Interesting that Iain Dale writes today that he agrees with Labour old boy Ray Hattersley that a hung Parliament would be a very bad thing. I couldn't disagree more.
Lord Pearson, the favourite to be the next leader of UKIP, agrees with me that a hung Parliament would be a very good thing and I'm glad he does. The fact is that I'm one of the young 'uns coming through who has grown up under the New Labour project, created and ran by Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell and Gordon Brown, among others. In many ways, I see very direct similarities between Blair's modernisation process of the Labour Party in the early 90's and the David Cameron project in the Tory Party. And it's frankly scary.
You see, advocates like Iain who support the Conservative Party of course support the Tories because he believes they, with David Cameron as Prime Minister, will bring positive change and improve the country. They naturally then want a strong government that has the authority to make such changes. But having seen Labour's dominance of Westminster, especially up until 2005, so-called strong government carries heavy risks. It allows the governing Party, with a three line whip, to have what is effectively a dictatorship controlled by the PM, their front bench and the whip enforcers.
Having seen just how much damage a so-called "strong" Labour government have done to the country, a Tory one fills me with just as much fear. I don't mind having a government with a significant majority. It's just that if the choice is between Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat, none of which I believe are parties of any real idealogical conviction, I'd pick coalition government every single time. Then hopefully the damage that these people can do will be limited.
2 comments:
It might be even better to have total parliamentary chaos, with weak coalitions constantly collapsing and being replaced with equally weak and short-lived ones. Think of Italy in the 1960s, or Israel more or less since its establishment, or to a lesser extent Germany. They've all done much better than us with no effective government at all for long periods.
Could all the parties practically get on and form one goverment?
I read an interesting article on www.charter2010.co.uk regarding polls showing that a hung parliament is very likely. What do you think about this?
I think that parties should commit themselves now to working to produce a multi-party supported government on a fixed four-year term.
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