Tag Archives: government formation

Getting a new parliament up and running: what happens after the election?

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sir_david_natzler.smiling.cropped.3840x1920.jpgbeamish.jpg (1)We may not yet know the result of the election, but we do know that we will have a new parliament. David Natzler and David Beamish explain what will happen when the new parliament commences next week. No matter the outcome of today’s vote, certain processes will need to be followed: parliament will need to be officially opened, MPs will need to be sworn in, and committees will need to be re-established — and their members and chairs must be elected.

The dates

The first days of a new parliament follow a well-trodden path, and the surest guide to what will happen is usually to look up what happened last time, in June 2017. However, much depends on the political context. And we will not know that context until the early hours of Friday 13 December at the earliest. All we know for sure is that the new parliament will meet on Tuesday 17 December, and that if the current Prime Minister returns, the State Opening – the start of the new session – will be only two days later, on Thursday 19 December. If there is a hung parliament, the State Opening could be delayed. Continue reading →

A long time coming: the formation of Ireland’s new minority government

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The formation of Ireland’s new government following February’s general election took more than two months. In this post John O’Dowd discusses the reasons for the delay, the role played by the President and the agreement that was eventually reached to allow Enda Kenny to be reappointed as Taoiseach at the head of a minority government.

Partly on account of its possible repercussions for the slow-motion Eurozone crisis and partly because of its sheer length, the formation of the most recent Irish government attracted more international attention than usual, as well as much domestic puzzlement and frustration. The process began with a general election on 26 February 2016 and ended (perhaps) with the nomination of Enda Kenny (leader of the largest party, Fine Gael) for reappointment as Taoiseach (Prime Minister) on 6 May.

A delay of more than two months in forming a government is unprecedented by Irish standards and lengthy enough internationally. The government that has emerged is also somewhat odd. A minority coalition government is not without precedent in Ireland, but it is unusual in a parliamentary system for an administration to consist of parties and groups accounting for less than 40 per cent of the members of the house to which it accounts – Dáil Éireann; of the 157 votes, 59 were for Enda Kenny’s nomination, 49 against and 49 abstained. A further peculiarity is that, as well as the government depending on a formal agreement with the main opposition party, Fianna Fáil, this support is conditional on Fine Gael obtaining sufficient support through a Programme for Government agreed with other parties or groups to enable it to govern on the basis of Fianna Fáil’s abstention. In the event, Fine Gael could not attract any other parties into a coalition, so the current government consists of Fine Gael plus nine independents.

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Scotland, Wales and Ireland point to how governments should be formed in hung parliaments

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Nicola Sturgeon and Carwyn Jones have this week been re-elected as First Ministers of Scotland and Wales, whilst two week ago Enda Kenny was re-elected as Irish Taoiseach. In each case the newly elected parliament elected the head of the new government. In a new report Petra Schleiter, Valerie Belu and Robert Hazell argue that a similar procedure should be adopted at Westminster, where currently the Queen decides who should be Prime Minister before parliament meets. Robert Hazell explains why.

This week has seen the re-election of Nicola Sturgeon and Carwyn Jones as First Ministers in Scotland and in Wales, following the devolved elections on 5 May. Two weeks ago we witnessed the re-election of Enda Kenny as Taoiseach in Ireland, ten weeks after the Irish election on 26 February. What these three countries have in common is not just that the same leader has been re-elected, but that in their recent elections Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland all saw the return of a hung parliament in which no party gained an overall majority. In these circumstances it does not fall to the Queen to decide who shall be First Minister, or in Ireland to the President; under their constitutions it falls to the newly elected parliament, whose first business (after election of a presiding officer) is to elect the head of the new government.  That is what happened in Ireland on 6 May, in Scotland on 17 May and in Wales on 18 May.

In a report published this week, which I have written with Professor Petra Schleiter and Valerie Belu of Oxford University, we suggest that is what should also happen in future at Westminster. Instead of the Queen having to decide who should be Prime Minister before parliament meets, the first business of a newly elected House of Commons should be to select the Prime Minister, who would then be formally appointed by the Queen.

This may seem unnecessary after elections when a single party wins an overall majority, and it is obvious who is going to be Prime Minister: as happened in the UK in 2015. In those cases the election of the leader of the majority party to head the new government would be a formality.  The value of asking the House of Commons to choose the Prime Minister is when it is not obvious who can command confidence in the newly elected parliament. That is always going to be the case in a hung parliament, especially if it is closely hung. We risk forgetting how narrowly we escaped from having such a parliament after the 2015 general election. In the weeks before the election the polls suggested a very close result, with some forecasting a dead heat between the two major parties. Although the Cabinet Manual says it is for the political parties to work out who can command confidence in the new parliament, there is a risk of confusion and uncertainty if there is a standoff, with both main parties claiming to be able to form a government. The only reliable way to determine who can command confidence in such a situation is a nomination vote in the House of Commons. That would be a quicker and cleaner solution than the traditional vote on the Queen’s Speech as the first test of confidence in a new government.

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As Spain heads for a second election in six months, its parties have failed to correctly interpret the result of the first

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Spain will have a fresh general election on June 26 after government formation negotiations following December’s hung parliament failed. Alberto López-Basaguren discusses how things got to this stage, arguing that the parties have failed to correctly interpret the implications of the December result. The new election is not in their own or the public interest and the parties could, and should, have avoided it.

On May 3 King Felipe VI approved the dissolution of the Spanish parliament, calling a fresh election for June 26. In doing so he complied with Section 99(5) of the Constitution, given the inability of the Lower House to elect a Prime Minister within two months of the first investiture vote.

The election results of December 20 situated the political forces at the entrance to a maze into which, almost without exception, they have insisted on going further and further, so far indeed that they have been unable to find the exit. We have had months of uninterrupted electoral campaigning, as if for the parties there existed no other prospect than new elections.

Only the conservative Popular Party (PP), and the social democratic Socialist Party (PSOE), could form the backbone of a government majority. The strategy of both has basically been the same: the appointment of a PM being the objective, at any price, come what may afterwards, in the hope that the conditions making this possible would fall like ripe fruit. Although each of them had in mind a different fruit.

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