This was the topic of our lunch time discussion yesterday at the “Juan March Foundation”:http://www.march.es/ceacs/ingles/ceacs.asp, as I’m assuming it has been for many of you recently 🙂 My primary question was if Labour and the Lib Dems combined to hold a majority in the parliament but the Conservatives had won the largest number of seats in the election, was there any way that the Conservatives could block Labour and the Lib Dems from forming a coalition government (if they wanted to) and instead rule as a minority government? We were able to come up with a hypothetical set of institutions that might make this possible, but as it turned out, nobody actually knew what the rules were in the UK.
So I emailed my NYU colleague “Mik Laver”:http://as.nyu.edu/object/MichaelLaver.html, an expert on government formation in parliamentary systems. Mik helpfully alerted me to this draft cabinet procedures manual from the British Cabinet Office, and then further clarified:
bq. You will see (sections 16 and 17) that there will in effect be a Dutch-style informateur system with the Secretary to the Cabinet (ie head of the civil service, Sir Gus O’Donnell – a smart cookie) in the role of informateur.
bq. Crudely, the incumbent PM is first formateur (Section 16). If this loses or would lose a vote of confidence there is freestyle negotiation between party leaders (Section 17):
bq. “Where a range of different administrations could potentially be formed, the expectation is that discussions will take place between political parties on who should form the next Government. The Monarch would not expect to become involved in such discussions, although the political parties and the Cabinet Secretary would have a role in ensuring that the Palace is informed of progress.”
So the answer to my question is apparently no: if Labour and the Lib Dems had a combined majority and wanted to form a coalition government, the Conservatives could not block them from doing so, even if they (the Conservatives) had “won” the election by receiving the largest number of seats in the parliament. Interestingly, doing so would be even easier than any of us thought in this scenario, because as the incumbent party, Labour, would get the first invitation to form a new government, and could simply implement a coalition with the Lib Dems.
Mik also alerted me to the “LSE’s Election Blog”:http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/election/, which has much, much more expert commentary on the UK election, including a set of posts on the possibilities for a “hung parliament”:http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/election/?p=1404. I also like their countdown clock, detailing exactly when the election begins to the day, hour, and minute.