Talk:United Kingdom general election, October 1974

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[edit] Ulster Unionists

To clarify my edit, even my mental arithmetic is strong enough to see that Labour would still have had an outright majority in the October election even if the Unionists had supported the Conservatives. In February, it's true the Tories would have out-numbered Labour with Unionist backing, but they would still have been short of an overall majority, and could probably have only have formed a government with the additional support of the Liberals. Sofia9 16:49, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

True, though one of the key points in much of the talk about February is the "largest party" rule. Because hung Parliaments are now rare (only three since 1918) expectations tend to be based on the majority governments that are more common - i.e. the largest party is "the winner". (See for example the recent discussion about coalitions in Scotland where many argued the SNP were entitled to a "first chance".) Had the Ulster Unionists still taken the whip, the Conservatives would have been the largest party in the Commons and in a stronger position to at the very least hang on for a few months. (Apart from anything else, the election - called quite suddenly only three weeks earlier - would have impacted on all three main parties' financial resources and another election was best delayed a bit.)

The 1923 general election saw the governing party remain the largest but lose its majority - it stayed in office until the Commons had voted it out. By contrast in 1929 the governing party was not the largest and the Prime Minister resigned before Parliament met. (Although it has to be said in 1929 8 days elapsed between polling and the PM leaving office, longer than Ted Heath's supposed "undemocratic" staying in power over the weekend, though I suppose transport considerations, public acceptibility and even a wish to give the new PM a bit of time to assemble his government before being deluged with matters of state were all factors.) Timrollpickering 20:46, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree with all that, and it's a very useful summary of the various historical precendents. My point above was merely that the entirely unambiguous previous wording - "both of these results were due to the Ulster Unionist Party no longer willing to sit in a coalition government with the Conservatives" - went far beyond what is supported by the facts. In the October election, the Conservatives would not have overtaken Labour even with Unionist backing (because Labour in fact had an absolute majority), while in February it's not entirely clear what would have happened. The most that can reasonably be said is that Heath would have been the favourite to retain power had the UUP still been taking the Tory whip. The other possible interpretation of the earlier wording is that Labour would not have won the second election if they hadn't been able to form a government after the first. As speculation goes that's perfectly plausible, but it doesn't exactly represent hard fact. I was also slightly sceptical about the use of the word "coalition". I'm not (quite) old enough to remember first-hand, but I've never had the impression that the old Tory-UUP relationship was thought of as a coalition as such - the UUP were arguably seen more as the semi-detached NI branch of the Conservative Party. Sofia9 00:51, 21 June 2007 (UTC)