Supplying confidence: How confidence and supply agreements between minority governments and smaller parties work

Between 2010 and 2015, Westminster and Whitehall learned how to make coalition government work for a full parliamentary term – something that in May 2010, many predicted would not happen. Following the election of 8 June 2017, we now, unexpectedly, have a hung parliament once more. Full coalition on the 2010 model does not seem a likely outcome, so attention now turns to how minority government can be made to work.

This IfG Insight paper, drafted before the May 2015 election in anticipation of the hung parliament that never was, considers the challenges of minority government; it discusses what sort of agreement or arrangement might be entered into between the government and any smaller parties.