Hung Parliament

What is a Hung Parliament?

In a parliamentary system of government, a hung parliament is where no single political party, has an absolute majority of seats in the parliament. It is also less commonly known as a balanced parliament or a legislature under no overall control. It is then up to the party with the most votes to seek an alliance with a smaller party, in order to get the required number of seats for a majority when seats from both parties are combined. This is to enable the government to have enough votes to pass important legislation through parliament.  The alliance, often called a coalition, will need enough votes to defeat a vote of no confidence in the government,  If it comes to pass that a majority government cannot be formed then it will be referred to as a minority government. The second place party in the General Election may also attempt to form a coalition with the other political parties in an attempt to gain the majority of seats and oust the single largest party from power.  If neither party can form a strong coalition there will be a dissolution of parliament and another general election may be called as a last resort,

In the United Kingdom, before World War One, hung parliaments were rare as there were only 2 parties, Tories and Whigs.  From the mid 1800’s the Conservatives and Liberal parties were able to deliver a significant number of MP’s.  Changes came about after the Act of Union 1800, and a number of Irish MP’s took seat in the House.  Two Reform Acts (in 1867 and 1884) extended the franchise and redrew constituencies which coincided with a change in Irish politics.  In 1885, neither party had an overall majority, so the Irish Parliamentary Party held the balance of power and made Irish Home Rule, leading to another General Election 18886.  The Conservatives were successful in winning most seats and took power with support from the Liberals who opposed the Irish Home Rule, the Liberal Unionist Party.

Both elections 1910, resulted in a hung parliament with an almost identical number of seats won by the governing Liberal Party and the Conservative Party. This was because of both a constitutional crisis and the rise of the Labour Party.

Since the elections of 1929, there have been three general elections that resulted in a hung parliaments in the UK. The first was the election in February 1974, and the ensuing parliament lasted only until October. The second was the May 2010 election, the result of which was a hung parliament with the Conservative party as the largest single party, who formed a coalition the with Liberal Democrats. The results for the 3 main parties were: Conservatives 306, Labour 258, Liberal Democrats 57. The third one resulted from the snap election held in June 2017 that had been called for by Theresa May in order to strengthen her majority heading into Brexit negotiations later in 2017.

The formation of the coalition resulting from the 2010 election led to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, which instituted fixed five-year Parliaments and transferred the power to call early elections from the Prime Minister to Parliament itself. This was the idea of the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who said that this would stop the Prime Minister, David Cameron, from calling a snap election to end the hung parliament, as many other Conservatives had requested.

The term, Hung Parliament only came into existence during the 1970’s and was first used by a journalist, Simon Hoggart, in The Guardian in 1974, according to researchers, Andrew Blick and Stuart Wilks-Heeg.