The best thing to be hoped for is that the Liberals Democrats will behave loyally and modestly in the national interest; loyally when the going gets tough over reducing the deficit, and modestly with regard to the lack of enthusiasm for PR to which their bad showing in the election attests.
Sadly that is Cloudcuckoo Land, because the modern Liberal party is often to the left of Labour and sees this as a once-in-a-generation chance to muscle in PR. Every Government since the war has always been re-elected once — except Ted Heath’s in 1974 — so a minority Tory ministry is the second best thing to hope for.
A Lib-Lab government that delivered on PR would have been an unmitigated disaster. It would have meant governments run by Peter Mandelson, Nick Clegg and David Miliband for another decade. In the 17 elections since the war every Government but one failed to get an overall majority of the popular vote.
To have a second Labour prime minister in a row elected by the Labour Party but not the people would have been a standing affront to the British people.If Labour’s new leader had felt morally obliged to put himself to the test electorally, David Cameron would have been elected on a surge of popular resentment — assuming PR had not been introduced.
By Andrew Roberts, a historian.
We need a government that is going to be honest about the scale of the problems facing Britain and the severity of the solutions. None of the parties met that criterion during the campaign, though the Conservatives came considerably closer than the others.
The new government will have to forget a raft of manifesto promises, in the medium term at least. Few voters probably believed them anyway. A lot of rash promises were made that cannot responsibly be honoured in the present economic climate, including ring-fencing spending on privileged areas such as the NHS and overseas aid.
Actually policies won’t be the problem because the Government won’t have much choice. It has to come up with a credible plan to reduce the deficit, pay down public debt and convince the sceptical, beady-eyed markets that its means what its says and will live with the social and political consequences. That will mean hacking away at the revered icons of the welfare state, including public service pay and pensions and middle- class benefits . The scale of spending on the public services ballooned under Gordon Brown and must be ferociously cut back.
The real test of the Government will be its political will. Will it be able not just to set tough targets but to stick to them when the going gets rough? Will it have the implacable will that Margaret Thatcher demonstrated early in her Government, facing down 365 economists who wrote to The Times to say her economic policies were nuts? Will it stick to its guns when the Opposition rubbishes it and faint-hearts in its own ranks start to wobble? Character is what will count.
Another test will be the ability to communicate tough decisions in a way that persuades people that the pain is worth the gain, even if that may is years away. Whoever leads the Government will need remarkable self-confidence and certainty to pull that off.
I would add a few other pieces of unsolicited advice. Be more radical, not less, in tackling our economic problems: the benefits will come through quicker. Act quickly, don’t push decisions off into the future. Now is the time to push through the toughest decisions. Be rigorous in setting priorities. This is no time to fiddle around with reforming the Lords or other second or third tier issues.
Don’t reinvent government. It is far from perfect but it is what we’ve got. Don’t invent yet more ministries. Use the Civil Service, don’t use armies of political advisers to second guess it. Don’t build an imperial No 10. Let ministers and their departments do their jobs.
Who if anyone matches these testing requirements? I took Margaret Thatcher to dinner last night and her table was besieged with people begging her to return. She politely suggested that age would be a barrier. But we need her qualities back and only one of the three leaders on display came close to demonstrating them, and that is David Cameron. If he is deprived of the chance by cynical manouvering, the country will be the loser and Britain will be headed back to the nightmare of the Seventies.
By Charles Powell. Lord Powell of Bayswater was private secretary to Margaret Thatcher in 1983-91.
Nearly a week without a Government — and my first reaction, like that of many people, was “What a mess!” But then I reflected, it is a democratic mess of our own making. Indeed it is a very British mess, in which, faced with the direst economic crisis in memory, we gave no party a decisive mandate but hoped they would work it out among themselves. My guess is that the consensus for the national interest is about to blow apart and we shall shortly return to the ritualised abuse of politics as usual — which is emphatically not what we voted for.
We need a different way of practising politics, more collaborative and less acrimonious than that of the recent past. Political parties are themselves coalitions. There can be coalitions between them as well as within them. None has a monopoly of wisdom or even of folly.
When the next election approaches, probably sooner rather than later, we shall remember which politicians put the national interest first, and which did not. We shall also remember that the supposed advantage of first-past-the-post, that it delivers a decisive election result, has been shown to be illusory. It is not suited to a multi-party system.
We can turn the extraordinary events of the past week to advantage if we make the following resolutions: first that we find a voting system that is reasonably democratic, and then that we implement it efficiently, so that never again shall there be such chaos at the polling stations. We are supposed to be a mature democracy, not a banana republic.
By Martin Bell, a former Independent MP.
Imagine the ballot paper had posed a choice between two options: a Tory-Liberal coalition or a Labour-Liberal coalition. Who would have won? No, I don’t know either.
And yet the interest of country and all three parties is actually identical. The best government would be the most viable. The economic differences between manifestos amount to less than the margin of error in the growth forecasts so it’s the credibility of the plan to reduce the deficit that matters. That will be achieved by having a government with a programme agreed for a full Parliament, with the votes to back it up. The only arrangement that produces that is a Conservative/ Liberal Democrat coalition.
The Lib Dems must show they are serious. They must show that coalition politics can work. They could get a referendum on electoral reform. They could liberalise the Tories. If they pass up this offer they might as well go and grow fruit.
The Conservatives would love to share the pain of cuts. They can get off daft manifesto promises. They can dramatise that they have changed. They don’t have to worry about their own headbangers as much. Labour can avoid a rickety coalition being brought down by the money markets. It can avoid slashing its own spending programmes. It can avoid foisting another unelected leader on a public after an election in which It came second. It can regroup under a new leader knowing it is only 50 seats behind the Tories.
Everyone needs to realise that a Conservative/Liberal coalition is the prize. Then this election that nobody won becomes the election that everybody won.
By Philip Collins, a Times leader writer and a former speechwriter to Tony Blair.
The outcome of the election threatens the territorial unity of the United Kingdom. It reveals a profound discrepancy between English opinion and that of the other nations which make up the UK. Of the 306 seats the Conservatives won, 297 were in England. They won just 8 seats in Wales and 1 in Scotland, where they are the fourth party and the Liberal Democrats the third. A Conservative minority government or a Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, which sought to make radical cuts in public expenditure would face a legitimacy problem in Scotland.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats hold just 234 of England’s 533 seats. If a Conservative minority or coalition government were to be defeated by the votes of non-English MPs on matters devolved to Scotland, such as health and education, the English would be furious.
English votes for English laws would not solve the problem. The Scots continue to be taxed by Westminster, and the Scottish Parliament’s revenue depends upon decisions made in Westminster. Therefore the Scots must be fully represented there.
The imbalance between England and the rest of the UK is grossly exaggerated by the electoral system. Around one-sixth of Scottish voters support the Conservatives, but are rewarded not with 10 seats but with one.The first past the post electoral system, therefore, now threatens the unity of the United Kingdom.
By Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government, Oxford and author of The New British Constitution.
If David Cameron were dealing with 57 Nick Cleggs there would be every chance of a durable Lib Dem-Con deal. David Cameron and Clegg could agree an exciting programme of public service reform and lower taxation for low-paid workers. They wouldn’t agree on Europe, immigration and defence but they could happily cohabit for an extended romance.
Unfortunately, the biggest beasts in the Liberal Democrat jungle swing to the Left. Paddy Ashdown has accused the Tories of being “rabidly Eurosceptic”. Ming Campbell is a close friend of Gordon Brown. Charles Kennedy advocated higher taxation when he led the party. Vince Cable is a protégé of the former Labour leader John Smith. Simon Hughes is a constant defender of public sector interests. Labour is a much more natural partner for Mr Clegg’s party, but it knows that the public would be unlikely to forgive keeping a defeated Labour Government in office.
Consequently, the Liberal Democrats will probably agree a deal with the Conservatives but their hearts aren’t in it. It’s hard to believe that they will be stable partners when the going gets tough and the going is about to get very tough.
The other danger for the coalition comes from the Right of the Conservative Party. The compromises necessary for working with the Liberal Democrats haven’t yet been made public but there’ll be concessions on marriage policy, inheritance tax and, of course, electoral reform. The Right will also be unhappy at the likely movement towards a more ambitious climate-change agenda. The long-term winners will be Labour if the Lib-Con coalition fails to gel and Mr Clegg and Mr Cameron look likely to begin a very high risk strategy.
By Tim Montgomerie, editor of Conservative Home.
Everyone agrees that a “strong and stable” government is needed to tackle the economic crisis. Given the voters’ verdict, this has to be either a Conservative-Lib Dem or a Labour-Lib Dem coalition or pact. The former, which now looks the likely outcome, would be stronger in terms of MPs. But it would not necessarily be better or stabler.
First there is policy. The budget deficit has to be cut. But I do not agree that the hole in the budget is the main problem. The main problem is the hole in the economy that the deficit is plugging. So I would not start cutting the deficit, as the Conservatives are eager to do, until there was clear evidence that the economy is recovering. At present there is not sufficient evidence of that.
Secondly, you cannot get stable government if the partners disagree on the main questions of policy. On the economy, Europe and political reform Lib Dem sympathies are closer to Labour than to the Conservatives. A Con-Lib Dem coalition would be purely expedient. A Lab-Lib Dem pact would have been more principled, and had a better chance of surviving.
Finally, alliance with a weakened Labour Party would have offered the Liberals their best hope in 80 years of getting the electoral reform that will release them from their third party ghetto. They will never get it from the Conservatives, who would be the main losers.
Thus, whereas the national interest should always trump party advantage, in this case both point to a Lab-Lib Dem coalition. This is what should have happened. But I would not be surprised if David Cameron takes office as head of a minority Conservative government.
By Robert Skidelsky, a crossbench peer and biographer of J. M. Keynes.
Unlike many areas of government business, coalition rule can be positive for the nation’s defence and security. We won two world wars with all-party alliances. Of course the circumstances were very different. But even today, stability and a strong enough majority to plan ahead and act boldly in the defence of our country are the most important factors: a minority administration would be the worst possible outcome.
Defence will not be a stumbling block for any of the parties in their talks. Conservatives and Labour have remarkably similar policies, so there is unlikely to be much difference in a coalition led by either party.
All three parties have pledged an immediate defence and security review. Our armed forces are configured to fight the last war not the current one or the next, and radical rebalancing between the three services is urgently needed. But such controversial changes may be fudged to prevent fragmentation of either a coalition or supply and confidence arrangement — a real danger for our national defence.
The Liberal Democrats would press for review of the planned replacement of Trident. That may be no bad thing, although any reduction in capability would need careful consideration against current and future threats.
The Liberal Democrats want a shift on defence cooperation away from the US and towards Europe. Given our different attitude to warfighting from many European allies, this is a danger area that should be resisted by both Conservatives and Labour.
We would see greater contrasts on national security. The common ground between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats on civil liberties could lead to a review of counter-terrorist legislation, including a softening of tactics and techniques used by our security services. There are big risks here, but the reality of government and real responsibility for public safety may temper any ideological inclination to drop our guard too far against what remains a very high level of threat.
The greatest risk is that defence and security will drop too far down the list of government priorities. Whoever is prime minister must put considerable personal energy into directing our war efforts in Afghanistan. But there is a danger that he will have his hands too full not just trying to repair our badly battered economy but also holding together an inevitably fragile coalition.
By Richard Kemp. Colonel Richard Kemp is Former Chairman of the Cobra Intelligence Group.
Given the state of the economy, what we need above all in a future prime minister is a sensible bedside manner. This man, both blessed and cursed by the times, will have to exude the virtues we rightly expect of a good physician: he will have to seem serious but not dour, solemn but not grave, competent yet without bureaucratic heartlessness.
But most of all, after the last few years, what we most crave from a prime minister is normality. However much we may want our intellectuals or artists to be passionate, strange, a little deformed and prone to outbursts of joy or fury, recent experience has left us in no doubt as to the dangers of eccentricity, whether physical or psychological. We are in need of an above average version of a very average citizen — a prime minister as imagined by the menswear range of Marks & Spencer’s.
As for the members of the Cabinet, we need a suggestion that none of their recommendations will be driven by ideological fury or party rancour. We need to be at the opposite end of the spectrum from the bullying student politics that remains the instinct of some members of both the Labour and the Conservatives camps. The Cabinet must imply that they have reached their conclusions with all the lack of imagination of accountants or pilots. Ideology is out. The purpose of our politicians must now be to be boring, kind, sensible and polite (as they rub the disinfectant over our skin and prepare to inject the needle).
Let us hope that the unusual situation removes any remaining neo-Thatcherite ideology from David Cameron and any Romantic Liberal idealism from Nick Clegg. Let us also hope that Labour suit the era by electing David Miliband, all three of these men being exemplars of our current need for balance, calm, centrism and intelligent unexciting doctor-next-door managerialism.
By Alain de Botton, the author of The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.
There is a real danger of forgetting that the Liberal Democrats chose not to declare a preference for either Labour or the Conservatives in the election as coalition partners. They said that they would negotiate first with the party that had the strongest mandate.
Too many people talked afterwards as if the Lib Dems could go through the motions of negotiating with the Conservatives but end up choosing Labour because they were more natural allies. But from the moment David Cameron spoke on Friday it was clear that he was ready to respond democratically to not having an overall majority and to lead a coalition that took serious account of Lib Dem voters.
Once Tory negotiators began to spell out common ground, there was only one further compromise that fair-minded Liberal Democrats could have held out for, and that was for a referendum on proportional representation. With Labour prepared to concede the alternative vote, without a referendum, it was brave of Mr Cameron to convince his party to commit to a referendum on AV. I have no doubt that only a Conservative- Liberal Democrat coalition can provide stable, more representative government, and I will fully support it.
By David Owen. Lord Orwen is a former Foreign Secretary.
The SNP stood ready to play a part in building a progressive alliance in the Commons — had Labour and the Lib Dems been willing to form a coalition prepared to reach out for wider support across Parliament and the nations.
Unfortunately, the Lib Dems preferred a regressive alliance with the Conservatives, and Labour preferred to inflict a Tory government on the majority of voters who rejected such an administration. The SNP takes its marching orders from the people of Scotland — and about 85 per cent of them voted against a Tory government.
The Tories languish in fourth place in Scotland, while the Lib Dems came third in share of the vote. Clearly, from a Scottish perspective, a Tory-Lib Dem government lacks legitimacy. Indeed, the parties that could have formed a progressive alliance won more than 50 per cent of the vote in England, two thirds in Wales and carried broad support in Northern Ireland.
The prize was within reach — real electoral reform, renewed politics, respect for all the nations of these islands and agreed action to boost economic recovery. It is a pity for people across these islands that Labour and the Lib Dems lacked the wisdom and ambition to seize the opportunity.
By Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party.
The first priority of a new government must be to tackle the lamentable fiscal legacy. Government borrowing was more than £160 billion last year and, even on relatively optimistic projections, debt is expected to be £1.4 trillion in 2014-15. Government is spending way beyond its means and tough, painful decisions must be made.
During the campaign the Tories undoubtedly gave the strongest signals they would be tough. They would start to implement savings this year, set up an independent Office of Budget Responsibility and announce an emergency Budget within 50 days of taking office.
A Tory-minority government — unencumbered by partners who clearly have some vastly different political objectives — would be better at starting the fearsome task of reining in the public deficit. Nick Clegg’s behaviour in recent days has cast serious doubt on his wish to put the national interest before his party’s.
The Conservatives should present their Budget, as tough as it needs to be, and challenge the opposition parties to support them or risk a serious collapse of international confidence in the UK economy, followed by some very nasty medicine from the IMF.
By Ruth Lea, economic adviser to the Arbuthnot Banking Group.