Is it better to have a weak or strong opposition party in government

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I'm not speaking from a political journalist point of view, when obviously a strong opposition makes life a lot more exciting - rather than from a political point of view. I used to think strong opposition = good but :
With a strong opposition the government is always worried about being re-elected and hence only persue vote winning policies - not necessarily good for the country. (Often a problem in countries with PR).
But with a weak opposition the government has a lot less incentive toactually follow its own manifesto, can go off on flights of fancy knowing there is no short term parlimentary challenge (ring any bells).

So, what would you prefer or is there - ahem - a third way.

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 10:54 (twenty-two years ago)

ANARCHY!

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 10:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Right now, when the US and the UK seem to be on the verge of an invasion of a third country, and lives are at stake, it is the duty of all the Parliamentary and Congressional parties not in government to be strong, to do their job - ie question and harry the government representatives at every step, to ensure these governments demonstrate that their intentions are justified.

― Jeff W, Wednesday, 15 January 2003 11:03 (twenty-two years ago)

with MMP, and national doing so badly, i'm afraid i don't really know what "opposition" means anymore. (this could be a good thing, but i don't even know that anymore, i sure as hell don't know why there is a christian party at Fuhrer Clark's side).

― di smith (lucylurex), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 11:04 (twenty-two years ago)

(not that all christian's are bad or conservative, but peter dunnes party are hardly what i would call progressive)

― di smith (lucylurex), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 11:06 (twenty-two years ago)

perhaps MMP is the third way.

― di smith (lucylurex), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 11:07 (twenty-two years ago)

In the UK system a medium opposition (a governing majority of 80 say) is best Pete - enough that a sizeable backbench revolt can cause the government real trouble, not enough for individual MPs to derail the government by themselves. In terms of what the opposition itself does, it's quality not quantity that matters.

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 11:10 (twenty-two years ago)

Hmm, I thought the continuum would come in here somewhere.

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 11:12 (twenty-two years ago)

sorry i forget no-one cares about nz.

― di smith (lucylurex), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 11:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Though I don't think I was necessarily talking about numbers of seats in my initial definition of weak or strong (though granted it plays a natural part). The situation with the current Tory party in the UK is that they are weak, not just due to lack of seats but also because they are not effectively arguing an alternative position.

Opposition also suggests total disagreement, where in the current situation (re war in Iraq) there really isn't any choice as the Tory's would be as committed as Labour.

NZ is PR right? So how many parties are currently in a government coalition?

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 11:18 (twenty-two years ago)

The political subtext to the Iraq thing though is that it's become the Lib Dems' big breakaway move - an absolute gift (and a massive gamble) for them.

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 11:20 (twenty-two years ago)

Maybe we should have a wacko kind of PR that gives an overal majority of 80 seats to whichever party wins the most votes.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 11:21 (twenty-two years ago)

MMP = mixed member proportional. there are three parties in the ruling coalition, however the minor partners are really minor.

― di smith (lucylurex), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 11:22 (twenty-two years ago)

What are the three parties, and how are the politically aligned (for which read what did the big party promise the minnows to give them the majority)?

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 11:30 (twenty-two years ago)

okay its actually Labour/Progressive Coalition coalition, with United future Support. (so only two party majority). United Future were promised a Commission for the Family and strong victims rights legislation, united future are centre left i guess with a big family values christian slant. progressive coalition, well jim anderton used to be a prominent labour MP and him and Fuhrer Clark are pretty tight. Labour are centre left but the progressive coalition are more socialist and concerned with providing aid for nzers living in poverty.

as a bit of history, after the 1999 election, there were three coalition partners, labour, alliance and the greens. the alliance party was lead by anderton (who incidentally was deputy prime minister in that term) and broke down just before the 2002 elections, splitting into two factions of which anderton's side came out on top, as he has a loyal fanbase in one electorate. the greens did okay in the 2002 election but they had no show in becoming a coalition partner because of their anti-GE stance. (moratorium on GE due to be lifted sometime soon and the greens refused to support that).

― di smith (lucylurex), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 11:52 (twenty-two years ago)

SO I guess my question would be here in a multi party system, with coalitions being formed here and there by minority perties who campaign on a much smaller slate of issues, how does an opposition run? Is there such a think as a head of the opposition? (I'm not sure such a thing really exists in the UK any more except due to historical precedent).

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 11:58 (twenty-two years ago)

its history in the UK is kind of derived from pro-king party vs anti-king party, during the era when the king's power was financial rather than directly constitutional (eg 1688-1820s really)

that is a superloose summary btw

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:03 (twenty-two years ago)

well anyway national, the centre right party, are traditionally a major player in new zealand politics, in fact they have held the majority in new zealand since time immemorial, but recently they have become so weak as to be pathetic due to having a really crap leader and all sorts of infighting changing of party prezzes etc etc. so they are the "opposition" but there are three other parties who have seats in parliament too. i am of two minds about all this, its not a problem that national are so weak, but i just don't like it that the labour party are so damn strong. i feel like there aren't enough people being critical of Labour.

― di smith (lucylurex), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:05 (twenty-two years ago)

Strong opposition I think leads to better government because the government is forced to question its actions much more. A strong opposition will carry out more scrutiny on government proposals. However a strong opposition and a weak government can be crippling, cf last years of John Major's government, often this leads to a pandering to special interests in the party or coalition of government to the detriment of good governance.

Iain Ducan Smith is Leader of Her Majesty's opposition and as such has access, along with the shadow cabinet, to some government documents before ordinary MPs do so that a response can be prepared when a document is published. However this only applies to things put before parliament, so because Labour are circumventing parliament as much as they possibly can this role becomes fairly redundant. The chief whips of the the government and the main opposition party have a role, along with the leader of the house and the speaker, in deciding what business come before parliament.

As we have seen though real opposition and scrutiny tends to come from committees with strong independent minded, (more often than not), Labour chairpersons.

Democracy is seriously warped in the UK and some separation of the representative legislative (parliament) and executive (government) branches of the state need to happen some time soon.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:07 (twenty-two years ago)

but there are three other parties who have seats in parliament too i mean not counting the aforementioned labour/pc/uf coalition.

― di smith (lucylurex), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:08 (twenty-two years ago)

that is a superloose summary btw

i assume you are referring to me, mark, and probbly true, i hate talking about politics.

― di smith (lucylurex), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:12 (twenty-two years ago)

I think he's refering to his pro-King anti-King UK summary, which is correct but - in his own worlds - superloose.

Whilst i wouldn't expect two paragraphs to sum up the inticacies and history of NZ politics, I think your summary gives me a fair idea of the kind of horse trading that has gone on recently (and I'm assuming the National party is predominantly to the right which is where the current crisis is?)

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:15 (twenty-two years ago)

yippo.

― di smith (lucylurex), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:18 (twenty-two years ago)

A good coalition works together for shared goals. A bad coalition panders to vested interests within the coalition in order to hold the coalition together. Political parties in most countries with a british heritage seem to be coalitions of interests the extreme being the US where Republicans and Democrats occupy overlapping broad spectrums of political opinions and are more loose associations of individuals in the manner of Victorian pre Victorian British parliaments, cf. Italy where if your view differ even just a little bit from a party you might support you go and form a new party.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:19 (twenty-two years ago)

yes i wz referring to me di, i ~~don't care about~~ know anything about nz politics

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:22 (twenty-two years ago)

I expect that will stop happening so much in Italy now they've moved to a first past the post/Berlusconi always wins system.

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:24 (twenty-two years ago)

in the 18th century, though parties existed, they were kind of looked down on as a distortion of proper parliamentary politics, and referred to as "faction" (as in, "We should abstain from enthusiasm and faction")

("enthusiasm" meant uncritically issue-loyal fanaticism, us.w. religious overtones)

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:25 (twenty-two years ago)

the obv supplementary question here being: with a watertight majority, labour have theoretically been able to do what they like for the last five-and-three-quarter years, faced as they have been with the weakest conservative opposition since...well, douglas-home i suppose, though some might say lord liverpool...and yet they act precisely as if the opposition were strong, i.e. pursuing vote-winning (or vote-buying) policies as a consequence of unfounded paranoia abt how daily mail readers will vote.

― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:31 (twenty-two years ago)

In other words MPs represented the interests of themselves and their electorates, i.e the rural propertied classes. Government was much smaller in those days and not necessarily drawn from parliament, although getting yourself a significant role in government would probably get you ennobled if you weren't already.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:33 (twenty-two years ago)

I think that paranoia comes from having won the middle class vote and - despite all the focus groups - not actually knowing how (or suspecting that it might have just been the fact that people wanted a change). Bundled into this is not knowing which of their Daily Mail pleasing policies they could tweak without losing that support. Education seems to be particularly crippled by this indecision (and was probably the most overt of their unpopular decisions they made very, very early on which was cushioned by the euphoria and large majority).

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Two reasons I suppose:

- Blair continually hallucinates a phantom public opposition and moves to trim against it. This isn't totally just being paranoid, either - I think he understands that the lesson of his '97 victory is that when the pendulum now swings, it swings quickly and hugely (he got a glimpse of this with the fuel protests but the situation switched back). So majorities don't matter so much anymore.
- Blair doesn't care anything about the Tories but needs as huge a labour party as possible to allow him to push his own anti-left agenda through it, so his 'real' internal majority is much slimmer.

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:38 (twenty-two years ago)

I think Blair fails to recognize that the daily mail sells just 2,327,723 (december ABC) copies, plus the daily circulation of Metro 720,783 you get 3,048,506. Lets say we double it, 6,097,012, to get a figure for the number of people who might peruse a copy. Of that a fair chunk won't vote because a fair chunk of the british people don't vote and a fair chunk will not agree with the mail's political views slavishly enough to vote the way it wants.

Are the views of the mail representative of the views of middle england at large, in part maybe but people in this country seem ready for an agenda slightly to the left of the Labour party but have no realistic place to get this from so plod on with the labour party. Although most people describe themselves as middle class in this country because by historical standards they are, but the problems that many of these people face are modern variants of the problems that the labour party was set up in part to fix, un-unionised exploited workforce, poor health of the nation, poor services, inequality, squalor and deprivation.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:55 (twenty-two years ago)

I think you might be taking the Daily Mail thing a little bit too literally. Its used to describe a demographic, not the actual readers (which is incidentally a pretty lazy demographic at that for many of the reasons you mention above). The Daily Mail in itself, along with the Telegraph have still been the one of the most critical newspapers toward the current government.

Oddly the Labour Party can pretty much only rely of The Guardian to be generally behind it these days.

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 12:59 (twenty-two years ago)

Demographics generally don't work contrary to popular belief people have minds of their own.

That's what I was trying to say.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 13:01 (twenty-two years ago)

the long-term effect of reaganism and thatcherism has been the effective proletarianisation of large reaches of the OLD middle middle class: but this is - as ed says - a class fraction w/o coherent political awareness of itself or of the increased coincidence of its interests with with the bottom of society rather than (cf the massive pup they were sold) the top

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 13:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Also asks the question are people more likely to change their political party that their newspaper? And has the media partially taken on the role of the opposition?

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 13:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Don't underestimate the extent to which the Labour Party has been scarred by the Thatcher years -- they are so afraid of ending up out of office for so long that they (perhaps predictably) over-reacted in their first term: but then a massive landslide which ejects one party can just as easily do the same again. The benefit of hindsight makes them look a lot more cautious than they in fact were. Although the constitutional change put in motion was a muted version of their original agenda, it's still having major impacts in UK politics, as the devolved areas set their own agendas which rebound on the centre (eg Cook's HoC reforms effectively piloted in Scotland). Also don't underestimate the extent to which 'tough on crime' rhetoric (and results?) is necessary to keep the working class labour voters on side: only the middle-class care about e.g. civil liberties (up to a point, of course).

― alext (alext), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 13:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Also asks the question are people more likely to change their political party that their newspaper?

Almost certainly I'd guess. Conscious newspaper switching is pretty rare because it's a very regular purchase choice whereas a choice you only make every 2/4 years is much more malleable, particularly as parties get less openly ideological.

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 13:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Hmm.. I'd have thought it's about similar.

Floating voters are only about 20% of the electorate, as I recall. Most people vote the same all their lives (this loyalty may have eased in recent years though)

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 13:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Actually a lot of people switch from paper to no-paper and then back to a different paper after a fairly long gap.

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 13:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Make your mind up.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 13:28 (twenty-two years ago)

That's not the same as direct switching though.

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 13:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Well, no. But voting has big gaps between too.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 13:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I know but it's still direct switching if you do one thing at one choice-opportunity and then another at your next choice-opportunity even if they're 4 years apart.

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 13:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Just how many times are you planning to completely revise your stance on this Tom?

― Tim (Tim), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 13:46 (twenty-two years ago)

He's a floating market researcher.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 13:52 (twenty-two years ago)

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