BEING HUNG AIN'T ALL BAD

# Akash Paun, senior researcher at the Institute for Government, says a hung parliament could act as a welcome corrective to the tendency to force bills and budgets through without adequate scrutiny. This article first appeared in TotalPolitics magazine.

Imagine this: it is the morning after the night before. The returning officers have retired, exhausted, to bed. The BBC's swingometer has swung its last. And the media are licking their lips in anticipation. For the first time in 36 years, a UK general election has returned a hung parliament.

For many politicians and commentators, that is the nightmare scenario. Conservative frontbencher Ken Clarke recently claimed it would be the worst possible outcome for the country and that even a Labour victory would be preferable. Former deputy Labour leader Roy Hattersley was similarly disdainful, speaking of the "squalid horse-trading" that would follow. Fear of political instability has also already been cited as the cause of a drop in the value of sterling.

The first question is who will lead the new government. After most general elections there is no doubt. The leader of the party with a majority of seats is called to Buckingham Palace and invited to form an administration. If it is the former opposition that has won, then this is preceded by the outgoing prime minister making a final visit to the Queen as PM in order to tender his resignation.

In a hung parliament, things are less clear-cut. It is easy to forget, when casting our votes - even in Cameron's Witney or Brown's Kirkcaldy constituencies - that we are not voting for a prime minister. Rather, we are in effect electing the members of an electoral college who will determine what type of government is formed.

Key test

The key test for an aspiring PM is whether he or she is able to secure the confidence of Parliament: the support, or at least acquiescence, of a majority of MPs. What this means is that it is not a constitutional requirement that the leader of the largest party will enter Downing Street, although political considerations generally make it the most likely outcome.

Neither is it an unbroken historical precedent. In 1924, for instance, Ramsay MacDonald formed Britain's first Labour government despite his party holding 67 fewer seats than the incumbent Conservatives. The decisive factor then was the decision of the third-placed Liberals to back Labour. In February 1974, the Liberals again opted to unseat the ruling Conservatives to allow a Labour minority government to be formed. That time, however, Labour was (narrowly) the largest party.

Our party system has changed little in the intervening decades. The heirs of Lloyd George will almost certainly again hold the balance of power in any hung parliament. Nick Clegg's stated position is that the paty with "the strongest mandate from the British people" would have the right to form the government. This suggests that he would allow the largest party in the Commons to take office.

However, Clegg's formulation is studiously ambivalent on whether the strength of the mandate derives from the number of seats, or votes won. The scenario to watch is if Labour gains more seats but fewer votes than the Conservatives - a real possibility, given the bias in the electoral system. As long-time campaigners for a proportional allocation of seats, the Liberal Democrats could in this context conceivably make a case for backing the Tories over Labour.

Symbolic

Technically, it may be the Queen who invites one or other of the party leaders to form a new government. But, by strict convention, the monarch carries out her symbolic function as head of state only after the politicians have established who is best placed to command the confidence of Parliament.

This is likely to be done quite swiftly, despite fears to the contrary. A few phone calls between senior party figures may be enough, as was the case in Scotland in 2007. The parties holding the balance of power may decide simply to abstain in the vote on the Queen's Speech, the first test of a government's political viability, in which case a minority government will be formed by the largest party in the House.

Even a formal coalition agreement or (more likely) a looser "confidence and supply agreement" could be drawn up within a couple of weeks if there is sufficient political will. The latter, following the New Zealand model, could see smaller parties winning policy concessions and consultation rights if they commit to backing the government on crucial votes, including on the Budget. The Liberal Democrats may be positioning themselves for such a deal.

Nick Clegg has promised that "no risks will be taken with Britain's financial position" if he is in a position to make or break the government, while setting out four broad demands that would be made as a condition of support - including reform of Westminster and the tax system.

Independent

When a legislature is under no overall control, all this means is that no single party can get its way on all policy and legislative decisions without having to compromise, to negotiate or to persuade others of the merits of its point of view. In most of the democratic world this is perfectly normal behaviour. As a result, a parliament without a single-party majority is in most countries not a hung parliament at all, but simply a parliament. Across the EU, for instance, only three other countries currently have single-party majorities in their legislature: France, Malta and Greece.

A government also enjoys a wide range of levers and resources to achieve its objectives that are independent of strength in the House of Commons. For instance, legislation is not needed to reorganise the performance management of hospitals, schools and police forces. As in Scotland in 2007, a minority administration could choose to reorganise the work of government around a clear set of strategic objectives and align budgets accordingly.

Wider international experience also underlines that sensible minority governments can build coalitions across party lines to tackle tough issues. It was a minority government in Sweden that tackled the country's ballooning fiscal deficit in the 1990s, and a minority government in Canada that introduced universal healthcare in the 1960s.

In this light, the widespread belief in this country that a hung parliament and effective government are incompatible appears highly questionable. Indeed, as Making Minority Government Work: Hung Parliaments and the Challenges for Westminster and Whitehall by the Institute for Government and the Constitution Unit argues, a House of Commons without a single-party majority could act as a welcome corrective to the tendency of governments to overlegislate and to force bills and budgets through Parliament without adequate scrutiny. The need to seek cross-party agreement could even provide a basis for durable solutions to long-term problems relating to the country's structural deficit, its ageing population or the challenge of climate change.

Resented

Cynics will argue that a minority government of any colour will have less ambitious objectives: to pass a budget, to publish a spending review, to demonstrate the capacity to govern reasonably effectively and to call another election within a year in search of a working majority.

The cynics may well be right. However, the disruption of another election campaign may be resented by voters. Elections are also expensive, for political parties and the taxpayer alike. And in any case, a second election might simply return a second hung parliament. For these reasons a longer period of minority government should not be ruled out.

One final intriguing scenario has a minority government, led by either major party, confronted by a freshly-minted opposition alliance some months down the line. In this context, a minority PM could be unseated and replaced by a new coalition government without the need for a second election.

A hung parliament on 7 May would undoubtedly shake up the political game. In the short term, there may be confusion about the precise rules in operation, and the various players may be uncertain about their new roles. But none of the challenges likely to emerge is insurmountable. And who knows? By May 2015, the new "nightmare" scenario spooking the markets could even be the re-emergence of bad old one-party majority rule.

What is certain is that a hung parliament would present a challenge to the nation's politicians. Time will tell whether they are able to rise to it.