to think that it's perfectly legitimate for minority parties to form a coalition?

[FishWithABicycle]

There's a lot of talk about what kind of coalition might be "legitimate" with a lot of the tory press asserting that (a) the party with the largest number of seats should get first shot at forming a coalition and (b) the current incumbent should also get first shot (they will shout this second even louder if Labour get more seats)

This is deliberately spreading an utter misunderstanding of how government works. If a number of smaller parties have enough in common to work together and enough reason to oppose the biggest party, then that biggest party being in opposition IS the democratic will of the people.

article being a bit more eloquent about this

As for (b) - Gordon Brown did not get first stab at forming a coalition 5 years ago and the tory press were howling for him to vacate downing street despite the fact that coalition negotiations were still ongoing. Funny that.

All the Rupert Murdoch newspapers are hanging out Labour and UKIP to dry.

It's funny how he liked Blair though isn't it, then the sun couldn't do enough but Just because the labour MPs were instrumental in the breakdown of the News of the World. He has it in for them.

And there's also that thing about his wife and Tony Blair.

Sorry about that rant!

I absolutely agree. I think it shows that the UK is very inexperienced with coalitions, other countries are quite used to this.

Well the expertise and statesmanship of UKIP plus the Green Party would work well for me..they probably cover everything you'd need politically / intellectually between them....and it's been a great solution for Italy over recent years so minority coalitions have definitely got my vote. Why did we not see this sooner??

Bluesky what a straw man, congratulations. I'd be very surprised if that coalition could work together at all given how little they have in common, and even more surprised if they had more than a tiny handful of seats between them

But if party X and party Y between them have more seats than party Z on their own then there is no moral imperative whatsoever for party Y to choose to cooperate with party Z instead of party X just because Z have more seats.

I was obviously being facetious

Legitimate is obviously using the wrong word. Would a rainbow coalition be practical. That's a reasonable question.

It's possible, but likely to result in a pretty lame duck government as you cannot be sure of passing any measures when House majority is wafer thin. More than two parties is likely to be unworkable. This coalition survived because there was a far-reaching agreement, with only two players.

The Lib/Lab pact didn't, because it was a looser arrangement, and everything became an ad hoc muddle including constant back room deals for just about everything.

Of course, having a government that does precisely nothing might be an attractive option in itself. Didn't Belgium go through that recently?

It would look Tory, because under AV they would get all ukip's second preferences.

YANBU. The Tory press (and of course the Tories) are deliberately muddying the waters.

I don't see why a leftist coalition should not govern if they hold the majority regardless of the size of any single party within the coalition.