For all the obsessing about whether Nick Clegg would prefer to be in government with the Tories or Labour after the next election, there is very little discussion of what happens if that just isn’t enough. On 8 May 2015 we could find ourselves with a parliament made up both of a largest party too small for a majority government and a third party too small to form a stable two-party coalition government.
If the Tories fail to gain seats, or lose a few, and the Lib Dems have a terrible night too, then they will still need MPs from another party to prop them up. So who do they turn to?
For last night’s Newsnight, I imagined what would happen if a coalition turned to Ukip for a confidence and supply arrangement – but one at a price. In the interview afterwards, Douglas Carswell said Ukip would not have a coalition, but that it could agree to the sort of arrangement envisaged in my film. But such an arrangement would firstly be unlikely to last and secondly be highly unsatisfactory as the Lib Dems and Tories – who have already run out of road in several domestic policy areas – would only be able to pass bills that Ukip could also sign up to, unless Labour, which would be in the throes of a leadership crisis at the same time, could support them.
This would also apply if Labour ended up being the largest party with a smaller cohort of Lib Dems. In that situation they would be faced with some kind of arrangement with the SNP, which would be catastrophic for Ed Miliband’s party on many levels. Many Labour MPs would insist either on a minority government with no arrangements at all with the nationalists, or else a second election, with no guarantee that this would benefit Labour either.
When you start to examine the different outcomes from this election, it becomes clear that Westminster politics could be very unstable and confusing. This means the civil service will need to be at its strongest to keep government going, something all parties are becoming increasingly attuned to.
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