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► ELECTORAL SYSTEMS - Hung, drawn and quartered: what will a hung parliament really mean?

Author: Laura Heads

With the chances of no party gaining an overall majority looking increasingly likely, what will that mean for the country?

A hung parliament, we’ve heard that term being thrown around a lot in the past three or four weeks. There’s no secret that it’s a definite possibility this time around, we could well have the first hung parliament since 1947. The only problem is none of us really know what that would mean for the country, it’s just a lot of political jargon to most.

In layman’s terms a hung parliament occurs when no party gains a clear enough majority in the House of Commons, that is to say that no party gains more than the number of MPs required to form a government. If it occurs in such a way as to leave Labour still the technical biggest party in Parliament then Gordon Brown, is allowed to retain his office, if it occurs in a way that leaves David Cameron and the Conservatives as the technical biggest party, then he will take office; in both possibilities Parliament will need to attempt to work it out. Deals will then struck left, right and centre, back room negotiations will become a feature of currency and ‘I’ll side with you on this issue if you side with us on that issue’ will become the main language within Parliament.

Nine times out of ten, a hung parliament will result in forming a coalition government, where it can be predicted that one or more of the smaller parties will side with either Labour or the Conservatives in order to give them the majority they need to run the country successfully without hindrance from their opposition.

As my dad so technically put it the other week when this issue happened to come up in our household, if the above were to happen it would mean “complete social and economic melt down”, I’d like to think that this isn’t the case and a vast exaggeration, but unfortunately there is some truth to the matter.

I’m sure we’ve all seen the political debates on TV and have at some point pointed out to our housemates/partners/families that the three leaders are essentially acting like spoilt children in a playground, arguing over every technical matter they can and denying profusely anything their opponents say about them and their policies, true or untrue. Expecting at least two of them to work together in a coalition is going to be a very long and arduous task, one that will involve a lot more bickering and a lot less thinking about the public.

There are serious, credible fears that a hung parliament will essentially form a boxing ring within the Houses of Parliament, each of the three main parties will fight to ensure that their policies are voiced and taken on board, that it is them who gains the credit. In essence the public, whom this election should be about, will be relegated to a back row seat to sit and watch whilst our political system destroys itself from the inside out.

Nick Clegg, perhaps the most influential member of a hung parliament, has already made his opinions very clear about who he intends to work with, a definite no if the Conservatives were to gain a minority, and a definite no if Labour were to retain power with a minority and still keep Gordon Brown as the Prime Minister. It doesn’t really leave much room for negotiation, and the Tories or Labour could end up having to form deals and coalitions with smaller parties like the Green Party in an attempt to gain a majority.

All three of these parties have vastly different plans and policies about how they would go about tackling things such as crime, immigration, and of course the economy. There is nothing in the rule books which dictates that any of party gets first say over any one of these issues, and it can be safely assumed that no one party will easily give up their ideas in favour of another. Hence we reach stalemate, resulting in a country that is going no where and the constant bickering of politicians.

Labour only needs to lose 24 seats, with the Conservatives gaining no more than 115 and the Lib Dems gaining no more than 263 in order to achieve a hung parliament, many argue that this would produce change within our country and our government, and there is no way I can argue that this wouldn’t be true. However, whether the change will be the positive, the ‘everything’s rosey change’ we were expecting, is seriously open to debate.

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ELECTORAL SYSTEMS - Hung, drawn and quartered: what will a hung parliament really mean? Posts