Control of the chamber will decide how much of the government’s programme survives. Here is how to read the new map, seat by seat.
When the last count closed at the Calder Exchange shortly after four o’clock on Friday morning, the arithmetic was settled but the politics were not. The Civic Party finished as the largest group with 24 of the 61 seats, the Reform Union took 19, the Ardle Greens nine and the Liberal Coalition seven. The two remaining seats went, as many expected, to independents from the hill towns, both of whom campaigned on bus services, broadband and the future of the cottage hospital at Harrow Moor.
A working majority needs 31 votes. No combination of two parties reaches it without the Civic Party or the Reform Union, and the two big groups have spent six weeks promising never to govern together. That leaves three realistic routes to a programme, and each one changes what the next two years will look like.
The arithmetic, group by group
The most straightforward route is a Civic–Green arrangement, which delivers 33 seats. That is two votes to spare, which sounds comfortable until you remember that the Greens lost a member to a long illness in the last session and the government twice survived budget votes by a single vote. The Greens want the Ardle flood programme fully funded and a firm date for closing the coal-fired boiler at the Selwyn docks; the Civic Party has signalled it can live with the first and will haggle over the second.
The second route is a minority Civic administration propped up issue by issue. With the Liberal Coalition abstaining and the two independents onside, the Civic Party can win most ordinary votes. It is the arrangement City Hall officials privately prefer, because it avoids a written agreement that could unravel. But it gives the independents enormous leverage, and both have said publicly that their price is a guaranteed timetable for the Harrow Moor hospital refurbishment.
The third route, rarely discussed during the campaign, is a Reform-led bloc of Reform Union, Liberal Coalition and both independents. That adds up to 28, three short. It only works if the Greens abstain on the budget, which their leader ruled out on Friday night. It remains, for now, a threat the Reform Union can wave in negotiations rather than a plan.
“Whoever forms the government has to accept that every major bill will be won in committee rather than on the floor. Nobody has the numbers to bulldoze anything through, and the voters seem to have intended exactly that.”
That was the verdict of Imogen Thorley, a lecturer in public law at Calder University who has advised Assembly clerks on procedure, speaking on Friday afternoon. She points out that the committee chairs are allocated in proportion to seats, so the Reform Union will chair at least four of the eleven committees whatever happens in government talks, including, almost certainly, finance.
What survives, and what does not
Read against those numbers, some parts of the outgoing government’s programme look safe. The Valley Line extension has cross-party support and is already funded. The schools capital fund, which every group except the Liberal Coalition backed, should pass with a large margin. The plan to merge the Port Selwyn and Ardle harbour authorities is likely to proceed, if slowly, because both independents represent towns that stand to gain from shared dredging costs.
Other measures are in real trouble. The proposed congestion charge for the old town, which the Civic Party had softened before polling day, has no obvious majority: the Greens want it tougher, the Reform Union wants it scrapped, and neither independent represents a single voter who drives into the centre every day. The rewrite of the planning code, which ran to 400 pages in draft, will almost certainly be split into smaller bills so that each section can find its own coalition. Expect the housing chapter to move first and the green-belt chapter to stall.
The seats that will matter most
Beyond party totals, a handful of individual members will shape the session. Watch the two hill-town independents, Owen Garside of Harrow Light and Bethan Ruddock of the upper valley, who have agreed to vote together on anything touching transport or health. Watch the three new Reform Union members from the canal wards, who won on narrow margins and will be wary of any vote that looks hostile to city-centre businesses. And watch the Liberal Coalition, whose seven members are divided on almost everything except their opposition to the congestion charge.
The talks begin formally on Monday. The Assembly’s standing orders give the parties 28 days to nominate a first minister before a fresh election can be called, and nobody wants another campaign before spring. Two years is not long in Assembly terms. On this map, it will be spent building majorities one bill at a time.
