Shanthi Rajagopal

The Labour Party won the 2005 UK general election with 35.3% of the popular British vote. The Conservative Party was just a few points behind with 32.3% of the votes, but because of the first past the post voting system, the Labour Party had a significant majority with 356 parliamentary seats (MPs) compared to 198 seats for The Conservative Party.

2010 Elections

The United Kingdom general election, 2010 was held on Thursday 6 May 2010 to elect members to the House of Commons. The election took place in 649 constituencies across the United Kingdom under the first-past-the-post system.

None of the parties achieved the 326 seats needed for an overall majority. The Conservative Party led by David Cameron won the largest number of votes and seats, with the biggest swing since 1931. This resulted in a hung parliament where no party would be able to command a majority in the House of Commons. The last time this occurred was in the February 1974 election, and only twice since the Second World War.

On May 6, 2010, British voters delivered to the House of Commons a hung Parliament—the first time a single party had not achieved a majority since the February 1974 election. At 65 percent, turnout was up 4 percent over 2005, when Tony Blair had led his Labour Party to its third successive majority. In 2010, however, Blair was not a candidate, having turned over the reins of government to Gordon Brown, his longtime chancellor of the Exchequer. Sagging poll numbers for Labour and a resurgent Conservative Party under the youthful David Cameron brought the assumption that the Conservatives would cruise to a parliamentary majority for the first time since 1997.

The election also brought some other surprises. The Alliance Party of Northern Ireland won its first seat ever in the House of Commons, ousting Democratic Unionist Party leader Peter Robinson. The Green Party also won its first seat, capturing the seat of Brighton Pavilion along the southern coast. And, surprisingly, though there was a strong swing away from Labour in much of the country, the Labour share of the vote held up rather well in Scotland and Wales.

Clegg indicated that the Conservatives, as the largest party, should have the right to attempt to form a government, but, with no party securing a majority and with most parties unlikely coalition partners for the Conservatives, it remained unclear who would become prime minister. Negotiations between Cameron and Clegg began in earnest on May 7, and on May 10 Brown announced his intention to resign as leader of the Labour Party. The following day Brown announced his resignation as prime minister and as leader of the Labour Party, and Cameron subsequently became prime minister.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats formed a coalition government—Britain’s first since World War II—with Clegg taking the post of deputy prime minister. Conservatives William Hague (foreign secretary) and George Osborne (chancellor of the Exchequer) were among the leading cabinet appointments. Several Liberal Democrats, including Chris Huhne (secretary of state for energy and climate change), also took cabinet posts. As part of the power-sharing agreement, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems agreed to set out a plan for deficit reduction in an emergency budget to be presented within 50 days of taking office. They also agreed to a fixed five-year Parliament that called for the next election to be held on the first Thursday in May in 2015, though dissolution of Parliament and a subsequent election could come earlier through the vote of 55 percent or more of the House of Commons. The coalition partnership called for a referendum on alternative vote, whereby voters indicate a first and second preference, with the second preference being counted only if no candidate receives a majority—which fell short of the Lib Dems’ goal of full proportional representation.

Coalition talks began immediately between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats and lasted for five days, although there was a brief attempt to put together a Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition in the middle. On 11 May 2010 Gordon Brown announced his resignation as Prime Minister, marking the end of 13 years of Labour government. This was accepted by Queen Elizabeth II, who then invited David Cameron to form a government and become Prime Minister. Just after midnight on 12 May, the Liberal Democrats emerged from a meeting of their Parliamentary party and Federal Executive to announce that the coalition deal had been “approved overwhelmingly”, sealing a stable coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

There were quite a few ‘first-time incidents’ during this election. None of the three main party leaders had previously led a general election campaign, which hadn’t happened since the 1979 election. During the campaign, the three main party leaders engaged in a series of televised debates, the first time ever in a British election. The Liberal Democrats, achieved a breakthrough in opinion polls after the first debate in which their leader Nick Clegg was widely seen as the strongest performer. However, on polling day their share of the vote increased by only 1%, and they suffered a net loss of five seats. However, this was the Liberal Democrats’ largest popular vote since the party’s creation, and they found themselves in a pivotal role in the formation of the new government.

The share of votes for a party other than Labour or the Conservatives was 35% and was the largest since the 1918 general election. The Green Party of England and Wales won its first ever seat in the Commons, and the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland gained its first representation since 1974.

Talking about the next elections, Kenneth Clarke, the shadow business secretary and former Chancellor, speaking at a Westminster lunch after the elections, said he would rather the Labour Party won the next general election than it result in a hung parliament, with all the uncertainty and chaos that would mean. He believes that, in the middle of an acute national crisis, a hung parliament would be one of the biggest disasters England could suffer. According to him, that would be a bigger danger than a Labour victory.

The British electorate has had a knack over the decades of delivering just that; but a weekend opinion poll putting the Tories only seven points ahead of Labour is the latest indication that the country may be heading for the first election in a generation to deliver neither of the two main parties an overall parliamentary majority.

There have been false alarms before. In 1992, it was widely assumed there would be a hung parliament but the Tories under John Major won a majority of 21 and the largest popular vote in history.

In February 1974, Edward Heath went to the country in a “who governs” election after a battle with the miners, and lost. The Tories had 297 seats and Labour 301. However, the Conservatives had a majority, so Heath tried to soldier on by doing a deal with the Liberals, who had 14 seats. Even that would not have been enough for a majority but the Tories could have stayed in office with the votes of the Ulster Unionists.

The negotiations foundered, Heath resigned and Harold Wilson decided to govern without a majority for six months before calling another election, which Labour won outright but only just. By 1977, Labour’s slender majority had gone, so James Callaghan, by then prime minister, entered a pact with the Liberals to keep the government going without a formal coalition.

In other words, the system muddled through.  Labour remained in office for almost the duration of its five-year term before being defeated in a vote of confidence in 1979. A party without a majority, according to some, is not necessarily the disaster that Clarke fears. Indeed, far from being something the country could well do without in times of crisis, coalition government is precisely the option that has historically been chosen to see the country through – as in two world wars and the Depression of the 1930s.

But things might be different this time.

First of all, comes the issue of the size of the electoral mountain that the Tories must scale to secure a parliamentary majority. They need to win an extra 117 seats and require a swing in their favour greater than Thatcher achieved in 1979 to do so. And that is to get a majority of a single seat. Were the outcome of the election to be anything like the figures in the weekend Ipsos-Mori poll, the Tories would be well short of the 326 seats they need (currently they have 193).

This, then, is the nightmare scenario; and it is intensified by the greater diversity of British politics compared with 1974. Then, there were only 37 MPs from other parties apart from the big two. At the last election, there were 92. Anthony King, professor of government at Essex University, says that U.K will be in untrodden territory because they have multi-party Westminster politics in a way they had never had before. The sheer arithmetical probability of a stalemate is greater than at any time in the last 100 years.

Because large parts of the country are no longer winnable for the Tories, including Scotland and much of Wales, it is perfectly possible that the Conservatives could end up as the largest party in a hung parliament but be well short of a majority.

Under the UK constitution, the party able to command the confidence of Parliament is invited to form the government. That does not necessarily mean the party with the most seats or votes. Even if he lost power, Gordon Brown would remain Prime Minister until he resigned. He might try to form a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats by offering their leaders key Cabinet positions in exchange for support to get his legislation through. This would be massively unpopular in the country and could well split the Lib Dems. At the weekend, Nick Clegg gave a clear indication that he would not be interested in propping up a Labour government that had fewer seats in parliament than the Tories.

Clegg believes that the party which has the strongest mandate from the British people will have the first right to seek to govern,

But a deal with the Conservatives could also split the Liberals, as happened in the early 1920s and 1931. And it might not be as simple as that, anyway. If David Cameron is so short of a majority that it is not feasible to continue as a minority administration, hoping to wade through to another general election that the Tories could win, if he to try to forge a coalition, he would be asked to pass a Bill to introduce proportional representation, a long-standing Lib Dem demand. The price would be far too high, since it would mean there would never be a majority Tory government again.

This is where the Queen is drawn into what could become a constitutional quagmire. There is no need for a hung parliament to become a crisis – provided the politicians can reach some sort of agreement among themselves. Prof King, the author of a new book on the British constitution, says that the Queen must ardently hope that such a situation does not arise. She and her advisers would be prudent to work out what to do well in advance and how to keep well out of it.

The British constitution is a collection of conventions and precedents, some of which are written down and some of which are not. There is a Whitehall “Precedents Book” that would be consulted by senior mandarins; but the problem is that there are no precedents, or certainly none in modern times.

As well as relying upon the advice of her private secretary, the Queen would also take private soundings among constitutional experts. In the 1970s, Robert Blake, the historian, was said to be the favoured counsellor; today, it is likely to be Vernon Bogdanor, professor of government at Oxford University. Whoever it is would have to pick their way very carefully through a political minefield, trying to keep the Monarch out of making any decision that could be seen as parti pris in any way.

The Queen has a number of advantages here: principally, the experience and integrity that would enable her to deal with such circumstances without damaging the monarchy. However, the rule of thumb would be to keep her well out of it and hope the politicians could sort out a deal. If they did not, there would have to be another election – and the party that forced it would likely be punished at the polls.

None of this need happen. Even if there were a hung parliament, the Tories as the largest party would almost certainly try to carry on as a minority government (as the SNP has done in Scotland) until such time that they lost a key vote and David Cameron asked for another election, which the Queen would grant.

In order to stay in office, such a government would probably do very little to frighten the horses. There might even be a period of less government and better administration, which would benefit, rather than harm, the country. It might even do something to restore the primacy of parliament in our national life, since the executive would no longer be able to govern without winning the argument.

Much would depend on what the outside world made of the failure of the British to maintain something they have almost always managed to achieve: strong government. If there were a run on the pound and a collapse of international confidence in the British economy, then a crisis could occur.

Just the sort of crisis, indeed, that in the past warranted the formation of governments of national unity.

The results of the 2010 election results are provided in the table.

May 11, 2010

Gordon Brown announces that he will tender his resignation as prime minister to Queen Elizabeth II and will ask her to invite David Cameron to form a government. Cameron subsequently becomes prime minister of the United Kingdom—the youngest leader of the country since 1812. Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats becomes deputy prime minister.

The political party and term of office of each British prime minister are provided in the table.

Prime ministers of Great Britain and the United Kingdom

The origin of the term prime minister and the question to whom it should originally be applied have long been issues of scholarly and political debate. Although the term was used as early as the reign of Queen Anne (1702–14), it acquired wider currency during the reign of George II (1727–60), when it began to be used as a term of reproach toward Sir Robert Walpole. The title of prime minister did not become official until 1905, to refer to the leader of a government.

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