Battle Lines - two sword blades length

I didn't know this until recently that the government and opposiion benches facing each other in the House of Commons are separated by two sword blade lengths. Lines are drawn in red to indicate the distances. This harks back apparantly to the times when gentleman, inhabiting Parliament, wore swords and it was considered reasonable to keep govenment members and opposition members at least two sword blades length away from each other.

It's an indication that from earliest times the chamber has been adversarial, combatant and very much a male domain with no quarter given. And political parties need sufficient majorities to ensure that they rule. Any movement away from this seems to create all sorts of anxieties about system collapse and inability to get things done from the we know best all the time parties. And hung parliaments therefore are really not good to be hanging around for any length of time or are they?

Ok its a crude analysis. Parties do perhaps work together more behind the scenes in the Commons but not to the same extent that balanced (Alex Salmond's term for hung which I think is better) parliaments do. The SNP have run a minority government relatively successfully for the last three years. They have wheeled and dealed themselves around the Scottish Parliament offering collaboration and compromise to all parties. They've carried through legislation by offering concessions to the other parties including minority parties like the Greens (they got concessions on energy efficiency projects) and the Lib Dems (on student funding).

An article today in The Guardian (Saverin Carrell) suggests that it has worked because the Scottish parliament is designed to promote collaboration unlike the confrontation which the Westminster model exudes.

It uses proportional representation so that in a country with four major parties and a number of minority parties it's not very likely that there will be a government with an overall majority. It has bipartisan committees to work out legislation a fixed budget and fixed term parliaments.

We need change, electoral reform, more working together - lets get rid of those red lines of demarcation in the House of Commons - lets go for balance.