The Scottish Veto on English Government

Over at Our Kingdom Guy Aitchison highlights an interesting passage from Patrick Dunleavy who suggests that hung parliaments are becoming the norm.

For the first time in history, the Australian outcome means that every key ‘Westminster model’ country in the world now has a hung Parliament. These are the former British empire countries that according to decades of political science orthodoxy are supposed to produce strong, single party government. Following Duverger’s Law their allegedly ‘majoritarian’ electoral systems (first past the post and AV) will typically produce reinforced majorities for one of the top two parties.

But now the table below shows that four of the five key countries have coalition governments in balanced parliaments where no party has a majority. The one exception is Canada, where the Parliament has been hung since 2004, across three general elections.

Assuming that the Scots continue to shun the Tory Party - and it appears that they will - then an age in which 'weak' or coalition government becomes the norm makes the West Lothian Question a very important Westminster issue. The WLQ can be mitigated by Cameron and Clegg, or so they believe, so that it does not impinge too much upon the Tories' control of England. But the small matter of Scottish MPs' voting privileges when it comes to England-only legislation is not the be-all-and-end-all of Scottish MPs.

Scottish MPs also help choose the colour of the UK government, and therefore the colour of the government that has power over England. Given fair electoral boundaries in 2005, England would have elected a blue government. But in 2005 what England got was red Labour. In 2010 (despite unfair boundaries) England emphatically elected a blue government, but what we got, thanks to Scottish and Welsh MPs, was a blue-yellow coalition government. Scottish MPs prevent England from having the government that it voted for, and if Patrick Dunleavy is to be believed this Scottish interference could well become the norm.

To opponents of the ConDem coalition government, the 2010 general election could be regarded as the fifth time that a government was imposed upon England against its wishes. Gerald Warner has details of the four previous.

In 1950 England voted Tory, but Scotland’s contribution of 37 Labour MPs gave Labour its six-seat majority which enabled it to cling to power for another year. In 1964 the Scottish contingent of 43 Labour members supplied Harold Wilson with a majority of four to rule over Tory-voting England. In February 1974 England voted in a Conservative majority, but 40 Scottish Labour MPs again gave Wilson a majority of four, with the collaboration of the Liberals. In October of the same year his overall majority of three was supplied by 41 Scottish Labour members.

In all four of those general elections – 1950, 1964, February 1974 and October 1974 – England, which had voted Conservative, acquiesced in the imposition upon it of a Labour government as a result of Scottish votes, without crying foul or trying to move the goal posts. Those results produced a total of nine years of Labour rule in England which English voters had not endorsed. But when things began to go in the opposite direction from 1979 the Scots yelled blue murder and “Democratic Deficit!”

Whether or not England will be so willing to acquiesce now that Scotland has its own parliament may be the question on which the future of the Union rests.