Perhaps the most badly (as in confusingly and hysterically) covered part of the Con/Lib coalition agreement this week has been the so-called 55% rule. To recap, this is what the coalition agreement says, in the section on fixed-term Parliaments:

“This legislation will also provide for dissolution if 55% or more of the House votes in favour.”

The coverage was so confusing that that I spent a whole day raging against the 55% rule before having it explained to me properly and have since come out saying 55% is actually too low. This is a complex constitutional issue and bears some further discussion.
Me? I’m on the fence. It’s important to remember that (as far as I know) all we have from the coalition at this point is that one single sentence above. That sentence is so vague, and so widely open to interpretation, it’s hardly surprising that everyone is confused. So let’s have a look at some of the key concepts involved here and the possible interpretations of that one pesky sentence. (I knew that politics degree would come in handy one day…)
I guess the first question is why we might want a fixed-term Parliament, as opposed to the current system where it is the Prime Minister’s right to ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament and call a general election. There’s a good reason this little oddity of the UK constitution is referred to as a “right” of the PM. There is a certain amount of advantage to incumbency in politics. The way elections are called in the UK, however, magnifies that advantage significantly. It allows the ruling party to pick the time for a general election based on how well they are doing in opinion polls, thus significantly disadvantaging any opposition parties. Currently the only limitation on this is that an election has to happen no later than 5 years after the last one. The keen-eyed among you may spot that the last two times an incumbent party has lost the election (1997, 2010) that election has been held at the 5-year limit. A fixed-term Parliament would mean that the ruling party can no longer find the best moment for them during a Parliament to call an election. They would have to take their chances every 5 years, just like everyone else. In my book, this is considerably more democratic than the current system. YMMV.
Next, let’s look at two important concepts: the legislature and the executive. And while we’re at it, we might as well include the judiciary for the sake of completeness. Those are the three branches of power. The legislature makes laws. The executive puts those laws into practice. The judiciary ensures laws are consistent with each other and are applied consistently across the board (the rule of law). The idea for most modern democracies is that these three branches of power keep an eye on each other – checks and balances. Each of the three has some powers to control the other two, none has absolute power. From the people’s point of view, this is basically divide (your rulers) and conquer. And it’s a good thing.
In the UK, Parliament is the legislative branch of power. The government is the executive. And yes, the government tends to be more or less a subset of Parliament, i.e. MPs from the party with the most seats in the Commons, led by the leader of that party as Prime Minister. Nevertheless, it’s really really important to understand that the two institutions are separate, have different interests, and have very different functions. They usually have a symbiotic relationship, as well as one of checks and balances; but they are different.
So now that we have established that Parliament and government are two different things, let’s look at the two concepts of a vote of no confidence in the government and the dissolution of Parliament. The former is one of the powers Parliament has to keep the government in check. If for some reason the government stops commanding a majority in Parliament, Parliament can declare that the government no longer has its confidence, and the government falls. The latter is a power government has over Parliament, a right of the PM to dissolve Parliament when it suits them. We’ve established above that I think this right is undemocratic because it disadvantages opposition parties in elections. There seems to be a misguided perception among commentators over the last few days that the government falling and the dissolution of Parliament are the same thing or somehow go hand-in-hand. They do not.
Parliament consists of the people’s elected representatives. If we, the people, have a friend among the three branches of power, it is Parliament. If a no confidence motion is passed by Parliament, that means the people’s representatives have declared that they will not support the government. That clearly puts an end to that particular configuration of the executive. This in no way means that the legislature has to be dissolved. There is no reason to think that the legislature is no longer representative of the people and a new election is needed. Under some circumstances it is still possible for Parliament to find someone who can command a majority, perhaps under a different coalition, and therefore form a new government within the same Parliament. This is not a bad thing and, as fas as I’m concerned, in no way undemocratic. They’re still your representatives, they should be trusted to be able to sort it out.
Obviously, we need some sort of safety measure. If a government loses the confidence of Parliament halfway through a five-year term, and Parliament cannot produce someone who can command a majority, we can’t go for two and half years without a government until the fixed term expires. Most systems handle this with a time limit. The Scottish Parliament, for instance, has 28 days to form a new government. If that doesn’t happen, a new election is called, regardless of the fixed term.
So having covered the basic concepts and constitutional theory here, let’s look at the numbers. And let’s first of all remind ourselves what the coalition agreement says:

“This legislation will also provide for dissolution if 55% or more of the House votes in favour.”

So, it clearly says dissolution. A lot of commentators, however, seemed to think at least initially that it applied to no confidence votes as well. That would clearly be undemocratic, it would be an artificial prop for an unstable coalition that was sold to us as the only “strong and stable government” which could come out of this Parliament. I am inclined to believe that the agreement does mean dissolution only, and that the traditional 50% + 1 MP would still apply to votes of no confidence. (Incidentally, this does not mean 51% of MPs.)
Once we had established this, the next set of commentators came along and said “Don’t be absurd, that would mean that if the government lost the confidence of Parliament but there wasn’t the required 55% majority to dissolve Parliament (Tories only have 47% of seats by themselves, for instance) things would just go on without a government and nothing would get done.” Jack Straw is a key proponent of this argument. And aye, therein does lie the rub. As the statement stands, we currently have no idea how the coalition intends to handle the case above. I believe there is no other way to do it but to introduce a time limit in which another government can be formed. How long this time limit should be is still open to debate as far as I’m concerned.
And finally, here is one more point about the numbers game. The 55% threshold appears to be very cynically designed for this particular government. It means that if the Lib Dems and the Tories agree, they can still between them vote to dissolve Parliament, yet the Tories can’t turn around and shaft the Lib Dems by calling an election as soon as they have a chance of obtaining a true majority by themselves. While this is all well and good in the next five years, it is no way to make a fundamental change to the constitution.
After all, this country still has a first past the post election system and therefore generally tends to produce large single-party majorities. If in the next Parliament either Labour or the Tories have more than 55% of the seats, suddenly you don’t have a fixed-term Parliament anymore, and we’re back to the old extremely exaggerated incumbency advantage. In Scotland, the majority required to dissolve Parliament and call an election (other than when there has been a vote of no confidence and no new government has been formed within 28 days) is 66%. This seems like a much more reasonable number.
In summary, I think decoupling votes of no confidence from dissolution of Parliament is a good idea and certainly necessary if we want to achieve fixed-term Parliaments. I believe it would be genuinely more democratic, as it transfers power from the government to Parliament (remember – the legislature is your friend!). However, for this to be a. practical and b. sustainable, two things need to be true:
1. There needs to be a time limit to handle the situation where a government falls.
2. The threshold needs to be much higher than 55%.
These are the two things you might want to start asking your MPs awkward and difficult questions about now.
If you’re interested in further reading, here are some reactions from both sides of the spectrum. The second one is especially worth a read.
Vikram Dodd declares 55% undemocratic in the Guardian.
loveandgarbage from LJ on the other hand, writes a piece that is both informative and amusing about the constitutional implications over at Liberal Conspiracy.