The new British Government

Britain now has a Prime Minister: David Cameron. It took a while, though less time, of course, than it took in 2000 for us to verify the election of a President. But I still think we do things better.

At least Nicholas Clegg, the leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrats, did the honorable thing. He had said that if one party got both a majority of seats and a majority of votes, it had the right to try to form a Government. And the party that did, of course, was Cameron’s Conservative Party, So Clegg was right to accept Cameron’s offer of a coalition. But Cameron was forced to accept the idea of a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, though his membership mostly opposes coalition-building with that party. Yet, a coalition is the only way the Conservatives could have a stable government, with majority support in the House of Commons.

But the British Liberal Democrats, it appears, are rather further to the left than the German Free Democratic Party (FDP), so there is more political distance between them and the Conservatives than between Germany’s FDP and Christian Democratic Union (CDU). So while CDU-FDP coalitions have been common in Germany, this will be a difficult coalition to maintain. I suspect there will be another election soon.

And this is one more thing I do not like about the British system. Unlike ours, it depends on a monolithic uniformity of each party’s votes in the House of Commons. While Susan Collins and Richard Shelby both call themselves Republicans (and Bart Stupak and Nancy Pelosi both call themselves Democrats), they are free to vote their conscience and if they differ, no new elections are necessary, in the British system if the Conservative leadership decides the party’s members of Commons should vote a certain way, they all do, whatever the members may think. (I would hate to be an MP in Britain.) And if the Conservative and Liberal Democratic leadership have a falling-out, there will need to be a new British election.

Nobody knows how long this coalition will last. Coalitions, outside of the two World Wars, have never existed in Britain. And this is another problem with the British system. You have to expect that an election could be called at any time. So there is a permanent campaign in Britain. Each of the parties will be trying to position itself for the next election.

Perils of an unwritten constitution

In the US, we have a Constitution that is a written document. While there are a lot of unwritten constitutional rules, the formal written text of the US Constitution sets the ground rules, by which everything is run. And in 2000, when there was some question about the result of the Presidential Election, this fact meant that everything was settled (even if it took some time) in a way that could not be contested.

Contrast Britain, which has a "constitution" that includes some Parliamentary laws (which can be changed, however, by simply passing another law, unlike our difficult amendment process!) but is mostly an accumulation of traditions. Right now they are trying to sort through the results of an election in which their House of Commons (which combines the role of a house of Congress here with that of the Electoral College) is without a majority.

According to one of those traditions, the sitting Prime Minister is given the first chance to try to "form a Government" (he has to put together a Cabinet and first have it approved by the House of Commons, unlike our system, where the Cabinet, though requiring Senate approval for each individual position, need not be in place for the President to take office).

On the other hand, there is the strongly-held belief that the leader of a party which has won the largest number of seats in the Commons, particularly if that party received the largest vote in a general election, should be given the first chance. And in this case, the incumbent Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, leads a Labour Party (that's how they spell it there), which has finished a rather distant second in seats (306 to 258), and was also far behind the Conservatives in votes. Furthermore, the third place (Liberal Democratic) party leader, Nicholas Clegg, is on record as agreeing with ths second proposition, that the leader of a party which has won the largest number of seats in the Commons, as well as the largest vote in a general election, should be given the first chance. And Clegg's position is important, because the Conservatives can get a majority if they join with the Liberal Democrats. So both Gordon Brown and the Conservative leader, David Cameron, believe they deserve the first chance.

Well, the way it works now is that Cameron has sent emissaries to talk with Clegg's people, but Brown's resignation has not taken place. And in fact Brown is fulminating that he deserves a chance first. But in fact, the Labour and Liberal Democratic parties together do not have enough seats (Labour's 258 plus the Liberal Democrats' 57 make 315, and 326 are necessary) to make a majority. So even if Brown could convince Clegg to join him, he would still need support from some small minor party.

And further complications ensue because a lot of British Conservatives feel they should not make any concessions to the Liberal Democrats to make a majority, but should try to govern without a majority. British practice permits such a minority government, but only if enough small parties agree not to oppose the Prime Minister's party to prevent its defeat on a no-confidence vote. And the Liberal Democrats' size is such that this is the only party that could provide this non-opposition in sufficient numbers, and Clegg is not likely to agree to do it without concessions. So that solution is a non-starter.

Isn't it great to have a written Constitution?