Welcome to the messy world of agonising, late-night post-election negotiations. They are here to stay. The days of clear-cut election results and the Friday victory speeches from the steps of Downing Street may be over, or at least unusual.
In past decades, the scale of the Conservative victory – 49 more seats than Labour and a seven-point lead in the popular vote – would have given David Cameron’s party a comfortable majority. It was more than Edward Heath achieved in 1970 (42 more seats and a 2% lead) or Winston Churchill in 1951 (26 more seats and, in fact, slightly fewer votes), when both men led the Tories back into power with enough MPs to govern for a full term.
Indeed, perhaps the greatest virtue of our first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system was that, with rare exceptions, it produced decisive outcomes. It allowed us to “throw the rascals out”. That supreme virtue trumped its failings: the way it punished smaller Britain-wide parties and gave untrammelled power to larger parties with well under half the total vote.
This weekend, that virtue has gone into hiding. And the key point is that it may stay there. For this is not like the weekend after past hung-parliament elections, such as that of February 1974. That was a rare exception. Last week’s indecisive outcome may the first of many, even if FPTP survives. The reason is that the Labour and Conservative parties no longer dominate our politics as they once did. In 1951, only nine MPs did not take the Labour or Tory whip. In 1970 the number was 12. By 1979 the number had climbed to 27; but the 70-seat Conservative lead over Labour delivered Margaret Thatcher an overall 43-seat working majority.
Last week, even a 70-seat lead would have been insufficient. As well as the 57-seat contingent of Liberal Democrats, 28 MPs will represent eight smaller parties. To secure an overall majority of just two, the Conservatives would have needed 86 more MPs than Labour. History shows us what a demanding task that was. Not only was it more than Churchill, Heath or Thatcher achieved when they led the Tories back into government; it was more than that achieved by any party in nine of the last sixteen general elections since 1950.
In the weeks ahead, then, such arguments are bound to be deployed in the debate about the future of our voting system. There will be others. If the eventual outcome of this weekend’s talks is a minority Conservative government, expect loud complaints from Scotland that it has been reduced to a colony of England. Remarkably, not a single seat changed hands on Thursday north of the border, compared with 2005. This means that the Tories still have just one of Scotland’s 59 MPs. Alex Salmond will publicly deplore his country’s second-class status; privately, he must be delighted, for it gives him the perfect platform from which to pursue his dream of independence.
More widely, one of David Cameron’s problems is that his looks like such an English party. There will be 298 Tory and 235 non-Tory MPs in England; but the rest of the United Kingdom returned just nine Tory and as many as 108 non-Tory MPs.
To which the Tories could counter: those lopsided figures are exaggerated by FPTP. They secured the support of one Scot in six. A proportional system could have another nine Scottish MPs to accompany the solitary figure of David Mundell.
There is an even bigger reason for Conservatives to dislike FPTP. Had Thursday’s voting figures been reversed, with Labour winning 37% of the vote and the Tories taking 30%, Labour would have enjoyed an overall majority approaching 100. Even after the latest boundary changes, which effectively gave the Tories 12 extra seats, Britain’s political geography remains tilted against the Tories.
Yet the Tories remain fiercely attached to the very system that now causes them such anguish. There are two main reasons, one principled and the other self-serving. The principled reason is that FPTP keeps the constituency link. Each MP represents a relatively small population of less than 100,000. Any proportional system would gravely weaken that link.
The other reason is that, despite its defects and biases, FPTP is the system that gives the Tories their best chance of power. This weekend, and whatever the outcome of post-election talks, David Cameron must be dreaming of a second general election within the next year or so. He will need only 18 more gains to secure the overall majority he craves. Any other system – including the alternative vote, which would keep the constituency link – would deliver power to a combination of Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs under almost any likely scenario. Indeed, that is precisely why so many Labour politicians have become some passionate converts to electoral reform: they relish the prospect of a near-permanent progressive majority which could keep the Tories out of office for another 13 years.
We shall know within days, perhaps hours, whether British politics will set itself on a course that could bring this about.
An edited version of this commentary first appeared in the Sunday Times, May 9
