A quick explanation of Parliamentary government

Following on from Heidemarie's comment on my last post, my answer started getting too long for a comment. Hence this post.

Heidemarie – (8 May 2010 23:40)
No matter how many times Parliamentary government is explained to me, I just don't get it.

To be fair, this is hardly normal Parliamentary government. Normal Parliamentary government is really simple. To wit:

The Prime Minister, as part of the vestiges of the Royal Prerogative, decides when to call a General Election. This must be within 5 years of the last one, though there is no formal minimum time. In practice, if a Prime Minister wants to call an election every 6 months, permission will likely be refused. It costs a lot to run an election, anyway, so no political party would be very happy with overly frequent elections. The Prime Minister must give at least 17 working days notice of the election date, to allow the other parties time to campaign.

The country (including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) is divided into constituencies, with roughly equal populations (more or less). This time there are 650 of them. (The number varies slightly, as they adjust boundaries to take into account changes in population based on the last census.) These are separate from the constituencies - and elections - held for the various national assemblies and governments that exist in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Each constituency elects a Member of Parliament (MP). Each of the main 3 parties (the Conservatives, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats) and a number of smaller parties (the British National Party, the Green, independant candidates, usually standing on local issues like hospital closures) put up a candidate and The People vote, between 7 in the morning and 10 at night on the day selected by the Prime Minister as polling day.

Once The People have voted, the votes are counted, usually overnight that night. There's a bit of a race to be the first constituency to declare, and it's usually Sunderland. The winner of each constituency is the person who got the most votes, and they become the MP. Each MP gets one seat in the House of Commons.

Usually what happens next is that the leader of the party with the most MPs becomes Prime Minister, and there's a whole rigamarole around the outgoing Prime Minister going to see the Queen and resigning, and the incoming person going to see the Queen to be appointed. (Unless the incumbent wins, of course - but then the PM still goes to see the Queen, I think, to be formally invited to stay PM.) This has almost always been the leader of one of the two main parties (the Conservatives and the Labour Party, since the inter-war period.) Different rules applied during the Second World War, I think, though I'm not sure quite what they were...

This time, no one political party has won an overall majority of seats in the House of Commons, which is rare, to say the least. Coalition government is not common in the UK Parliament, which is why there's a fuss about it. The two parties that got the bigger share of the seats in the House were the Labour Party and the Conservative Party (though Labour didn't actually get that many more votes than the Lib Dems, but that's one of the quirkes of our First Past the Post election system...) - they are now each trying to persuade the Liberal Democrats to support them, which would give the Tories (the Conservatives) an easy majority in the House, and would give the Labour party much more support - they'd still have to get some support from other minor parties, though, since the Lib Dems alone wouldn't give them a majority.

This reason it's a problem that no party has a majority is because of the way Bills are passed in the UK. If a political party has a majority of seats - if they can out-vote all the other parties joined together - they can pass the legislation they set out in their manifesto (these are known as "Manifesto Commitments" oddly enough), because - assuming their own MPs remain loyal to the party, and there's a whole system designed to ensure this - all the other MPs can't stop legislation passing by out-voting it, no matter how much they disagree with it.

If a party has a very small majority, they can have trouble passing Bills, particularly if the leader of the party is unpopular with his MPs. (John Major in the first half of the 1990s, for instance.) Even if the other parties put together can't out-vote all the Government MPs, not all Government MPs will necessarily vote the Government line. There are varying amounts of pressure and carrots dangled to ensure compliance, but on some issues, there are rebellions of MPs, where they vote against the Government, even if it's their own party. If there's a very small Government majority in the House of Commons, these rebels can tip the balance the other way and defeat Government legislation. Big rebellions can defeat even healthy majorities, though it doesn't tend to happen nearly as much.

I'm going to stop rambling for a bit. If you have any questions about any of the above, or anything I've missed out - or if I've got anything wrong - do give me a shout in the comments...

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Elections continued

Well, waking up this morning, there still aren't any real results. The Lib Dems didn't manage their shiny brilliance - people lie to pundits, what a shocker. Disappointing for them though - and a particular shame that Dr Evan Harris didn't get back in. He was one of the few MPs to actually understand the Internet and why it matters.

Good news is that Dr Caroline Lucas *did* get elected. She was my MEP when I lived back in the UK, and it's great news that she's now an MP! No real surprise that it was Brighton that elected her, though!

ETA: Other good news: Nick Griffin was slammed in the constituency he was standing in, and the BNP did crap tonight. Also Philippa Stroud didn't win, although it was a very close vote looking at the results. Clearly the people in her constituency are deeply depraved. (Hi Jon!)


Those people whingeing about not being allowed to vote after 10pm, I have very little sympathy. They should have started queuing earlier - you can't claim to be massively dedicated to voting, generally speaking, if you don't turn up until just before the cut-off point. Polls opened at 7am, after all.

It looks to me like all the people talking on the telly about this have sort of missed the point - they think it's difficult to tell what people want; I think people have been really clear - they hate all the main parties. They don't want the kind of polarised politics that we've had for the last many years, they want people to have to actually negotiate and work things out, rather than push through rushed legislation on a 3-line whip. And I think that's an excellent idea - wonder if any of the parties will take the hint.

I suspect, though, we're going to end up with David Cameron as PM with a very small majority, and politics will go on the same as ever. Shame, really - this election had so much promise.

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Elections

I'm quite sad that I'm not in the UK to vote today - I didn't register for a postal vote in time, and even if I had, it probably wouldn't have got there in time, given that the ballots are only posted out 11 days before the election, and need to be back by 10pm on polling day. French post just isn't that good - nor are many other countries, in which British expats are effectively disenfranchised, even if they are still entitled to the vote, which expires for us unlike citizens of other countries.

However, that means I'm looking at today purely as an observer - and from an outside point of view, it's brilliant. The Sun particularly excels itself today, with this front cover:

(Image via http://www.politicshome.com/ Any butchering of the resizing is mine, with apologies...)

And Page 3 girls are clearly a lot more intelligent than I ever expected. In this fabulous story (naked breasts galore, best not to click on it at work, unless you have a very open minded IT policy...) we find that:

Poppy said: "The basis of Lockean thought is his theory of the Contract of Government, under which all political power is a trust for the benefit of the people.

"His thinking underpins our ideas of national identity and society. Please don't let those who seek to ban our beauty win. Vote to save Page 3!"

Who knew Page 3 girls were all about Lockean thought and Contract of Government?

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