Minority government would represent a fresh “leap into the unknown” for Whitehall but could be more stable than many commentators predict, former cabinet secretary Gus O’Donnell has said.
As Britain’s most senior civil servant until 2011, O’Donnell played a key part in the negotiations for the current coalition between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
With polls pointing to another hung parliament as the most likely result at next week’s election, O’Donnell acknowledged that the prospect of a party without a majority choosing to go it alone would pose challenges for the civil service.
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“It will be, again, a leap into the unknown,” he told BBC Newsnight.
But O'Donnell also pointed to the longevity of the current coalition as proof of the civil service’s ability to adapt to electoral circumstances, and suggested that the potential uncertainty of a minority government had been overstated.
“We didn’t know about coalition government [in 2010]. That turned out to last five years. Minority government, in theory, could easily last for five years under the fixed term parliament act, so I think it’s quite possible. I think people are underestimating the relative stability. But it does depend upon the nature of the numbers.”
In a recent interview with CSW, O'Donnell said voters should be prepared for talks on forming a new government this time to take longer than the five days of negotiations in 2010, although he said people should be "relaxed" about such a prospect.
"That’s just the process of government working out smoothly," he added. "It’s the kind of thing that would be regarded as entirely routine throughout most of Europe.”
Some pollsters predict that the Conservatives could win the popular vote next week, but go on to take fewer seats in the House of Commons than Labour. O’Donnell told Newsnight that he believed such a result could prompt calls for an overhaul of Britain’s voting system.
“People will think at the end of this, ‘are there better voting systems’? Certainly, I think that will be one of the outcomes on May 8. People will think, ‘is this relationship between votes and seats so out of kilter that we should think again about it?’”