Governing without a majority: Dilemmas for hung parliaments in Britain

by David Edgeworth Butler

good copy

156 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1983

About the author

Sir David Edgeworth Butler, CBE, FBA was an English political scientist who made a major contribution to the study of UK elections, particularly through the series of Nuffield Election Studies which has covered every UK general election since 1945. Butler was a commentator on the BBC's election night coverage from 1950 to 1979 and was a co-inventor of the swingometer. He later appeared as an electoral analyst on various television and radio programmes, including for ITV on the night of the 1997 general election, and Sky News election night coverage in 2001. He also appeared as a guest on the BBC's coverage of both the 2010 and 2015 general elections.

[with thanks to Wikipedia]

Reviews

[mk.miles_ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fitting read for unstable times.

Written in 1982, just at the beginning of the Thatcherite era - but also during the rollercoaster heights of the Liberal-SDP Alliance - David Butler's book remains surprisingly relevant to our age, even though we now face a far more chaotic party landscape. His focus on the law (an unwritten constitution, legal conventions, prescedent) is part of what makes this book continually timely, which is perhaps more a testament to the nature of Britain's parliamentary democracy than to Butler himself.

The highlight of this book was the chapter on comparative politics, 'Experiences Abroad'. It is from here two interesting points are made; the former a prospective prescription for British democracy, the latter a keen observation of the nature of multi-party coalitions.

Butler notes that the German chancellor "can only be ousted by a 'constructive vote of no confidence'", where a successive premier is lined up before the incumbent is removed from office. This is a feature Britian might (quite desperately) need to borrow with Reform at the helm, whose systems of internal democracy are untested and, arguably, non-existent. Recent events have even shown this would be useful for organised Labour backbenchers, creating a means of by-passing the internal party structure which would otherwise require party members to organise their affiliations far more publically. Whatever happens, this would give confidence votes a more imminent prescedent in a nation where said prescedent is already being flouted (e.g. Gething's messy overstay as FM).

Butler also points out that coalitions generally seek to dominate certain ministerial portfolios, particularly when they are repeatedly elected to office, again bringing up the German example. Even if FPTP is maintained in the UK throughout the remainder of the century (this seems unlikely), it appears that the only way the left will govern the nation is through coalition government, and as such the question soon arises as to who takes what portfolio. From this, the character of each party could evolve quite seriously. But more seriously, the intense debates over who would lead the treasury in this situation could be irreconcilable, especially if they each continue to share around 15-20% of the vote.

So, without even realising, Butler provides some stark warnings for today's politics, over 40 years on. Unfortunately he loses some points for largely neglecting potential impacts of regional parties in Wales, Scotland, and particularly Northern Ireland. The influence of the latter might be near impossible to predict, but it is still worth exploring; even now, the odd yet recurrent trope of forgetting that Ireland exists seems to continually beleaguere political scientists.