Cry me a river (Cam)

[dolorosa_12]

I mentioned in my last post about local politics that our council elections ended with 'no overall control' of the county council. (What this means is that no single political party received enough votes to have a majority of councillors.) Our council previously had a Conservative majority. They are still the party with the largest number of seats on the council, but none of the other parties will work with them.

After a week of negotiations, we've ended up with a rainbow coalition, with the council now being run by the Lib Dems, Labour, and an allied group of independents.

The Conservatives are having an extended whinge about this and claiming there was an electoral pact. (Labour didn't stand candidates in several wards which the Lib Dems then won, and the Lib Dems didn't stand candidates in wards that the independents won.)

From my perspective, I couldn't care less if there was a formal pact or not. If the Conservatives — who, as the party with the largest number of seats in the council would have had first dibs on trying to form a coalition — couldn't get anyone else to work with them, that's their problem. My general attitude these days is more electoral pacts, electoral pacts everywhere! I have my preferred party, but these days that party is 'whoever isn't the Conservative Party candidate'. We are getting to the point where the only way to get them out of power is through electoral pacts and coalitions.

Also, I may be in the minority here, but I think that coalition governments are inherently a good thing, as long as the country considers it beyond the pale to form a coalition with the far right. Obviously I prefer centre-left coalitions, but if the end result of an election is a centre-right coalition, that is an acceptable price to pay for a system where coalition government is the norm, rather than treated like some undemocratic, repulsive abherration.

I'm in an even smaller minority in that I think the Lib Dems did nothing wrong in agreeing to form a coalition with the Tories in 2010. I think things that that government did while in office were awful, they were certainly not my preferred choice of government at the time, and I think that coalition in some ways sowed the seeds of the current debased state of affairs in the UK over the past decade, but it was not an immoral, anti-democratic choice, in and of itself, to go into coalition. And the sooner people on the left make their peace with that, the better.

As to the Conservatives who've gone crying to the local paper about a supposed electoral pact: in an unjust system (namely, first past the post), any attempt to fight back against those it benefits (namely, right-wing parties) is always perceived as outrageous and devious. And I, for one, am here for more outrageous deviance.

Comments

[lirazel]

Coalition governments are so far from my experience that I'm always fascinated by how people in countries who have them react to them. They seem like a good thing to me but I think you're right in that a lot of people who live under them seem to be infuriated by their existence.

[bruttimabuoni]

I, uh, like coalitions. I didn't much like ours in 2010, but that's because it was extremely Tory weighted. But I feel like having to balance multiple interests in government is healthier than having a massive majority off a minority vote and using it to cement your power by a series of illiberal new laws.

Cough.

This is not the British way, apparently. It's probably a sign I'm a metropolitan elitist europhile. But coalitions seem pretty healthy to me. Good work on yours.

[trepkos]

Absolutely!

[lokifan]

If the Conservatives — who, as the party with the largest number of seats in the council would have had first dibs on trying to form a coalition — couldn't get anyone else to work with them, that's their problem

Agreed.

And also agreed re: the Lib Dems. I mean, I think the tuition fees debacle was one they brought on themselves after making it a major, defining feature of their campaign - but they were the junior partner in a coalition, that requires negotiation and limits their power, and I defended them at the time on that basis. Much as the coalition government did various awful things (getting rid of the payment to poor sixth-formers to help them stay in school is a big one) that doesn't make coalitions inherently bad - the Tory weighting was the problem, not coalition in itself. I think coalitions can be really healthy reflections of multiple viewpoints - as long as the far-right's beyond the pale, as you saw.