In this tight election an often overlooked factor is the effectiveness of the communication operations of the parties after the election result is known.
How the parties present themselves could be decisive in the formation - not to mention survival - of the next government.
There has been a lot of discussion of the detail of Britain’s unwritten constitution in the event of a hung parliament - whether the largest party would have the right to form a government, the role of the Monarch, the importance of a Queen’s Speech. But if on the morning of May 8th it is clear that no single party has a mandate to govern, what then?
As the morning wears on the parties will embark on a frenzy of negotiations and calculations - in public and private - as they jostle for the right to form the next government. But not only will the party leaderships have to try to form a government, they must also seek to create legitimacy for that government.
If you can’t gain legitimacy from commanding a majority in parliament, how do you get it? The answer is by communicating effectively how you will form a government, and why you deserve to remain there.
Of course, a lot hinges on the constitutional guidelines for forming a government in the event of a hung parliament. The Cabinet Manual, produced in 2011, says that where an election does not result in an overall majority for a single party, the incumbent government remains in office unless and until the Prime Minister tenders his or her resignation and the Government’s resignation to the Sovereign.
An incumbent government is entitled to wait until the new Parliament has met to see if it can command the confidence of the House of Commons, but is expected to resign if it becomes clear that it is unlikely to be able to command that confidence and there is a “clear alternative”. At this point the Sovereign will invite the person who appears most likely to be able to command the confidence of the House to serve as Prime Minister and to form a government.
This seems reasonably straight-forward - the incumbent government has the right to stay in government and to attempt to form the next government unless or until it becomes clear that they will not be able to. David Cameron, therefore, can stay in Number 10 after the election for as long as he wants, so long as there is no clear alternative government. If it becomes clear he can form a government he will do so. If not, he will resign and the “clear alternative” will form a government.
But it is naive to suggest that the majority of the population have read the Cabinet Manual - one might even speculate as to how many politicians have - and know what the procedure for forming a government entails.
Even if voters have read it, one voter’s idea of a “clear alternative government” may not be the same as another’s, never mind the same as the politicians’. Is a minority government a “clear alternative”? Is a coalition, in the process of being negotiated, a “clear alternative”? How will the public form a view on this?
In practical terms, much will rest on how the prospective government is explained, and how coalition negotiations, if there are any, are presented. So the message honed by the ‘spin-doctors’, along with their party leaders will be important and is bound to influence political commentators and, through them, the views of the man or woman in the street.
The danger for David Cameron is being perceived as “squatting” in Downing Street in the immediate aftermath of the election despite the fact that convention stipulates that he has a right to be there.
Gordon’s Brown’s experience in 2010 tells us that the longer you stay there, the quicker your popularity and legitimacy diminish. That is unless, of course, the Conservatives can effectively communicate David Cameron’s right to be there, according to precedent, and counteract the opposition parties’ screams of foul-play. Gordon Brown’s team couldn’t do it, but could the current Conservative press team?
Labour face an altogether different legitimacy issue, the possibility they will be “propped up” in government by MPs in Wales and Scotland, while they do not have a majority in England.
In this scenario, the West Lothian question would rear its head once again. What right, people might ask, does a Labour party with fewer seats than the Conservatives in England have to make legislation that affects only the English NHS. Worse still - as their opponents would claim - a Labour party propped up by the Scottish Nationalists?
No doubt the Conservative party, not to mention UKIP, would make a big fuss about this, and the feeling might be shared across England, and even to an extent, the Home Nations. Even if this kind of government is initially accepted, they may lose legitimacy if challenged on a particularly controversial or unpopular piece of legislation.
A third possibility in this by no means exhaustive list is an attempt by Labour or the Conservatives to form a minority government.
If either party succeed in getting a Queen’s speech through parliament with one-off support from another party or parties then the government could be composed of a party for which 60 to 70 per cent of the electorate did not vote. Such a minority government would struggle to debase opposition accusations that they do not have a mandate to govern.
This, again, can be heavily influenced by the way the parties present themselves. After the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections Alex Salmond flew into Edinburgh’s Prestonfield House in a helicopter and emerged to declare victory in the election in an impassioned speech outside the historic Scottish site.
At this point the SNP hadn’t technically won the election - some constituencies had yet to declare - but Salmond had already presented himself as not just a winner, but a First Minister, and he had beaten Jack McConnell to it. Shortly after that it emerged that the SNP had won one more seat than Labour (47 seats to Labour’s 46) and Salmond went on to be First Minister despite having won just over 31 per cent of the vote.
A lot in the weeks and months following the next election hinges on how the new government, and the prospective government, is perceived by the public. The politics of government is now synonymous with the politics of legitimacy. And that in turn can be heavily influenced by presentation.