5 days - or longer - in May 2015

No one has the faintest idea what the election result will be in 2015 but we could easily have another hung parliament – and the experience of 2010 will influence the expectations and behaviour of politicians, the media and the markets.

Andrew Adonis, a Labour negotiator in 2010, has always maintained that a Lab/Lib Dem coalition was both arithmetically possible and desirable then given the two parties’ overlap on the ‘progressive agenda’. He elaborates this view in his new ‘5 Days in May’, a counter to '22 days in May' produced in autumn 2010 by David Laws, now back as a Lib Dem minister. Their contrasting views emerged an informative, and entertaining, recent event at the Institute.

Yet, as Adonis implied in presenting a spoof Laws’ 2017 memoirs on the progressive coalition, his favoured outcome would only have been possible under certain, as it turned out, implausible assumptions: in particular, that Gordon Brown had resigned as Labour leader on the Friday morning, rather than eventually announcing on the Monday that he was quitting as party leader (a day before he left Number 10).

Moreover, Nick Clegg’s prior decision to commit himself to talk first to the party with the most votes and MPs gave David Cameron a big advantage. The weakness in the Andrew Adonis view is that, while the outgoing Brown Cabinet supported the talks with the Lib Dems, many Labour MPs, including ministers, were reluctant, if not opposed. Moreover, as David Laws has argued, since Labour and the Lib Dems together did not have a majority of MPs, any resulting coalition would have relied on minority party votes, and would have been inherently unstable, and short-lived.

There are several lessons for the future for political leaders:

• It is no good publicly proclaiming your belief in single-party majority government, that is in the hands of voters, not politicians, however much you may want a single party majority.

   

• Try and foster informal links with other parties and their leaders before the election in case you may need them afterwards. Gordon Brown hampered himself by his pre-election coolness to Nick Clegg.

   

• Prepare for what you would do in a hung parliament, which could mean a minority government as well as a formal coalition. In 2010, only the Liberal Democrats fully prepared for negotiations; a small group of senior Tories very privately did during the campaign; and Labour, to its cost, did not do so at all.

   

• Don’t make commitments which you will later open you to charges of betrayal such as the Lib Dem pledge in 2010 against tuition fees which was never sustainable in any likely coalition or deal.

   

  The 2010 campaign also underlines the advantages of taking time to form a government. Five days seemed a long time by British standards, albeit very short by European ones. And next time the parties may gain a day or two longer, though probably not much more. This is necessary not just to explore all the options but also, crucially, to nail down any coalition agreement on policy. In retrospect, there were lots of holes in both the immediate and more extended 2010 agreements which have caused lots of problems since then.

  The leaders also need time to obtain the full commitment of their parties which David Cameron didn’t in 2010, which partly explains the continuing hostility of a hard core of Tory backbenchers to the coalition, and to him.

  2010 also reaffirmed the constitutional principle that the incumbent Prime Minister should remain in office until it is clear who can command confidence in the new parliament. This is a very tricky area since it could affect who has advantage in the negotiations. Gordon Brown did his duty by staying on until the Tuesday since it was only clear that afternoon that he could not command a majority and only David Cameron could. However, there was still an uncertainty even when Mr Brown resigned about whether Mr Cameron would head a minority government or a coalition since the deal with the Lib Dems had not been completed. So for all the attempts to provide clarity, there is probably bound to be some ambiguity.