate.

This time, the Conservatives won 42.4 of the vote. Despite the failure to secure a majority of seats, that is one of the highest vote shares since 1970: only Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and (very marginally) 1983, and Tony Blair in 1997 did better. Theresa May’s party captured the votes of 29.1 of the eligible electorate. While this is the highest share secured by any party this century, it is lower than the share of any winning party between 1945 and 1997 except Labour in October 1974, owing to diminished turnout.

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A cross-party committee of the Privy Council should be established to seek consensus on the terms of Brexit

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Following last week’s general election result Theresa May is likely to face severe difficulty in negotiating Brexit successfully unless she seeks cross-party consensus. In this post Jim Gallagher suggests that consensus could be achieved through a special committee of the Privy Council, the membership of which would reflect the House of Commons and also contain representatives of the devolved legislatures.

It will be impossible for a minority government with a weak Prime Minister to negotiate Brexit successfully, against a ticking clock, if it deals with the issue in the normal way of British politics. Government cannot formulate policy privately, then seek to sell it to the House of Commons while talking fitfully to the devolved administrations. Theresa May’s administration can be held to ransom, if not by the DUP, by factions in her own party. The opposition will sense blood and might be keener to bring down the government than do a European deal. The devolved will stand on their rights to consent. So even if she can negotiate some agreement with Brussels, she will fail to secure a domestic legislative consensus and the deal will fail.

The government has already used up two of the 24 months allowed for this negotiation and succeeded only in weakening its position. As a result, the UK is faces a high risk of crashing out the EU in an unmanaged way.

Leaving the EU presents the British state with an unprecedented problem. It must be handled in an unprecedented way. Other countries might consider a government of national unity to give the negotiators authority to commit to a deal. We seem too partisan for that, but some senior figures in both government and opposition parties are already saying openly that a cross-party consensus will need to be built on this question. To build such a consensus, however, is anything but straightforward and will require a degree of trust and information sharing that is wholly alien to our normal way of doing government business – to which Westminster and Whitehall will default unless something radically different is devised.

If government tries to develop policy behind closed doors, keeping the devolved at arms-length and negotiating tactically secure a day-to-day majority in parliament, it will almost inevitably fail. There is certainly very little chance of completing the process in time for the agreement to be settled and ratified in Europe as well as here.

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Why democrats should welcome a hung parliament

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Much commentary has presented the hung parliament that resulted from last week’s general election as a source of damaging instability. In this post Albert Weale argues that democrats should in fact welcome a hung parliament, where a parliamentary majority approves measures on the basis of the merits of the arguments rather than on the basis that they were included in the majority party’s manifesto.

The UK now has a hung parliament. Does that mean that British government is no longer strong and stable but weak and wobbly? To listen to much commentary, you would think so. But for democrats there are good reasons for welcoming a hung parliament.

The prevalent view of parliamentary democracy in Britain runs something like this. General elections are occasions of accountability of governments to the people. Parties stand on their manifestos, and if they secure a majority of seats, their democratic responsibility is to implement what they have promised. Through the Salisbury convention, the House of Lords will not frustrate measures promised in the manifesto. If the people do not like what the governing party has done, they have the opportunity to get rid of that party at the next election.

In this way of thinking, the first-past-the-post electoral system occupies a crucial role. It may not deliver a fair representation of political opinion, at least as judged by the test of proportionality, but it does secure stable government. It magnifies a simple plurality of the popular vote into a majority, often a large majority, of seats in the Commons. With such a majority, a government has no excuse for not implementing the programme for which it has received a mandate. That is simply democracy.

If politics were simply a matter of a contest between left and right, with the two major parties drawn towards the centre ground, this view of democracy might have something to be said for it. In the real world it has nothing to be said for it.

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The election of the Speaker: myth and reality

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When the newly elected House of Commons meets on Tuesday, its first task will be the election of the Speaker. In this post, Andrew Kennon explains how this will work and separates some of the myths surrounding the process from reality.

When the newly elected House of Commons meets for the first time on Tuesday, the first business – even before swearing in all MPs – will be election of the Speaker. John Bercow, who won his Buckingham seat with a majority of over 25,000 on Thursday, is expected to be re-elected unopposed, though prior to the election there was some talk of a challenge. What are the myths and realities surrounding this process?

Is the Speaker always re-elected unopposed?

This is what has happened in practice. Every Speaker who has been re-elected to the House – normally with other parties not putting up rival candidates in the constituency – has been re-elected to that post. But the House is given the opportunity to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Only if the answer is ‘no’ does it proceed to a full election.

The possibility of rejecting the incumbent has been raised in the media under Speaker Bercow. He was first elected in 2009, about a year before the 2010 general election. At that point, he was a Conservative MP on the opposition side of it he House. There was some speculation after the 2010 election that the new Conservative government would oppose his re-election, but this did not materialise. The same occurred after the 2015 election.

So: this is practice but not binding.

Does a new Speaker always comes from the Government side of the House?

This is what happened in practice until 1992 when Betty Boothroyd was elected. There is no reason to regard it as a convention.

Does the Speakership alternate between the two main parties?

Since Speaker Martin (Labour) succeeded Speaker Boothroyd (also formerly Labour) in 2000 this cannot be said to be a firm rule. Between 1965 and 1992 successive Speakers did come from the opposite side of the House to their predecessor – but, equally, they also came from the party in government at the time of their election. The House’s freedom to make its own choice among an array of volunteers probably means that any sense of it being the ‘turn’ of a particular party is out of date.

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