Shelagh McKinlay: Westminster getting hung up over prospect of no outright winner

WITH the latest polls for Westminster voting intentions showing that it's almost too close to call between Labour and the Conservatives, London-based political pundits are panting at the prospect of a hung parliament.

Headlines report that the pound is coming under pressure due to investors' anxiety about the possibility that no single party will win an outright majority.

Watching this fretting is an interesting experience for Scots as minority government has been a fact of political life for us for ten years. In the first two sessions of the Scottish Parliament, the stable Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition and partnership agreement meant the business of the then Executive progressed at a brisk rate and frantic scrambling to get parliamentary votes to stack up was a rare event.

However, I do recall as a former parliamentary clerk earnest discussion during dissolution prior to the last Scottish election about how we would cope with the febrile atmosphere that might ensue were there to be a minority government with no coalition.

Would committees effectively cease to function with members obsessed with playing politics rather than getting the business done? Would votes of no confidence be the order of the day? Would bills be subject to amendment for political spite? Well, no.

Horse-trading over budget proposals has become much more blatant and the Scottish Government has suffered more defeats at the amending stages of bills, but in most respects, everyone has just got on with the job. Whatever knockabout stuff is witnessed in the chamber, parliamentary business at Holyrood this session has had to be as much about negotiation as confrontation.

The key opposition parties had to decide post election whether they played ball or threw their toys out of the pram. They chose the former, perhaps deciding that politically kneecapping a fledging Scottish Government might be seen as an arrogant refusal to accept the election's outcome.

Likewise, the Scottish Government realised you have to pick your battles, most noticeably when John Swinney said the government would not proceed with its manifesto commitment to introduce local income tax. Significantly, the government said the change of heart was about the mathematics of the vote. At Westminster, if ministers get an inkling things will not go their way in the voting lobbies, a spurious reason must be drummed up for the change of heart.

Of course, the PR system here gives the Scottish parties statutory justification for not getting enough bums on Chamber seats – but in the final analysis it's still about perspective.

At UK level, the lack of an outright majority is viewed as a failure all round – on the government's part in losing seats and on the part of the opposition who failed to get the swing. This fuels a sense that a minority government is a mortally wounded beast which needs to be put out of its misery by sticking the political knife in at every opportunity.

The alternative is to accept it as what it is – not an aberration, but the expression of the views of the electorate. As parties jostle each other in the increasingly crowded centre ground, this may be something we need to get used to.

Westminster has not proven itself particularly adept at divining when things are changing. It also did not appear to either look at, or learn from, the Scottish Parliament's response to its own expenses troubles, when it was quickly agreed that expenses information should be released.

If no-one romps to victory in the general election, hopefully Westminster will at least ask the Scots how we've made it work.

• Shelagh McKinlay is a former committee clerk at the Scottish Parliament