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Coalition Government

My Lords, I broadly agree with everything that my noble friend has just said, but that is not surprising because he speaks with almost unique experience of both Houses of Parliament. I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean, on a very timely debate, because we are after all in a different situation so it is good that we take this time. However, I have to say to her that, when a Labour supporter quotes Mr Simon Heffer, I tend to discount some of the rest of the argument. Ever since the 1920s, when the Liberal Party descended into the doldrums, an almost total political duopoly has grown up in this country, at parliamentary level at least, between the Labour and Conservative parties. In 1951, we should recall, when Labour and the Conservatives won 96.7 per cent of the vote, the Liberals won only six seats. The electorate was largely settled in its political allegiance, often along social and economic, and even hereditary, lines. I recall in my first successful election in 1964—I was very, very young—banging on doors and often getting the response, ““Oh, my husband is a union member, so we are Labour””, or, ““We are in business, so we are Conservative””. Occasionally, people said, ““We have always been Methodists, so my family are Liberals””. Allegiance was automatic, but that is no longer the case. Dramatic changes have taken place over that period, but Britain nevertheless got used to a stable two-party pendulum. Up till 1979, the pendulum moved fairly regularly and fairly modestly; then came the minority Governments of Thatcher, Major and Blair. Curiously, as the pendulum swung less often—but often with more force—the mandate for Governments with large Commons majorities declined. Thatcher had a 43-seat majority in 1979 on only 43 per cent of the popular vote. She then got a majority of 144 seats on a lesser vote of 42.4 per cent in 1983 and a 102-seat majority on a very similar share in 1987. Then, in 1992, John Major won more votes than any Prime Minister before or since, yet he was returned with a smaller Commons majority of just 21. In 1997, Blair won only 43 per cent of the vote—far fewer votes than Major—but Labour won a majority of 179 seats. All these capricious, irrational results can be explained by the gradual pluralisation of political choice, constrained by an intrinsically binary political system. However, just as people had begun to demand more choices as consumers, so they wanted to exercise more choice in their politics. The situation that we now face—so well described earlier—is that the parties and Parliament are having to catch up with where the people have already led. By 2010, the total vote for Labour and Conservatives had declined to less than two thirds—fully one third went to parties other than the big two. So what does this mean? It means that, in the context of this debate, the public as a collective are quite clear that they want more than two answers to any given political question. Voters are no longer wrapped up in red cloth, blue cloth or even a golden sash. Party and class alignment are all but dead as voters float among the parties between elections and even during election campaigns—what psephologists refer to as ““churn””. The verdict of the most recent general election was clearly that no one had really won. In the most propitious circumstances, the Conservatives could not defeat Labour, and despite astonishing scaremongering in the media about the dire effects of a hung Parliament, more people voted for the Liberal Democrats—and indeed for other, smaller parties—than at any time since the party’s inception in 1989. It hardly betrays any secrets to say that the Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition was thought to be an impossible outcome. To their credit, however, the Conservatives were more prepared to embrace the facts of modern politics—that coalitions may be necessary to make government work—than were their Labour counterparts. The coalition was a popular change: 59 per cent supported the coalition after the election and many—contrary to the hopes and assumptions of noble Lords opposite—still do. People like the idea of politicians working together and putting aside the pantomime partisanship that they see so childishly displayed in Prime Minister’s Questions. Despite the popularity of the concept, of course, there has been disquiet about the consequences, to which the noble Lady has referred. The consequence is simply and inexorably compromise. Just as in every boardroom around the country, and in committees of all the organisations that we are all involved in, accommodations and common decisions are reached from different perspectives, so that now happens around the Cabinet table. Indeed, there is more open discussion of issues, as we understand it, than under the Blair and Brown regimes. Again, the public seem to be relatively relaxed about that. Only the media—the square mile of the Westminster village—hanker for times when things were simpler, when one party would win perhaps 35 per cent of the vote, gain a big majority of seats and do what it liked. That was all very straightforward, but it no longer works for the public. Manifesto commitments have been jettisoned in the past by majority Governments—for example, on electoral reform, tuition fees and privatisation proposals under the previous Government—whereas, with the coalition, the process is actually more transparent. The coalition agreement contains strands of policy that are clearly from one manifesto or the other. Indeed, those who were close to the negotiations—I was not there—can tell us that they usually chose the best policy of the two parties rather than attempt simply to water down either one or the other. Any dispassionate person can now look through that coalition agreement and see the Liberal Democrat parts, the Conservative parts and the parts that represent a blend. It has been argued, and it was hinted at earlier, that a coalition Government is one that nobody has voted for. Technically, I suppose that that is true. However, what is also true is that the electorate has a much more likely prospect of seeing a broad preference than a wholesale endorsement of any one party’s manifesto. Indeed, one thing that deters people from joining parties is that they think that all party members must share the same detailed commitments. That is obviously not true, but it puts people off. Sensible people think it weird, frankly, that anyone should say that they must wholeheartedly sign up to the policy platform of one party without a scintilla of qualification. With coalitions, there is a natural tendency to get what people want. That certainly happened to a very large extent to the voters of 2010. We all face a difficulty in adjusting to this situation, but I think that the public have adjusted better than either the media or many in politics. Sensible people respond well to this spirit of compromise and to the sense that, where there is no winner, no one should take all. We had better get used to it. As Professor John Curtice has pointed out—I have not the time to go through all his reasons—the hung Parliament that occurred after 6 May was no one-off aberration. He has outlined three specific reasons why—even under first past the post, if that continues—we will have more hung Parliaments, so it is important that we in politics should adjust to that and respond to what the public clearly wish to achieve. It is extremely important that the factors to which Professor Curtice refers, which make hung Parliaments a regular reality, impose some new disciplines on all of us involved in Parliament and in politics. Frankly, it is a good thing that we move towards where the public have already led. I do not accept that negotiation and agreement between adults should be painted as somehow grubby or as horse trading. At least the negotiation is a great deal more open than what happened in the elective dictatorship of recent so-called majority Governments. All of us who are involved in the profession of politics—it is a profession—have a very important opportunity to respond to what the public are asking us to do. The Westminster establishment may not be used to these questions or such realities, but to my mind they now broadly reflect the enlightened view of the British public. Politicians should talk to each other more often. There should be no one monopoly on rectitude. It is one of the great features of this House that we never assume that we are the only ones in the right and that all those over there are inevitably wrong, which tends to happen at the other end of the building. That is the best hope for good government. The best hope is plural government, and that may often mean coalition government.