Don’t let the blob bounce us into another coalition government

If at the general election Labour end up the largest party but without a majority, a minority administration could be the best outcome

While the polls suggest a Labour majority – and a large one at that – is in prospect at this year’s general election, it might do the body politic some good if due consideration is given in advance to the possibility of a hung parliament.
This is not to make any predictions, merely to point out that the swing Labour requires to achieve even a wafer-thin majority over all parties is larger than that achieved by Tony Blair in 1997, at a time when enthusiasm for the then Labour leader was somewhat greater than it seems to be for Keir Starmer.
Stranger things have happened, of course, and numerous analyses have concluded that the next government could have a three-figure majority. Still, were no party to cross the threshold of 326 MPs, it might be better to consider now what should happen next, rather than wait until the morning after.
What is often overlooked is the role played by the civil service leadership in 2010 in ensuring that what the people voted for – a minority Conservative government – should not be allowed to happen.
This is not to claim that anyone entered the polling booth with the deliberate intention of producing the outcome we actually saw in May 2010; the vagaries and unpredictable nature of our electoral system do not allow for such machinations. 
Nevertheless, the final result, with David Cameron’s Conservatives short of a majority by about 20 but with nearly 50 seats more than Labour, was an accurate reflection of the mood of the nation, which was fed up with Gordon Brown’s government but not quite sold on Cameron.
Cameron may not have won a majority, but he had won the election, and Brown, having led his party to an almighty defeat with less than 30 per cent of the vote, should have immediately headed for Buckingham Palace to collect his P45 from the Queen. That, according to all constitutional rules and precedents, would have meant an immediate invitation to Cameron to form a government, either with the aid of one of the smaller parties or on his own, as Harold Wilson did between February and October 1974.
Having taken up residency in Number 10, the Tory leader would then have been given a period of grace in which either to negotiate a post-election deal with the Liberal Democrats, or to draw up plans to govern in the short-term and call a second election, probably before the end of the year, in order to win that elusive majority.
So far, so standard practice.
But the then head of the civil service, Gus O’Donnell, had other ideas. He took it upon himself to decree that a minority government, however short-lived, would be unacceptable, and recommended to Brown that he should not resign until some form of stable majority was agreed among the parties. 
Hence the undignified and, frankly, undemocratic sight of Brown scrabbling around for days, ensconced in Number 10 and earning the (accurate) tabloid nickname of “squatter”, while he sought to cobble together a rainbow coalition of losers that would allow him, or at least his party under a different leader, to continue in government, despite having lost the election.
Such ambitions were thwarted when Cameron announced a “comprehensive” coalition agreement with the LibDems, who, it turned out, had been stringing Brown along the whole time. 
And so Cameron entered Downing Street with the ink barely dry on the first coalition agreement since the war, and Brown finally, and with much obvious reluctance, left office.
But why was past practice so objectionable to O’Donnell? Why was it assumed – and why was that assumption so broadly and unquestioningly accepted by the parties – that a minority government would be the “wrong” outcome of the election?
True, the money markets might have been spooked, and that’s a shame, but so what? Aren’t they always fretting about something? And anyway, if the shock of a minority government were likely to deal the stock exchange a mortal blow from which it could not recover, perhaps we need to consider an alternative model of capitalism.
The danger is that now, even under new management, the civil service will try to pull the same trick again if Starmer fails to win a majority. It would be perfectly acceptable for him to form a minority government, even if the prospect of a second election within a few months might irritate some. We can have faith in our democracy that it is robust enough to tolerate the shock of our having to go to the polls twice in a short space of time.
For unelected officials to rule out such an outcome in advance, to seek to impose their preferred remedy on a situation which the people have decreed through the ballot box, was outrageous in 2010 and it would be just as unacceptable in 2024. As with so much in the UK’s constitutional setup, a minority government would be untidy and awkward and not at all convenient to many. Too bad. 
Civil servants are there to advise, but when their advice is bad, and especially when it is contrary to precedent and history, we need politicians to have the self-confidence to reject it.