Minorities can't run councils – or can they?

The council elections of May 8th produced a highly unusual result with no majority party in any of our 32 councils. We have watched and waited as different political parties, and in several places Independent councillors, have performed elaborate manoeuvres to try and create various forms of administrations in different councils.

This has all been in the context of some parties, furiously denying the possibility they might collaborate in any shape or form with other parties; some parties standing aloof from such arrangements, and others acting quite scared of coalition with anybody at all. The recently concluded UK General Election with several weeks of stark party rivalry and campaigning has not helped us to get to a stable position in all councils in Scotland, and has been blamed for delays on deciding some Councils are actually did by way of political leadership.

Of course, Scottish councils are not alone in this anymore; we have minority central government in Scotland; in Northern Ireland, always as intended, the possibility of some form of shared administration – currently stalled; and now a Minority government in Westminster. Only in Wales do we have a sort of a coalition, with Labour, one Lib Dem and one Independent leaving 31 Assembly Members supporting the Administration facing 29 in Opposition.

All in all, different parts of the UK government machinery seem to have found themselves with the reality of minority government, even if they have not embraced it wholeheartedly.

This apparent desire to create various forms of coalition despite major constraints on choice; and at the same time avoid condemnation from both other parties and from within your own party, has forced some council party groups to apparently embrace the reality of 'minority administrations'.

This essay explores some aspects of minority council administrations – and discusses whether such arrangements present challenges to the assumptions we have worked under in local government for 40 or 50 years.

Some decades ago I was a councillor – one term in opposition, and one term in a majority administration. At a council meeting one of my majority colleagues argued that we were going to make a decision – on a matter furiously opposed by the three minority parties – "under the terms of Standing Order 32". There was puzzlement and much scrabbling for copies of the council standing orders until the other shoe dropped and he continued: "We have 32 votes, you have only 30."

There is currently not one council in Scotland where any committee convenor or cabinet member could confidently say that today. Of course there are some councils where there is an administration coalition that currently has a majority of votes, but as we saw between 2012 -2017, such majorities can erode, or even collapse suddenly. The days in the 1980s/ 1990s when comfortably more than half of councils were majority controlled are simply gone and they currently look unlikely to return. After the 1984 elections there were only four councils (of 53 Districts) listed as ‘No Overall Control ‘; the BBC currently records all bar three councils as being ‘NOC’. A lot has changed in the intervening years, but the generally held assumptions that colour public views of how councils should be run have changed to a much lesser extent – if at all.

It needs to be recognised that current party sentiment amongst voters, allied to the system of voting, used in Scotland local government elections since 2007 the Single Transferable Vote (STV) has to some extent caused this. I have a declaration of interest here; I was one of the people partly responsible for that change to the voting system, when I chaired a committee that recommended the new system.

However, STV alone is not the only reason Scotland now has no majority councils now; after all, there were majority SNP and Labour councils in the previous period, after the 2007 and 2012 elections.

The reason we have councils that either have ‘No Overall Control’ or have a majority of ‘Independent’ members is that the public no longer tend to vote as they used to, and as our parents and grandparents did. We no longer coalesce in our votes around a favoured party; the world where the consequences of First Past the Post could produce a thumping majority for the party that made it to that post even if it had less than 50% of the votes cast are gone.

Until and if we ever re-settle in our political views then ‘No Overall Control ‘ is going to be the likely future for many if not most councils; let’s get used to that.

I want to suggest that – as is so often the case – some politicians and at times political parties can struggle to adjust to this notion of a changed electoral system and changes in the electorate, just as most parties at first struggled to adapt to the Additional Member system that elects the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments.

Post-election, in Glasgow, where the SNP did not achieve their ambition of a majority on the council, there appear to have been some heated words about the Green party being unwilling to support both an SNP Lord Provost and Depute Provost and the proposed committee arrangements SNP wanted – i.e. a majority on the Cabinet. The Green Party seems to have made a clear choice to support the largest party in Glasgow, as it does currently in the Scottish Parliament, but crucially, not on all matters and all votes.

Politicians and political parties can struggle to adjust to a changed electoral system

The common obsession of most of the major parties has been to find ways to create some form of 'majority ‘ control in various councils. This generally happened in the councils of 2007 and 2012 with a an array of joint, and even multi-party, administrations that across the country was a real cocktail of mixtures, some more stable than others. In some cases these administrations lasted, in some cases they collapsed or were changed for various reasons. So, as previous experience shows, a coalition arrangement agreed some days after an election might not survive five years, whether through attrition or sudden collapse.

Part of the motivation of such arrangements was to echo the Labour/Liberal Democrat control of the first two periods of the Scottish Parliament, with a working assumption that these were the parties best suited to work together. It is worth noting however that there have been, over 10 years, multi-party arrangements between two or more different parties that have seen some very unusual partnerships around Scotland, occasionally including Independent councillors.

Of course, as we entered and came out of the Council elections such coalitions were always going to be more difficult to engineer this time round. After all, who was likely to chum up with who post these 2017 elections? The Lib Dems suffered in 2015 through their Westminster coalition; Labour was damaged in 2015 by being seen to share campaigning with the Conservatives in 2014; the Conservatives wanted to re-assert themselves; the SNP had a 'plague on all your houses' line. 

Despite this, after May 5th 2017 there are various coalitions currently in place, some of which have assembled an actual majority - for example, Labour and SNP in Dumfries and Galloway; and the Conservatives, Lib Dems and Independents in Angus. Several other councils have minority administrations such as East Dunbartonshire (where the SNP have 7 of 22 councillors) and West Lothian (Labour have 12 out of 33 councillors). 

In most cases, where no majority has emerged and there is a minority administration, it is apparent that there have been votes - or more often abstentions - of convenience when positions have been filled and committee memberships decided. In Midlothian (where a Labour minority administration has 7 of 18 councillors) Labour has all the seats on the Cabinet, but is in a minority on each committee.

We sometimes forget that councils – as important as they are for local decision-making and local services – differ from Parliaments in several distinct ways. Central to this difference are two features; in practical terms, if there is an array of parties and independents elected, and no majority, then councillors have to live with that until by-elections change things. If there is no majority within the council, that is just life. 

Councils cannot engineer a fresh election as Mrs May did back in April 2017, and as she (or her successor) perhaps will have to do somewhat earlier than she might have hoped. Similar options are available in the devolved legislatures, as we saw in Northern Ireland recently. The only option for councils would be for all councillors to resign, a collective action hard to enforce and unlikely to be popular with electors locally.

If there is no majority within the council, that is just life

The other key factor is that while councils make many important decisions in terms of local options and local choices on investment and services, they do not enter into international treaties, sell off major country wide state services, or increase/decrease household incomes by substantial amounts in any one year.

Other parties may forcibly oppose whatever potential council policies or decisions are preferred and supported by one party but on a case-by-case basis, there is usually some accommodation that can be arrived at between parties. The likelihood of the next five years in most councils is that we shall see few major changes of current direction – even if these were signalled in the 2017 LG election manifestos – unless they get some form of consensual support, or face very fragmented opposition.

Whichever party occupies decision shaping positions such as convenorships or executive positions has the power to shape agendas, to frame the way in which proposals are put forward, and to accelerate or defer discussion and decision – within reason. They can advance their ideas far more readily than can the councillors who are not in that chair at the head of the committee table.

It is likely that such arrangements will be made much easier if those in an administration are careful and considerate in talking to the opposition councillors earlier than they might otherwise be inclined to. There is an arrogance and presumption that goes with majority control, where decisions are made in a private majority group meeting and then sprung on other councillors at short notice as though their views were of no account - hence my point above and Standing Order 32. It could well be the case that by earlier negotiation, securing support through private discussion with opposition councillors can build understanding, diminish the likelihood of objection, and make the life of the administration easier.

Those in an administration – in most instances – will also have the major advantage of initiating proposals that other parties are then forced to suggest amendments to, giving them an inherent advantage. This is particularly so where there is a range of other parties, unwilling to be mutually supportive of each other. Amendment management in such circumstances is often a classic case of ‘...any enemy of my enemy is my friend (at least on this occasion)'...

There will of course be some –probably few – instances where a decision is so fundamental to the governing party that defeat will lead to abdication, and just allowing some other set of councillors to try their best. Of course in most councils, there will another minority able, and perhaps willing, to take over –but in turn it will still be a minority, with the requirement to follow much the same approach as the previous minority has had to do.

Until this past week we have generally been used to majorities in various spheres of government in the UK and uncomfortable with coalitions, though over the past decade we have got more used to them, especially in Scotland.

Some officers like majorities, even if through coalition – as two chief executives said to me last week – because they think it encourages stability and predictability. Perhaps that is the case, but the evidence is not actually overwhelming that majority or coalition councils make 'better' decisions. They sometimes make some decisions more quickly – though not always so – but not necessarily better decisions for that. It will of course also be challenging for senior officers, particularly those who have worked for ‘majority' councils for a long time. 

...the evidence is not actually overwhelming that majority or coalition councils make 'better' decisions.

However, the vast majority of senior officers are usually skilfully even-handed between those councillors who run things and those don’t. Officers may benefit from defining their practice and protocols even more clearly than the informal assumptions – and that might even be a good starting point for those new minority councils to begin their five years work, without the advantage of 50% + 1 of the votes in the council.

Maybe this next five years (in our councils) will teach us to accept, if not love, minorities; as for the UK government – that’s something for next week, month, and year – who knows?

Richard Kerley is Co-chair of the Centre for Scottish Public Policy @RichardKerley

Images: Wikimedia Commons, mattk1979 Kenny Murray Flickr via Compfight cc, Pixabay

Data visualisation by @cwmaddix