SNP-Green and Conservative-Liberal Democrat governments have given coalitions a bad name, but they can work – Scotsman comment

The Scottish Parliament’s Labour-Liberal Democrat administration seemed remarkably free of rancour

Coalitions have, of late, been getting something of a bad reputation. The Conservative/Liberal Democrat pact that saw “Dave and Nick” installed as Prime Minister and Deputy after the 2010 general election was dealt a bad hand, with the 2008 financial crash still reverberating. However, in hindsight, it singularly failed to turn the country’s fortunes around during five years in power.

It was the Lib Dems who took the blame, going from 57 seats to just eight. So it is hardly surprising that former party leader Vince Cable, speaking at an Edinburgh Fringe event, said they would be “very reluctant to get involved in a close coalition-type arrangement" with Labour after the next general election.

Meanwhile in Scotland, the SNP-Scottish Green ‘non-coalition coalition’ has become a source of considerable tension, with former leadership contender Kate Forbes now saying she is “in favour of... checking in with [party] members” to see if they still support the Bute House Agreement between the two parties.

While the Greens have demonstrated alarming levels of incompetence over policies like the deposit return scheme and highly protected marine areas, they somehow seem to have managed to gain the upper hand in negotiations with the SNP about which party gets what. So much so that it has led to allegations of the ‘Green tail wagging the nationalist dog’. In contrast, the Liberal Democrats under Nick Clegg gave every impression of rolling over to David Cameron’s Conservatives, with supporters angered by policies such as the ‘bedroom tax’, still controversial to this day.

However, looking further back in history, it is possible to find positive examples of coalition governments, such as the Labour-Lib Dem administration in the first years of the Scottish Parliament. Holyrood’s honeymoon years may have had an effect but it was a time of hope when radical policies like land reform – which could have gone badly wrong if mishandled – proved to be a success.

This was a government that seemed remarkably free of rancour, perhaps because both sides managed to find the right balance, with the junior partner neither too weak nor too strong. So despite Cable’s understandable wariness, coalitions can work.