Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.
2025 was the year that multi-party politics became established across Britain. Since the summer, we’ve had five parties on double-figure poll ratings. As things stand, only Reform UK has a chance of winning a majority, but if the Conservative recovery under Kemi Badenoch continues, Nigel Farage could easily fall short.
Both the 2010 and 2017 general elections produced hung parliaments – but neither of those were widely anticipated. Therefore, in advance of the election campaigns, there was next to no scrutiny on the issue of government formation.
Next time will be different. Unless one party sustains an overwhelming lead in the polls – and Reform has yet to do so – the consequences of a hung parliament will be taken seriously. Each party leader should be prepared for a barrage of questions as to what deals they’re willing to make (and with whom) in the event of an indecisive result.
And while there’s no place for the public around the negotiating table, they can still make their feelings clear at the ballot box.
So what are voters hoping for in the event of a hung parliament? Someone really ought to ask them – and last week that’s exactly what YouGov did. For first the time we’ve got some hard evidence as to how the electorate might respond to the new era of coalition politics.
The first thing that the research tells us is that British public aren’t that keen on coalitions: 49 per cent of those surveyed said they preferred single party government, only 27 per cent preferred coalitions and 24 per cent were don’t knows. Among Conservative voters the thumbs down for multi-party government is even more emphatic, with a 69 per cent prefering the usual British way of doing things.
Of course, this is the same electorate that’s currently splitting their support in such a way as to make coalition government much more likely than at any point since the war. But it isn’t the job of voters to extract coherence from the chaos of democracy – in theory, that’s what we have politicians for.
Speaking of chaos, this country isn’t just faced with the prospect of one or two possible coalitions but multiple permutations. YouGov polled people on no less than twelve different options. The headline finding was that of all those tested, the most popular is a Lib Dem and Labour government with Ed Davey as Prime Minister. Oh dear.
And if that isn’t grim enough for you, take a look at the next three most popular combinations. Labour plus the Greens with Sir Keir Starmer as prime minister is in second place, followed by Labour plus the Liberal Democrats (again with Starmer as premier), and then the Greens plus Labour with Zack Polanski leading the country. It’s only in fifth place that we get the first right-of-centre combo: Reform UK plus the Conservatives, with Nigel Farage as prime minister.
And yet this isn’t quite as discouraging as it might first appear. The relative popularity of the left-of-centre coalitions is a function of the fact that people voting for left-of-centre parties – i.e. the Greens, the Lib Dems and, to a lesser extent, Labour – aren’t as allergic to coalition politics as right-of-centre voters. For instance, supporters of Reform are even more wedded to single-party government than their Tory counter-parts.
It should be also be said that none of the possible coalitions is especially popular. For instance, the most popular – the Lib/Lab/Davey abomination – only gets the thumbs-up from 36 per cent of those asked, while 45 per cent gave it the thumbs down.
Then there’s the fact that on current polling and under the current voting system, Labour and the Lib Dems are nowhere near to winning a combined majority. Furthermore, that would remain the case even under proportional representation. Josh Housden, founder of Nowcast and a supporter of electoral reform, has done the maths, and his projection (based on the latest YouGov polling) shows that the Lib Dems and Labour would together have 213 MPs.
That means they’d need the 97 Green MPs too – and even then this traffic light coalition would be short of a majority. Instead, it would have to depend on some kind of arrangement involving the SNP and/or Plaid Cymru and/or the Northern Ireland parties. In other words, we’d be back to the coalition of chaos concept that did Ed Miliband such harm back in 2015. (Note that the YouGov research only asked people about two-party coalitions; I’d expect voters to take a dimmer view of more complicated arrangements.)
In any case, the introduction of PR in time for the next election without a manifesto mandate, a referendum or a consensus among Labour MPs would be a dicey proposition to say the least. Labour would have be desperate to even try – though it may yet come to that.
But unless or until it does, our time is better spent looking at the possibility of a right-of-centre coalition, i.e. one between Reform UK and the Conservatives. So what sort of reception does that idea receive from the voters? Well, judging by the YouGov findings the polite answer is “mixed”: 29 per cent would support a Ref plus Con government led by Farage, and 25 per cent would go for a Con-plus-Ref government led by Badenoch.
Among Conservative voters 41 per cent would support the first of these two options and 66 per cent the second; the corresponding figures among Reform voters are 85 per cent and 55 per cent. So our current voters are less keen on a coalition than theirs are. And there’s a further complication: according to the YouGov research 37 per cent of our supporters would not like to see Reform in a coalition government – a higher proportion than those who want to exclude the Lib Dems (30 per cent).
However, that doesn’t mean that more Tory voters would prefer a coalition with the Lib Dems than Reform. When given a choice of preferred coalition partner, 39 per cent of our supporters opted for Reform, 21 per cent for the Lib Dems and 29 per cent for a Conservative minority government. This isn’t contradictory, but it is complicated; so complicated, in fact, that Badenoch may be tempted to avoid the issue all together.
For the time being, that’s exactly what she should do – at least in respect to any push to unite the right. As the defection of Nadhim Zahawi shows, Reform’s strategy is still destroy-the-Tories. Unless or until that attempt visibly fails, there’s no point in having any sort of grown-up conversation.
However, there is one aspect of the coalition issue which could be turned to our advantage, and that’s in respect to the Liberal Democrats. So far, Ed Davey has got away with doing and saying remarkably little beyond banalities like falling off a paddle board or criticising Donald Trump. Time, then, to expose what his party really stands for – especially in the context of any coalition government that they could be part of.
Would they, for instance, countenance keeping Starmer as prime minister? Would they support further tax rises and oppose spending cuts? Would they block meaningful measures to cut immigration? Would they allow the Green Party a serious share of power, or agree to another Scottish independence referendum as the price of the SNP’s cooperation?
Those are all questions that the Lib Dems would prefer not to answer right now, which is why Badenoch should put them on the agenda. No more politics on easy mode for Davey. Either he should be forced to retreat from his party’s self-indulgent radical chic, thereby rendering it a more suitable coalition partner; or he’d have to confirm that the Lib Dems genuinely have shifted to sharply to the left – which ought to give centrist Tories serious pause for thought.
And let’s not forget the significant minority of Lib Dem supporters who’d prefer their party to cut a deal with the Conservatives (20 per cent) as opposed to Labour (59 per cent). This group could prove crucial in Con/LD marginals across southern England, and that’s yet another reason to force a Lib Dem choice between left and right.
One final thought: because the left-of-centre parties are comparatively positive about coalition politics, that could give them a key advantage. “Look”, they’d be able to say, “we’re willing to put our differences aside and work together for the common good”.
The Conservatives should be ready with a counter-strategy, and that is being straight with the voters. We shouldn’t pretend to be keen on coalitions, but neither should we deny that one might be necessary to deliver what the country needs. Then we should set out the irreducible core of a corresponding programme of government.
Like it or not, the next government may be chosen not at the ballot box, but behind closed doors. While we can’t take the voters with us into the proverbial smoked-filled rooms, we can give them a chance to back our negotiating position.