What is a hung parliament and how do coalition governments work?
With election day rapidly approaching, polls suggest Labour are on course to win a majority and form the next government. But if the polls are wrong, the result could be a hung parliament. Sky News explains what happens in this scenario.
Tuesday 18 June 2024 14:47, UK
Hung parliaments and coalition governments are rare in the UK - but not unprecedented.
In order to form a government on its own, a party must win a majority of the seats in the House of Commons. This allows it to win votes and pass legislation.
But if no party secures a majority, creative solutions need to be found in order to form a government.
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As we enter the final two weeks of the general election campaign, Sir Keir Starmer's Labour are comfortably ahead in the polls, according to the Sky News poll tracker, and the expectations are they will form a majority government.
But the polls have been wrong before - and unexpected things can happen during the course of a campaign - so what happens if the unexpected comes to pass and we're left with a hung parliament on 5 July?
How many seats are needed to form a government?
A party needs to win more than half of the 650 seats in the Commons to form a majority government - so at least 326 seats.
In practice, however, that number is slightly reduced due to the fact that the Commons Speaker and their deputies do not vote, and Sinn Fein reject British political institutions and their MPs do not take up their seats.
As it stands, a total of 12 people elected do not vote, bringing down the total number of voting MPs to 638.
Therefore, a party currently needs 320 MPs or more to have a working majority in parliament.
What if no party wins a majority?
When no party secures a majority of the seats, this is known as a "hung parliament" because the electorate has returned a parliament in which no party can command the support of a majority of MPs.
The last time this happened was in 2017, when Theresa May's gamble of calling a snap election backfired.
She lost 13 seats and had to strike a "confidence and supply" agreement with Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party to stay in office.
This deal saw the DUP support her minority government in key votes, but it did not join the government as part of a formal coalition.
The 2010 election also saw a hung parliament, with David Cameron - now Lord Cameron - and the Conservatives falling short of an overall majority.
Lord Cameron opted to go for a full-blown coalition with the Liberal Democrats, with an agreement struck after six days of intensive talks.
It was the first coalition in UK politics since the Second World War.
So how do coalition governments work?
A coalition is a government made up of two or more parties.
In 2010, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats worked to combine their policy platforms and decide how ministerial offices would be allocated between MPs of the parties.
They produced a joint document entitled "The coalition: our programme for government", which set out the policy plans in each area for the five-year parliamentary term.
They also produced a document setting out exactly how the government would function, entitled "The coalition agreement for stability and reform", which explicitly set out how government ministers would be appointed and how cabinet and its sub-committees would be composed.
What did the 2010-15 coalition look like and how did it operate?
As the leader of the largest party, Lord Cameron became prime minister and Lib Dem leader Sir Nick Clegg became deputy prime minister.
Between the pair, they also agreed which party's MPs would be appointed to which ministerial jobs, and agreed how any changes to cabinet's composition would be decided.
The coalition documents explicitly set out that collective cabinet responsibility applied as normal, and also established a "coalition committee", co-chaired by Lord Cameron and Sir Nick and composing of an equal number of MPs from both parties, to oversee how the government was functioning and resolve any internal disagreements.
"The coalition: our programme for government" document - at 36-pages long - combined the two parties' manifestos and agreed what policies the coalition would implement and pursue.
However, such detailed agreements are not explicitly required for a coalition to govern, although many would argue that it makes it far more likely to last the full five-year parliamentary term.
One key area of disagreement in the coalition formed in 2010 was university tuition fees - the Conservatives wanted to raise them and the Lib Dems had promised to oppose any bid to do so in the run-up to the election.
Sir Nick eventually relented after much internal discussion.
Despite him making a public apology for the U-turn, the tuition fees issue was seen as one of the main drivers behind the Lib Dems losing 49 of their 57 seats at the 2015 election.
Read more:
What are the parties promising in their manifestos
Who are the biggest political donors?
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Can coalition governments fail?
If the government of the day cannot command the support of a majority of MPs, then the government collapses.
This could come from the smaller party deciding to leave the coalition or just simply that not enough MPs on the government benches support key legislation.
The government could remain in place if it secures a "confidence and supply" agreement of some form to pass key business but politically, a general election would be a more likely scenario.
Could we get a coalition government after the next election?
Labour have a commanding poll lead at the moment so it is viewed as a remote possibility that we will see a coalition government after the election.
But if the unlikely did come to pass, the Scottish National Party (SNP) and the Liberal Democrats would both likely be in a position to enter talks with Labour if Sir Keir finds himself as the leader of the largest party in a hung parliament.
However, the SNP would likely demand a second referendum on Scottish independence as the price for any agreement - something both Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir have ruled out in principle.
Speaking to political editor Beth Rigby in September, Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey explicitly ruled out entering a coalition with the Conservatives again, but hinted at a potential post-election deal with Labour.