Last month Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, had to resign in the wake of unfavourable results in regional elections. The immediate cause of his government’s fall was the decision of one of the minor parties in the coalition, the reformed Christian Democrats, to withdraw their support.
Negotiations then ensued, and the result was that Berlusconi formed a new government made up of the same parties, including the reformed Christian Democrats, with a different assignment of ministerial portfolios. It was generally agreed that the minor parties had gained a little more influence.
For anybody who used to follow Italian politics in the days when the Christian Democrats were at the heart of every government it was quite like old times, when governments fell every few months and leading politicians changed places in what looked like an elaborate country dance. Governments fell but nothing essential changed. The same old faces emerged from the negotiations; it was a bit like the Mad Hatter’s tea party where everybody was suddenly ordered to move one place round.
All this may seem a long way from Holyrood. Yet perhaps it isn’t. With six parties and a few independents in our parliament we may be heading for continental-style politics, as practised in Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands, and as used to be practised in the France of the Third and Fourth Republics.
This reflection has been prompted by the news of Jim Wallace’s decision to give up the leadership of the Scottish Liberal Democrats and therefore his position as deputy first minister. His decision to go into the coalition with Labour in 1999 gave his party its first experience of office — and the power and influence that goes with it — since Liberals were members of Winston Churchill’s wartime government.
By doing so Wallace was able to achieve some of his party’s aims: free personal care for the elderly, the replacement of upfront student tuition fees by a requirement to pay for university education later in life, and the introduction of proportional representation in local government elections. Whether one approves of these measures or not, there is no doubt that they would not have come about without Liberal Democrat participation in government.
More remarkably, perhaps, the Liberal Democrats have also benefited electorally. The executive has scarcely been a resounding success. Inasmuch as the general election was a mid-term test of its popularity, Labour suffered badly, getting a smaller share of the vote and losing seats. In contrast the Lib Dems flourished and may now fairly — for the time being anyway — claim to be Scotland’s second party. Wallace may not have shown himself a great statesman, as some of the eulogies last week would have us believe, but he has been an effective party leader.
There is some dissatisfaction with the coalition among members of both parties: Labour resents having to share power and having to adopt their partner’s policies. The two candidates vying to replace Wallace have been suggesting that other arrangements might be better for them. In the case of Mike Rumbles, who won’t win, this is because he apparently thinks his party would have been better to have kept out of government and sought to win power on its own. Since that won’t happen — the electoral system having been designed, at Lib Dem instigation, to ensure that no single party has an overall majority — we may disregard Rumbles’ views and consign him to cloud-cuckoo land.
Nicol Stephen, the transport minister, who will win and be the next Lib Dem leader, takes a different line. He has been looking ahead to 2007 and hinting that it might be possible — and rather a good idea — to form a coalition with the SNP in the next parliament.
It is, however, unlikely that between them the two parties will have a majority at Holyrood — even if the Greens were to be added to the coalition. Indeed it’s probable that the only way to get Labour out is for a grand coalition that would include the Tories.
This being so, the probability is that young Stephen will find he has no possible partner but Labour; and that the alternative to a Labour/Lib-Dem coalition is a Labour minority administration, with no ministerial cars and salaries for his followers. One can’t see this appealing to them.
Accordingly it would seem that Stephen, by raising the bogey of an alliance with the SNP, is playing classic junior-partner politics. You play hard to get in order to increase your influence. You raise the price at which you will sell yourself because, as long as you don’t pitch it intolerably high, the rewards are richer. For the truth is that in continental-style, multi-party politics, it is the smaller parties that have the stronger hand. They can dictate terms because they know that they are indispensable. Theirs is a bluff that can be called only if the biggest party — Labour, here — has the courage to try to operate as a minority government.
In a sense it doesn’t matter because, if you set aside for the moment the SNP’s commitment to independence some day, there is no great difference between Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP. One of the more risible suggestions made this week was the nationalist former MSP Duncan Hamilton’s call for a consensus at Holyrood. It was risible because the consensus already exists. All three parties are committed to very high levels of public spending, and all three believe that the health service and our educational system can be improved only by “massive injections” of public money. When Jack McConnell and Nicola Sturgeon engage in apparently fierce argument about the Scottish NHS, it is no more than a mock battle. They are — if Sturgeon will forgive me — like two old bald men arguing over a comb.
Consensus is the all-but-inevitable result of an electoral system that makes coalition government the norm. If the SNP’s strength was greater, nearer Labour’s, then the Liberal Democrats’ bargaining power would be greater even than it is now. They could dance between two suitors. But, unless there is an unexpected SNP surge in 2007, our Liberal Democrats will not be able to swap their coalition partner and stay in office. Their choice will be between office or opposition, ministerial cars or bicycles. One may guess which option will be preferred.
However coyly Stephen may hint of a liaison with the SNP, he will still be bluffing. It is, however, a bluff Labour dares not call. So I reckon we are stuck with the present coalition for a good while yet. Immobility and the politics of consensus will continue.
