The recent era of majoritarian rule in the UK is drawing to a definitive close. On 7 May, for the first time since 1910, voters will almost certainly return a second successive hung parliament. In the absence of a 1992-style polling debacle (when the Conservatives finished 7 points ahead of Labour on election day, having been tied in the final surveys) or an extremely late swing, both of the main parties will fall far short of the 326 seats required for a majority.
The memory of two triple election-winners, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, has made single-party hegemony appear the norm. But in previous decades, the reverse was the case. Of the 20 governments formed in the 20th century, half were coalitions or minority administrations (with five of each). We are almost never in “uncharted territory”. David Cameron recently warned of the SNP: “This would be the first time in our history that a group of nationalists from one part of our country would be involved in altering the direction of the government of our country.” One can only assume that, as in the case of his preferred football team, the Prime Minister suffered a “brain fade”. Between 1885 and 1914, Irish nationalists campaigning for home rule played precisely the role he described.
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