If you want to make sense, maybe you should campaign for the exact system Labour gave the Scots – 4 year terms, and 66% dissolution threshold.

“Sorry Thalia, but no. The Queen appointed Cameron, not parliament. If the Lib Dems leave or are sacked he’s still PM. Convention is he remains PM until the Queen is able to appoint a successor. If the Queen can’t find a successor he remains in place.”

Yes, under purdah rules until a new government is formed. Fussing about this is like making a big deal over the fact that the rules allowed Brown to stay on after the election and potentially go to a Queen’s Speech. In theory yes, but in practise there is no point.

“Unlike in Scotland, at not time is the country left without a PM. There is no 28 day guillotine.”

There has been one sentence on this in a coaltion agreement, which has inspired one of the silliest hysterias I can remember. That isn’t the whole legislation, which is yet to be written and debated. It seems eminently sensible to assume it will have some kind of guillotine rather than risk a constituional crisis and putting the Queen in that kind of bind (especially as the immediate precedent, drawn up by Labour, for the Scots parliament does have this). *If* it doesn’t then it is worth concerned about this possible impasse.

I know everyone wants to spot the evil Tory plot, but this is an example of a progressive reform (fixed terms) in which the PM gives up the (conferred) power of dissolution and passes it to parliament. All the silly scenarios in which it is claimed Cameron could run a minority government having lost a vote of no confidence are just scare storires.

Unlike in Scotland, at not time is the country left without a PM. There is no 28 day guillotine.

No, in which case a 28 day limit would guillotine the situation and lead to an emergency election.

It’s not at all “unclear what effect a no confidence vote would have”. It would mean the government is defeated. This has been confirmed on numerous occasions.

The only thing needed to ensure this works is a 28 day limit to form a new government that can command 50%+1 – that avoids a constitutional crisis where parliament votes a government out but fails to form a new one.

I’m really finding the scaremongering on this pathetic. There is a very clear model of how to make this work in the Scots system – all we have to do is ensure the same safeguard of a 28 day limit applies.

If anything, Giles, you have confused the two with your claim that, ‘A new government could only be formed if it commanded confidence of the house at 50%+1’.

This is not the case at all. If the coalition government resigned, either because the Lib Dems withdrew or Cameron sacked them (as he is free to do), Cameron would be free to form a new minority government. That government might not survive a confidence vote, in which case the Queen would be expected to appoint someone else… but who?

And so we go around in circles.

It’s worth pointing out that a majority of 50%+1 could in theory overturn any of this simply by passing a new law.

However presumably the government (if there was one) could obstruct this being done by the opposition.

The proposals would only work if on a no confidence vote (50%+1) the government was forced to immediately resign.

A new government could only be formed if it commanded confidence of the house at 50%+1.

This leaves no possibility of a so called “zombie government” existing which does not command confidence of the house at 50%+1