Coalitions built bill by bill would slow some plans and kill others.
If the polls are right, no party will come close to a majority in the next Assembly. With 61 seats and the largest party projected to win somewhere between 20 and 24, any government will need the support of at least one other group – and possibly two – to pass its budget, let alone its programme. The question is not only who governs, but how.
There are broadly two models. The first is a formal coalition, in which two or more parties share ministerial posts and sign a written agreement covering most of the term. The second, increasingly discussed in the corridors of the Assembly building, is a minority government that seeks support issue by issue, assembling a different majority for each bill. Senior figures in two of the three largest parties have said privately that the second is the more likely outcome.
Bill by bill: what survives
A government that has to win every vote separately tends to prioritise measures with broad support and delay those without it. Looking at the manifestos of the main parties, a handful of policies command enough cross-party backing to pass in almost any arrangement: the extension of free school meals, more money for the valley’s bus network, the dark-sky protections for Harrow Moor and the long-delayed flood defences along the River Ardle. Each has been endorsed by at least three parties whose combined projected seats exceed 31.
Other plans look far less secure. The governing party’s proposed reform of local taxation, which would replace council tax bands with a levy based on current property values, has been opposed outright by two of its likely partners. The plan to merge the region’s three health boards faces resistance from members representing the hill towns, who fear that services would drift towards Calder. And the proposed new road crossing at Port Selwyn, a flagship promise for one party, is a red line for another.
“In a hung chamber the government proposes and the chamber disposes. A minister who wants something badly will have to give something away to get it, and the price will be set by whoever holds the deciding votes.”
So said Professor Ingrid Halvorsen, who teaches comparative politics at Calder University and has studied minority governments across a dozen legislatures. She expects the first budget to be the critical test: if a minority administration cannot pass it by the end of March, pressure for a formal coalition – or a fresh election – would grow quickly.
The power of two independents
Much attention has fallen on the two independent members from the hill towns, both of whom are expected to hold their seats. In a chamber where 31 votes are needed for a majority, two votes can matter enormously. Both have said they will not join any government but will consider supporting legislation that benefits rural communities. In practice, that could mean concessions on broadband, school transport or the future of the branch railway line in exchange for budget votes.
Critics argue that this hands disproportionate influence to a small number of members. Supporters reply that it forces governments to pay attention to places that are often overlooked. Both things can be true.
Slower, not necessarily weaker
Experience elsewhere suggests that divided chambers pass fewer bills, but that the bills they do pass are amended more heavily and tend to last longer, because they were built with wider support. Committees become more important, as do the clerks who draft amendments overnight. Ministers lose the ability to push unpopular measures through on a whipped vote. Civil servants, for their part, say they are already preparing for a session in which every major bill could take twice as long as usual.
For voters, the effect may be less dramatic than the headlines suggest. Bins will still be collected and schools will still open. But the shape of the next four years – what gets built, what gets reformed, what quietly disappears – will depend less on any single manifesto than on the deals struck in the weeks after polling day.
