They are dependent on a coalition government because so far they have never had a majority in Parliament. Without the Conservatives choosing to form a coalition with them in order to create a majority, the Liberal Democrats would never have been able to come into power. Furthermore they’re becoming increasing unpopular in power due to breaking promises and being accused of ‘turning Tory’. This suggests that they have no political strength by themselves and that many potential voters will turn to alternatives, such as the Labour party, who could ultimately gain popularity due to the failures of the Liberal Democrats; therefore the UK is still a two party system favouring the Conservatives and Labour party. However on the other hand it is argued that the UK could not possibly be a two party system because the Conservatives wouldn’t have been able to come into power without the Liberal Democrats.
In 2011 the government held a referendum offering the public the chance to change the voting system from FPTP to AV but the public voted against changing it. One key advantage of FPTP is that it is straight forward and simple to use as it grants each person 1 single vote without an ordering system and generally means that government changeover is fast as the results are quick and easy to calculate. However in 2010 this was not the case, as for the first time in over 20 years, no single government won a majority of seats and so it took a few days for a new government to come into power. In this sense the 2010 election illustrates poorly the simplicity of the FPTP system as it failed to produce a government and so became much more complicated to decide who came to power and eventually the choice was essentially taken out of the public’s hands so was not simple or quick. Another advantage of the FPTP system is that it manages to marginalise extremist and revolutionary parties such as UKHIP and BNP as they are unlikely to win overall constituencies.
How has coalition government affected party politics in the UK? A coalition government is a government in which two or more political parties are in power, reducing the dominance of any one party within that coalition. The usual reason given for this arrangement is that no party on its own can achieve enough votes to gain power. The UK currently has a First Past the Post electoral system which is not designed to create a coalition government and so the now coalition government is the first we have experienced in the UK. The arrival of a coalition government formed between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party in 2010 has affected UK party politics in various ways.
This would actually increase the level of democracy in effect but may completely defy the objective of politics. If elections were every 2 years, parties could not make any long term goals for the country in fear of losing the next general election. All policies would be short term and therefore not made for any good running of the country and just to gain popularity in the short term. This in turn may not enhance democracy, but lead it to a failing economy and government and may even lead to anarchism. Another potential way of increasing and enhancing democracy would be a compulsory vote.
These constitutional reforms were proposed to improve democracy and the legitimacy of the governments in the UK however there has been a sense that these reforms have occurred with no real end goal therefore it makes it difficult to consider how effective they will be and if they would even make a difference due to the political framework of the UK. With the UK’s preservation of parliamentary sovereignty it in effect cancels out any proposals to move away from an elective dictatorship and to become more democratic. One reform that has taken place since 1997 is the reform of the House of Lords in the form of the House of Lords Act (1999). This was reform was proposed in two parts. The first phase was the dispersal of hereditary peers with only 92 remaining today and it abolished the voting rights of most hereditary peers.
They also have a number of hereditary peers (although there will no longer be any hereditary peers appointed. There have been many calls to make the House of Lords into an elected chamber as people say that the fact that it is unelected reduces the democracy of the United Kingdom and that it is unfair to have an unelected as the peers may not actually represent the views of the people. However, there are also many arguments as to why the House of Lords should remain unelected. The first and possibly most convincing argument is the fact that an elected second chamber would actually be completely pointless as it would be exactly the same and the House of Commons. This means that instead of making the House of Lords elected, it would probably be more practical just to get rid of it all together and just have the House of Commons.
It marks a significant step on the road to open government which is a vital element in democratic government. It led to the publishing of MPs expenses, which led to an increased accountability in the spending of public money. This suggests that constitutional reform has gone far enough and they have also produced results. The Labour party promised to make provisions towards electoral reform. This has occurred in the devolved assemblies, which utilise proportional representation systems such
The current First Past the Post system leads to an unfair system of representation. For example, in the 2010 general elections, although the Conservative party gained 36% of the vote they ended up receiving 47% of the seats in the House of Commons. For this reason, smaller parties such as the Liberal Democrats do the worse out of this system. In the same elections, although they gained 23% of the vote they only got 9% of the seats. This is one reason that the Westminster electoral system is in need of reform- proportional systems deliver a much more representable result which is more democratic and means that all votes have the same value.
It can be argued that FPTP has created a clear two party system. This can be illustrated because post-war only Labour and Conservatives have been in power. Labour or Conservatives have been the government every election because they have a lot of support throughout the UK, and therefore come first in many constituencies. To form a government, a party must have the majority of seats throughout the UK, which Labour or Conservatives always do. In 2005, the Liberal Democrats had 22% of the overall vote in the UK, sharing, but because of the FPTP system they only won 62 seats out of the 646 constituencies in the UK, this shows this system as clearly an unfair.
Since David Cameron took over the leadership of the Conservative Party in 2005, he carried out a number of reform policies to “modernise” the Conservative Party. Most of his social policies are generally described as an idea of “big society”. Cameron proposed that the Government should allow communities to take more control of services within their own areas, which in other words, more power should be dispersed to local government, authorities and the people. In the meantime, the Liberal Democrats under the leadership of Nick Clegg tends to adopt policies of Liberal and Socialist values. However, what we can see in the coalition agreement made in 2010 is that they agreed to promote a fair and responsible government which closely related to David Cameron’s “Big Society” ideology.