Thought

[andrewducker]

Electoral Reform is coming, at some point. Labour had it in their manifesto, as did the Lib Dems.

As soon as it does, The Conservatives are fucked, because they just don't get that big a share of the vote.

It's therefore in their best interests to show that they can be part of a coalition government. Because electoral reform will lead inexorably to an end to monolithic governments. If they want to be part of the ruling government of the UK in the future then they need to show that they can be good partners and work well with others, or they're essentially consigned to history.

I wonder if that's why they were willing to compromise so far with the Lib Dems.

Comments

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Fixed term parliament means that it's no longer the prerogative of the PM to call an election when they choose. If the govt loses a vote of confidence then an election will, AFAIK, still be forced, and this has been pointed out as a loophole to this legislation - a govt can deliberately provoke such a vote in order to bring about an election.

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

Yes, the confidence mechanism would still remain unless specifically removed by legislation (which no-one would get away with ... but particularly a govt running on a reform-of-parliament mandate.)

[communicator.livejournal.com]

They may set the majority for a no-confidence vote at 55% which means the Lib Dems can't get rid of them.

BBC here: We understand that under the new agreement for fixed-term parliaments, the only way to remove the government between elections would be a vote of no confidence with the support of 55% of MPs. At present, any no confidence vote requires only 50%, plus one MP.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

And history shows that those that call (and win) a vote of no-confidence are usually punished by the electorate (or so I'm told), so if they decided they wanted to have an election and deliberately threw a no-confidence vote, I think we should agree we have no-confidence in them either and vote them out!