Because there are lots of people on my list who understand this better than I

[lizzie_and_ari]

Just thinking about the whole coalition government.

What actually happens if they don't agree?

eg: With the whole student fees issue, if the Tories were 100% committed to go ahead, but the Lib Dems were sticking to their principles and saying no, how would that actually work? Do they just vote differently on the bill when it is proposed, and then the Tories are less amenable to stuff the LDs want? Or can the LDs say 'this is a deal breaker, we're going to walk away from the whole thing'? And what then? A re-election?

And say if there were an even bigger issue that suddenly came in - eg a war? Are the LDs locked into the coalition regardless, now?

Comments

[andrewducker]

The student fees thing was a special case - where the coalition agreement said that the Lib Dems could abstain, but not vote against, whatever compromise was come up with.

With other stuff, the various MPs are generally more free, unless their leadership are forcing them into it, using the Whip system.

Either party can walk away - but doing so means that people will be less interested in going into power with them in the future. I can see them doing it if things got particularly extreme, but not otherwise.

When it came to the student fees vote, for instance, the policies were a compromise, with the earnings level necessary to trigger payback raised to £19k in order to make more Lib Dems willing to vote for it.

I suspect that there will be more arguing after the bill is passed and date set for the AV referendum, and the repeal bill takes out some of the unpleasant civil liberties stuff that Labour brought in. Those were the main priorities for most of the Lib Dems - once they have those through I suspect they'll be a lot more interested in standing up for themselves.

Edit: That probably comes across as more confident than I really feel about it. I'm happy that we're getting a vote on AV, and a repeal of some of the toxic stuff stuff Labour did (but not enough), and that Labour seem to be admitting they were over the top on some things (but not enough). But I'm also deeply unhappy over the changes to DLA (for instance).

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

Sorry I never replied - thanks for this. Glad to know it seems basically as I'd understood it, thanks for the time to break it down a bit for me :) x