There has been a lot of talk over the last few weeks over the prospect of a hung parliament and what this would mean for Britain, and with many polls suggesting this to be the likely outcome it is of much practical importance. The debate is somewhat clouded by introvert party interests, both the Labour party and the Conservative party of course would prefer each of themselves to have a majority, and the Liberals would prefer a hung parliament as that is the only likely scenario where they would have a say and of concequence we have to take some of what is said with a pinch of salt, that is not to say it should be ignored, but that we should not take ever arguement as genuinely made.

My personal view of the matter is that a hung parliament is never a good situation, but that now the need for a strong government has been more apparent that it has for at least 3 decades. It hardly needs pointing out that the next full budget to be made in spring 2011 will be a damned hard one, there will be precious little positives and many negatives. In short its nothing to look forward to. At the end of the day bad things are going to have to happen, and when everyone knows something bad is going to happen, they tend to try and make it happen less to themselves and more than everyone else. What is going to be required is for someone to dole out the pain with all considerations.  Moreover it is essential from Great Britian PLC that the action that needs to be taking is taken soon. The money to keep the government liquid has to be borrowed from somewhere, and the people who decide where to lend their money aren’t offering a free unlimited source up for grabs. Those investors, before exposing themselves further want the government to demonstrate that it is committed to a credible and serious plan to reduce its financial reliance on debt, without this it will not be made clear whether the UK can afford even the interest repayments and it will be difficult to find the money to keep the ball turning. Although at the moment the debt seems to be this invisible mountain Britian in the 70′s and Greece at the moment has shown that it can some become a paralysis on the whole economy.

Coalition does not lead itself to urgent action, and the negotiations to be had on a budget like this would be harsher than most. The effect of this could be to either delay or water down an essential part of the economic recovery. I cannot be the only one to worry that a Liberal party having been out of power for many years would prematurely start trying to throw its weight about as soon as it got its foot in the door. Even if they do not demand concessions on the economy immediately the likely areas in particular are electoral reform and law & order, both of which can be highly contentious subjects. Even if negotiations were to take place immediately on the voting system that would be unlikely to be concluded, or at least concluded sensibly in time for the budget. Moreover if the larger party simply had to give in in order to get the budget passed it would mean a party which came third place would be dictating policy in a greater way than the two which voters had placed higher.

If this were not to be the case and the budget were to be passed without significant negotiation then surely this would be akin to have a majourity party in any case.

Many have quoted examples of the Scottish and Welsh parliament as succesful coalitions, and indeed to some extent they have been. This however has largely because the decisions taken their are not tremendously contreversial on particularly difficult. Probably the most contreversial chance the scottish assembly could make would be to alter a tax rate, which they have limited powers to do but as of yet have not been exercised. The funding settlements to the devolved regions is particularly generous when compared with the UK meaning hard decisions on spending do not generally have to be made. Even in devolved areas the extend to which reform can be radical is limited, things likely to create disagreement have tended to be the Trident nuclear system, ID cards, Immigration policy, anti-terror legislation, pensions etc. .  and although the devolved bodies may be able to alter things slightly on these issues the fundamentals are decided in westminister. I think therefore that when placed with the much harder challenges presented by national government coalition would not be nearly as comfortable.

Thirdly, and lastly I am not so sure the Liberal Democrats actually know what they really want.  Having not come first in an election since 1911 and having spend the majourity of the last 100 years way behind in the polls any feeling that policy presented at national conference would become national policy must have been ingenuine. Its seems most likely that the coalition leader would take most decisions on the economy, but what on other areas? On Britains nuclear deterant, they don’t want trident but they appear not to want to disarm, but yet plan to use the savings by not going ahead with trident on other things.  They say they want passengers to pay less for rail, but since central government doesn’t have much money at the moment does that mean they want only the more profitable rail services to continue? At the moment Clegg is saying he wants a regional element to immigration, but this would be vastly difficult to administer and it seems unlikely that when push came to shove it would be workable. Clegg has told us for the past 10 years joining the euro was something Britian needed to do, and now admits it would have been a mistake if we had done. In my (admitadly partial) view the liberal democrats policies are designed to increase their vote share rather than to be implemented. I think that now there is a prospect they might have an influence they really should reconsider many of the things they want to do.

Overall the case for a decisive and fast acting government is strong. The most likely result if this election does not lead to a majourity government is that we have another election in 6 months, and most probably it will be ‘basically theres big problems which we need to get sorted, we need one programme or the other, not to spend ages trying to mix up the two’.
On a final note, the actions the next Government will have to take will be far from popular, and stand a good chance of costing them victory in 2014/15. There is still turbulence ahead, and it will not be dealt with best by two parties trying to steer the ship in different directions