A Tory-Lib Dem Coalition?
Two words: No thanks.
A Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government would not work. Just Like a Labour-Lib Dem coalition wouldn’t. Or Labour-Conservative coalition. Coalitions, just in general, simply don’t work. Not in our political system.
Name any coalition in Britain that has not existed during a world war. Stuck? That would be because there hasn’t been any. There have been minority governments, but never any coalition government. And for good reason.
The first-past-the-post electoral system encourages oppositional politics. It certainly doesn’t encourage coalition government. The reason for this is the coalitions require a great amount of compromise and consensus – something not encouraged in the tribal world of British politics.
Whilst it is very good that the Lib Dems are making these sort of noises, the sort of thing they will want is to going to be things that a Conservative government could, or would, give. PR for Commons elections, for example, would be a very bad idea – although a cause close to the heart of many Lib Dems. It would be far better for the Conservatives to work with the Lib Dems on certain issues. But a formal government coalition? No thanks.
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While I agree with you that it would not work at the national level, I would just like to point out a very successful Con/LibDem coalition (led by a Tory) in Birmingham. We just moved from zero stars under Labour to 3 stars.
FPTP does not encourage ‘oppositional politics’ (there is no reason why we cannot elect 659 genuinely independent members to parliament using FPTP). The adversarial political system that is tearing the ‘U’K apart and destroying England is due to whipped party politics.