Greg Rosen: Should Labour Learn to Love Coalitions?
[Greg Rosen is visiting fellow at Goldsmiths, author of 'Old Labour to New' and editor of the Dictionary of Labour Biography.]
It is more than 150 years since Disraeli claimed that England does not love coalitions. And, as any statement of its time, as an observation, it is 150 years out of date. That is not to say that the opposite is true either. A more accurate observation would be to say that England, and indeed the rest of the UK, has fallen out of love with many of its governments, and that their success has been more to do with what they have sought to do and how they have gone about it than with whether or not they are multi-party coalitions.
If anything, the enduring insight of Disraeli's observation is that voters lose patience with a government that lacks coherent purpose, or that is so divided in itself by disparate factions pulling in opposite directions that its ability to resolve public policy issues is undermined. That this can be the case with single-party governments just as much as with coalitions can be seen through the prism of John Major's premiership pre-1997. For much of its time in office, the Major government, in which the likes of David Cameron and George Osborne served as special advisers, was a minority government constrained by its internal divisions. Had Major's government had sufficient policy common ground with other parties to secure an alliance, it would have been a more effective government. Indeed it is difficult to imagine it being worse. Previous minority governments, such as Callaghan's in 1977-78, and Ramsay MacDonald's during 1930, have had loose arrangements with the main third party (in both these occasions the Liberals) which, while more effective than Major's approach, were themselves less effective than the two main instances of Liberal and Labour coalition in the 20th century - namely the wartime coalitions during the first and second world wars....
Read entire article at Progress Online (UK)
It is more than 150 years since Disraeli claimed that England does not love coalitions. And, as any statement of its time, as an observation, it is 150 years out of date. That is not to say that the opposite is true either. A more accurate observation would be to say that England, and indeed the rest of the UK, has fallen out of love with many of its governments, and that their success has been more to do with what they have sought to do and how they have gone about it than with whether or not they are multi-party coalitions.
If anything, the enduring insight of Disraeli's observation is that voters lose patience with a government that lacks coherent purpose, or that is so divided in itself by disparate factions pulling in opposite directions that its ability to resolve public policy issues is undermined. That this can be the case with single-party governments just as much as with coalitions can be seen through the prism of John Major's premiership pre-1997. For much of its time in office, the Major government, in which the likes of David Cameron and George Osborne served as special advisers, was a minority government constrained by its internal divisions. Had Major's government had sufficient policy common ground with other parties to secure an alliance, it would have been a more effective government. Indeed it is difficult to imagine it being worse. Previous minority governments, such as Callaghan's in 1977-78, and Ramsay MacDonald's during 1930, have had loose arrangements with the main third party (in both these occasions the Liberals) which, while more effective than Major's approach, were themselves less effective than the two main instances of Liberal and Labour coalition in the 20th century - namely the wartime coalitions during the first and second world wars....