A question about British politics

[womzilla]

Now that the Alternative Vote referendum has been held (and failed to reform voting), why are the Liberal Democrats still in coalition with the Conservatives? Couldn't they force a confidence vote, which would fail, and dictate terms to the Labour Party for a new coalition? The Libs can't possibly relish being part of the government which destroys the UK for a generation, can they?

(I assume that enough of the small parties would join Labour and the Lib Dems to form a majority--but maybe I'm completely misreading things and the Conservatives would have an easier time scraping together 20 votes from the small parties than the center-left would have scraping together 11.)

Comments

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I'm too solidly embedded in US politics, in which it is assumed that no party actually feels bound by any promise. But it seems to me that all the LibDems would have to say is, "We joined coalition with the Tories in the expectation that they would be interested in governing the country. In fact, they are solely interested in gutting it, and we will have no part in this continuing travesty."

This would encourage voters to flee the LibDems, but it would also encourage them to rally to the honest party. I have no idea what the balance would be, but it seems that if the LibDems stay with the Conservatives, they will only lose supports at a rate best described as "horrific".

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

What I left out of the description is that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats made a formal agreement to run the coalition for the full five years of an expected parliamentary term, and then backed this up with legislation not to dissolve early. The reason for this was to prevent either party from blackmailing the other by threatening to withdraw and destroy the government. Exactly what legal compulsion enforces the continuation of the coalition I'm not sure, and I can't believe it's binding on individuals, but it does bear some weight. For one thing, the Lib Dems wouldn't be the "honest" party by violating a mutual-support agreement they voluntarily signed. And even without such an agreement, if the Lib Dems did withdraw, the Tories would accuse them of bad faith, and even if not true, that charge would muddy the waters considerably.