The Coalition and the Constitution
Public Seminars 2010-11
Prof Vernon Bogdanor (Research Professor at the Institute for Contemporary History, King’s College London)
Date: Thursday 12 May, 6.00pm
Venue: Council Room, The Constitution Unit
The first anniversary of the Coalition has come and gone. It was the cue for a mass of commentary - which is interesting in itself. It is clear that the British public and media are still coming to terms with coalition.
Professor Vernon Bogdanor, long a student of coalition governments, has been looking at the implications for the British constitution. Professor Bogdanor spoke on this yesterday at the Constitution Unit to promote his new book The Coalition and the Constitution (Hart Publishing, Oxford).
He drew interesting comparisons between historical coalitions and our current situation. Bogdanor argued that many coalition governments had been formed out of fear. For instance, the current economic stresses at home and abroad caused the Liberal Democrats to form a coalition with the Conservatives and abandon their previous policies and adopt the Conservative policy of immediate and sustained deep spending cuts.
Bogdanor argued that this was not going to be a comfortable ride for the Lib Dems. Coalitions have never been happy experiences for the Liberals, often leading to splits within the party -the classic example being the Liberal Unionists who later merged with the Conservatives. His analysis showed that the Conservatives, on the other hand, had largely benefited from these alliances.
The reduction of Commons seats from the current figure of 650 to 600 had been overshadowed by the AV referendum, despite being arguably the more revolutionary reform of the two. This meant that many constituency associations will have to pick new electoral candidates which could result in a slew of anti-coalition candidates being chosen. A key point of Bogdanor’s talk was that coalitions collapse from the bottom-up, not from the top down.
He also spoke of the effect of the Fixed Term Parliaments Bill, which could provide the Lib Dems with a way out of the Coalition without having to fear immediate annihilation by Cameron calling a general election.
During the following question and answers session, some in the audience queried Professor Bogdanor’s historical account. Audience members of Liberal Democrat and Conservatives persuasion both defended the Coalition, trying to distinguish between the circumstances leading to the current coalition and those leading to previous coalition administrations.
A question was asked about the application of the Salisbury convention in the House of Lords. A peer in the audience argued that the House of Lords was fully entitled to vote down government legislation and that the Salisbury convention didn’t apply under the present circumstances.
The effects of the recent AV referendum were also discussed, with Professor Bogdanor believing that it will galvanise those ‘small c’ conservative elements in both Houses, but that the finality of referendums can be overstated - Britain’s status in Europe is still up for debate 31 years after the Common Market referendum.
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