In general, in thinking about ways in which to create over time an ethos of governance in a perhaps long-term minority situation wherein different parties will succeed one another in being in power in a minority situation, I think anything that would exacerbate the conflictual nature of Parliament would be a bad thing.
We're not used to minority government. When you look at European countries in which it's a fact of daily life, coalitions are a fact of daily life. The British, our cousins in parliamentary tradition, are going through an election right now, and the spectre of a hung Parliament and of a possible coalition—1974 all over again—is feeding a kind of terror.
I don't think that need be the case. I think there are perfectly functional European democracies that have, through different routes, arrived in a situation in which coalition-building is a necessity. But coalition-building is made a lot easier when people haven't been cast in the kind of conflictual situation that a binding standing order might exacerbate.
I think in a way it might take a longer time to create the more consensual way of dealing with the powers vested in the Prime Minister by doing it without the quick fix. I think we ought to be wary of quick fixes, of magic bullets that will solve this problem once and for all, and certainly of ones that might make the situation worse, because at the risk of repeating myself....
Something just beeped. Have I been talking too long?