Cabinets, coalitions and conventions…

The announcement of the First Minister’s new cabinet last week was a bit like watching the winning dance in the final of ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. Plenty of familiar smiling faces, some predictable steps forwards and sideways. But the glittering finale that swept us off our feet was the confirmation that a Liberal Democrat would serve as a ‘Secretary’ in Carwyn Jones’s Labour Cabinet. Kirsty Williams’s appointment to the Education portfolio is remarkable in itself. Despite seeing her majority in Brecon and Radnor swell to over 8,000 (a 9.3% increase in vote share) and a demolition of her Conservative rival in what had been seen as a highly marginal seat, ultimately she presided over a party that lost its deposits in 26 of the 40 Welsh constituencies and shrunk to a lone presence in the fifth Assembly. Still, the electoral arithmetic and some other serendipitous circumstances gelled nicely to offer this incredible rescue route for an admittedly talented politician.

However, what I’m more interested in is the issues raised by Kirsty Williams’s inclusion in the cabinet. The three weeks of rows on who’s sharing a soft-shoe shuffle with who have generated a new interest in stuff that is normally reserved for academics, officials and the behind-the-scenes fixers in the political parties. Coalitions, minorities, deals, pacts, agreements, compacts, confidence and supply arrangements-take your pick. Who could have guessed that such concepts would be elevated from dusty constitutional textbooks to be part of a more populist political lexicon here?

Now, beware anyone who claims to be an expert on all of this. The truth is that what makes this area of politics and constitutional practice so tricky is that there is no single blueprint for government formation, operation and maintenance in ‘hung’ situations and few strict and binding rules. There are a couple of reasons for this: first, because here, we regard coalitions and minority governments as foreign bodies — literally. I’ve been saying repeatedly that minority and coalition governments are far from unusual-it’s just been unusual in these isles. Across the 28 EU states, at most points in time, around two-thirds of them have coalitions of some form or another. Until we stop seeing such arrangements as continental oddities and portraying them in an overwhelmingly negative light, we are likely to miss the the point.

Secondly, all such governments show different historical trails in both their inception and operation. That’s because minority and coalition governments are mostly based on conventions and precedents (and these differ case by case). Therefore, the arrangements for establishing and maintaining them share as many distinguishing features as common ones. Arguments over whether the ‘Compact to move Wales forward’ between Labour and Plaid Cymru is a form of ‘confidence and supply’, and whether the new Cabinet is effectively a ‘coalition’ rather miss the point. In the brave new world of pluralist politics and ‘shared’ governing, pretty much anything goes.

Having said that, of course there are principles — constitutional and political — that underpin the broad models that are in operation, but those seeking a single, codified template to be followed by the letter will be disappointed. That’s because, without — but even with — a written constitution, flexibility, fluidity and adaptation are the names of the game. I was recalling a panel at the Political Studies Association conference five years ago where several of us interested in coalitions and minority governments talked about what Dr. Felicity Matthews of Sheffield University rather charmingly called the ‘constitutional stretching’ process as the UK adjusted to coalitions. The discussion considered whether we were moving to a form of ‘modified majoritarianism’ and what we might learn from our European partners and sub state level governments in Wales and Scotland.

In terms of our current post-election situation, I suspect what most are interested in is gaining some clarity around the process for establishing a new government and an opposition, how they are likely to operate and be sustained in a ‘hung’ or ‘balanced’ parliament. These can be condensed into a few important principles. Firstly, after an inconclusive election, who has first dibs on forming a government? Is it always the party with the most seats or, where different, the one with the most votes? Is this a moral authority and if so, from where does this authority emanate? In some states, simultaneous attempts government formation occur with the largest party having no special rights or priority. Unlike at Westminster, our First Minister is only appointed by the Monarch following a majority vote of support in the Assembly. Remember events in Scotland back in 2007 when the SNP’s Alex Salmond won enough votes to defeat Jack McDonnell only after second round support from the Greens, based on a deal to give the latter a powerful Committee chair (a form of ‘confidence and supply’). Now, Leanne Wood has been keen to stress that the current Compact does not constitute a ‘confidence and supply’. Her case seems to be based on it not tying in Plaid to support the government on financial votes. It’s true that most historic precedents of ‘confidence and supply’ are around support for government budgets, but there is no real reason why this has to be its only application. Also, most of them are time limited like Plaid’s and Labour’s. So there was both a supply (agreement around some of Plaid’s manifesto pledges) and an avoiding of a confidence crisis around the nomination of a new First Minister.

The notion of confidence is a really interesting one. Essentially, it is most powerful in its negative form when the opposition combines to have ‘no confidence’ in the First Minister and his/her government. This, of course, is the fatal option as the nuclear button should only be pressed if there is absolute certainty that the vote will be carried and a firm Plan B is at hand. But most other defeats in hung situations are not fatal, and any minority government should be prepared to lose several votes during a term; it must simply hope that these will not necessarily be life threatening. The SNP minority government lost a vote on its crucial budget bill in 2009, but then went back and renegotiated with some key concessions. It was not brought down because there was no appetite amongst the opposition parties to do so. And remember, at home, back in 2005, the minority Labour government’s budget was delayed for several months as the opposition flexed its muscles.

Next, to qualify as a ‘coalition’, does an agreement between parties have to be public and formal, or can have more private and informal elements-that is, does everything need to be clearly and openly codified between the two (or more) parties, or can the general thrust behind it be informal with some tacit ‘understandings’ around the other areas agreed. Usually, there are the ‘red lines’ around aspects of the agreements, but there might also be informal understandings as to the specific occasions when these might be relaxed in return for avoiding a ‘no confidence’ vote.

This leads us to the thorny question of collective cabinet responsibility-that is where and when (if at all) Ministers might be permitted to vote against the government. Again, precedents suggest that where collective responsibility exists, we can call this a coalition. I guess in the case of Kirsty Williams, as an individual AM rather than the leader of a party group, she is able to push back at the coalition conventions which have typically been framed by agreements between parties. But interestingly, there have been several instances of ‘confidence and supply’ in New Zealand in which ministers of the ruling coalition parties are outside Cabinet, as well as ministers from parties with ‘confidence and supply’ agreements also holding ministerial titles without being in Cabinet. Even more interesting for the current situation in Wales is that all such ministers are bound by collective responsibility.

So, apologies if all of this is about as clear as mud. But that’s my point. There are no hard and fast rules, only conventions and precedents. But conventions have to start somewhere and personally, I think Wales and Scotland are not bad places to develop a few constitutional conventions of our own. At that ‘futuristic’ academic panel five years ago, Adrian Kay (now at Australian National University) and I argued that Wales’s institutional design is predominantly majoritarian whilst the emerging politics is mainly pluralist. We also talked up Lijphart’s challenge to stop assuming that single party government was necessarily superior to consensual and shared. I get a feeling that we might be on the cusp of something new and exciting in Wales right now. But it will need us all to relax a little, be less judgemental and embrace the new climate of uncertainty around terminologies and realities. Who knows, it might just deliver better government and a more engaged politics.