There has been a flurry of excitement in recent days after a Labour insider suggested to the Sun newspaper that the party’s constitution might be changed at the request of Sir Keir Starmer to prevent it from ever going into coalition with the SNP or any other nationalist party.
Later the party’s message was changed somewhat to state that there would be no formal arrangement between a future Labour government and the SNP. The story was depressing for two reasons.
Firstly, because it made the absurd assumption that a formal Westminster coalition involving Labour and the SNP was remotely likely.
And secondly because it indicated how far Westminster politics still has to go to catch up with a phenomenon that is commonplace in most European countries – including three of the four UK nations.
Keir Starmer appears to be haunted by what happened at the 2015 general election, when newspapers like the Sun happily gave space to a Tory smear that then Labour leader Ed Miliband would be in the pocket of former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond – a rather strange slur, given that Salmond had been succeeded by Nicola Sturgeon the previous year after suffering a defeat in the independence referendum.
It’s true that the smear had some cachet at the time. I recall Welsh Liberal Democrats blaming it for their loss of the Brecon and Radnor seat, for example.
But surely with all that has happened since, including Brexit, Covid, partygate and the cost-of-living crisis, voters will have more substantial issues to be concerned about at the next general election than to fall for the same trick again.
The idea of banning all co-operation with “nationalist” parties is, in any event, a ridiculous restriction to place on a political party that faces an uphill struggle to win an overall majority next time round.
Regardless of any other considerations, the sensible course would be to wait until the election is over, look at the composition of the new House of Commons and decide what might be possible.
That, for what it’s worth, is what Spain’s socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez does, even factoring in votes from nationalist parties in Catalonia and the Basque country in his calculations after a tight election.
In any case, the idea of the SNP – a party focused on achieving independence for Scotland – demanding ministerial portfolios in a formal coalition with Labour and perhaps the Liberal Democrats is extremely far-fetched.
SNP MPs wouldn’t contemplate it and the party’s activists would go berserk if there was any hint of it.
Scottish Labour may not have worked with the SNP – but in some areas its councillors have been happy to work with local Tories to oust SNP administrations. The most prominent example of this happening is at Edinburgh City Council.
It’s strange, perhaps, that Sir Keir wants to rule out co-operation with “nationalist” parties, but not, it seems, with Conservatives.
In Wales, of course, Welsh Labour currently has a “partnership agreement” with Plaid Cymru, with the two parties working together on policy implementation and Plaid special advisers being embedded in the Welsh Government.
Most observers expected Plaid to be in a formal coalition with Labour last year, and that would almost certainly have happened, with Plaid leader Adam Price as deputy first minister, if Labour hadn’t performed unexpectedly well in the Senedd election.
It happened before, of course, between 2007 and 2011, when Labour and Plaid called it the One Wales government.
Plaid’s aspiration to achieve an independent Wales didn’t rule out co-operation between the two parties, and those who participated in the administration remember it with affection as a period of harmony.
The secret of the One Wales government’s success was that a detailed programme was negotiated between the two parties covering all policy areas.
It took some time to work out, but those involved knew that the resulting administration would work far more smoothly if potential differences had been discussed and ironed out in advance.
The two sides were given the space to work out the terms of the coalition, and because of the comprehensive nature of the agreement, no significant policy disagreements occurred over the nearly four years of the government’s existence.
Seven years before, a similar process had taken place when Labour formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.
There was a marked contrast when the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats went into coalition after the 2010 general election.
Newspaper and broadcast journalists were desperate to see a coalition formed as quickly as possible.
They hyped up the narrative that Britain’s role as a strong power was under threat because of the lack of a majority government.
I recall watching Nick Robinson, who was the BBC’s political editor at the time, producing melodramatic news reports implying that the national roof was falling in because a coalition hadn’t yet been formed.
The consequence was that the Liberal Democrats were rushed into making an agreement without securing sufficiently their “red line” demands.
They should have held out on the student funding issue they had put at the centre of their campaign. Capitulating in the way they did destroyed their credibility and made them look like chancers whose priority was to get well-paid ministerial jobs with chauffeur-driven cars for themselves.
The Lib Dems also failed to do enough to protect the vulnerable from austerity policies pushed through by the Conservatives.
In fact, they became enablers of such measures, damaged their reputation significantly and haven’t recovered their electability in urban areas where they once rivalled Labour for the progressive vote.
Most European countries have lived with coalition governments for many years.
They are an almost inevitable consequence of proportional electoral systems.
Any supporter of our “first past the post” system at Westminster would be hard pushed to make a case that it has led to better governance than what’s achieved by coalitions running governments in Europe.
In fact the likelihood is that a plurality of views and different expertise brought to a cabinet table with ministers from more than one party will lead to better and more creative policy outcomes.
And across Britain, where under present arrangements the right wins most of the time, a new dynamic could be created at Westminster if progressive parties were prepared to work together in a spirit of co-operation that has so often been sadly lacking.
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