{"id":2189,"date":"2010-03-12T08:43:14","date_gmt":"2010-03-12T08:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.widmann.org.uk\/?p=2189"},"modified":"2010-03-12T08:43:14","modified_gmt":"2010-03-12T08:43:14","slug":"coalition-stability-and-the-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/coalition-stability-and-the-uk\/","title":{"rendered":"Coalition stability and the UK"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nCoalition Pro\/Con<\/a>
\nOriginally uploaded by Zi ?<\/a>
\n<\/span>\n<\/div>\n

More and more people are pointing out that coalitions can lead to stable and successful governments<\/a>, at least in continental Europe, the point being that one shouldn’t fear the so-called “hung parliament” that so many supporters of the two big parties dread.<\/p>\n

I agree, and I actually think that it would be much better for the UK instead of the adversarial two-party politics that Westminster is focused on.<\/p>\n

However, discussing coalitions, Fraser Nelson was worrying<\/a> that “if everyone thinks they’re one year away from a new election how popular are cuts going to be”.<\/p>\n

I think this is exactly why coalitions have worked badly in the UK in the past.<\/p>\n

In countries where coalitions are successful, it’s also the case that they have fixed-term parliaments and\/or an electoral system that means that there is no hope for any one party to get a majority.<\/p>\n

In other words, in many countries the parties know that they have to make coalition a success, because they have no alternative.<\/p>\n

Sadly, however, if no single party gets a majority after this year’s general election, it’s likely they’ll only treat coalition as a way to prepare for the following general election, which will happen as soon as the PM of the day thinks that he can get a majority by calling an election.<\/p>\n

The consequence of this is that the LibDems shouldn’t hope for four years of influence. At the most, they’ll be influential for a year, so they’ll have to make the most of it, especially by changing the electoral system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coalition Pro\/Con Originally uploaded by Zi ? More and more people are pointing out that coalitions can lead to stable and successful governments, at least in continental Europe, the point being that one shouldn’t fear the so-called “hung parliament” that so many supporters of the two big parties dread. I agree, and I actually think that it would be much better for the UK instead of the adversarial two-party politics that Westminster is focused on. However, discussing coalitions, Fraser Nelson was worrying that “if everyone thinks they’re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,159,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election","category-en","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}