7th July 2022
Well.
This morning I was writing a Twitter thread on what would happen if all government minsters resigned.
For such a surreal thing to be of any practical concern, rather than for academic speculation, indicates that it has been an odd few days in the politics of the United Kingdom.
And now the current Prime Minister has announced his resignation.
He is not going immediately – but the process for a finding a new Conservative party leader will now start and it seems to me that Johnson cannot now do anything to stop that process.
Once that process produces a new leader, that leader will be invited to form a government by the Queen, and Johnson – by automatic operation of the constitution – will instantly cease to be Prime Minister.
He may go even sooner, with a ‘caretaker’ Prime Minister put in place until a new Conservative leader emerges.
Johnson may remain in office, but his announcement today means he has lost ultimate control of his political fate.
*
His resignation shows the operation of another constitutional rule – perhaps the most fundamental constitutional rule of all.
That rule is that Hubris is usually followed by Nemesis.
Wise politicians know this – and so they run tight ships, knowing that the pull of the tides can result in capsizing or being wrecked.
Less wise politicians assume their moment of great power will last forever.
Johnson – a successful electoral politician – was brought down not by any great policy issue or national crisis.
From Partygate and the Owen Paterson affair, he and his circle made unforced error after unforced error.
He and his circle believed that they could casually defy rules and conventions.
And so the ship of state became a ship of fools.
*
Johnson in December 2019 had the greatest prizes that the constitution of the United Kingdom can bestow on a Prime Minister.
He had won an emphatic general election victory – and so he had the “mandate” that meant he could translate his programme into practice without delays in the House of Lords.
And he had a substantial majority – of eighty – which meant he could get through the House of Commons legislation and revenue provisions without opposition.
He even had, with Covid and then Ukraine, two huge unifying issues for him to pose as a Churchillian leader.
Yet, two-and-a-half years later, he is resigning.
And the mandate and the majority have been wasted.
The latest Queen’s Speech was an embarrassing sequence of proposals, showing that the government had no direction.
And the one thing that Johnson and his government did do – Brexit with a withdrawal agreement – he was seeking to break.
Power without responsibility, as another Prime Minister once said in a different context.
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Brexit was begat by the Conservative and Unionist Party.
The 2016 referendum was an exercise in party management, and it was from that egg that Brexit first emerged.
After 2016 the Conservative and Unionist Party said Brexit should mean Brexit, and they campaigned on that basis.
And under Johnson, the Conservative and Unionist Party “got Brexit done”.
But Brexit, being ungrateful, is destroying the Conservatives and dismantling the Union.
The revolution is devouring its begetters.
It is a political morality tale.
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And so good bye then Boris Johnson, if not now but soon.
The curious thing is that he may not even be the worst of the post-2010 Prime Ministers.
It was David Cameron who risked the future of the country on a single turn of pitch-and-toss – and with no preparation for a Leave vote.
It was Theresa May who insisted that Brexit had to be done, at speed, with its ‘red lines’ that kept the United Kingdom outside the Single Market.
These macro political mistakes were profound.
And we now have the greatest political mess in living memory, if not modern history.
It is time for the excitement to die down, and for a return to the dull work of taking government seriously.
The ejection of the repugnant Johnson from the body politic is a necessary step towards such political good health – but it is not a sufficient one.
Let us hope that we have not left it too late for there to be a recovery.
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I don’t quite understand how he can be considered to have resigned. Given that he is completely untroubled by convention – or decency – surely he will spend the next months trying to find some way to remain PM through subversion of the presumed process, e.g. by offering peerages to people who can influence the Conservative Party’s internal processes which are, after all, not actual laws. As far as I can tell, he will remain PM until he is pushed out, and the party does not seem to have the stomach to do so.
If the rules aren’t formally binding and someone is known not to play by them, one can’t presume that they will follow their natural course or be similar to previous instances. As near as I can tell, Boris Johnson has not yet lost, which for him is equivalent to a win, and the party is likely to regret not ousting him with immediate effect, as is the country.
The only proper way that he can remain PM is to call a general election now and to win it.
It may be the only possible way he can remain PM, but in any case, an election now is the proper way forward.
He has demonstrated time and again that he is quite content to go about things in improper ways. In fact I’d suggest he relishes doing so, it’s a kind of dark creativity that looks clever to the easily fooled.
Would any Tory party activist who doesn’t support Johnson be prepared to knock on doors and deliver leaflets if he were to call a GE?
And those who did knock on doors and deliver leaflets on Johnsons behalf are probably (I hope!) not going to be taken very seriously by most people.
Is it possible that Johnson himself might stand for Leader of the Conservative Party? If he believed he had sufficient support amongst the members outside Parliament, is it conceivable that he could persuade himself that he still might win with the members – thereby throwing something of a spanner in the works of Tory MPs who have seen him close up?
I’ve no idea whether the MPs select the candidates for the membership to vote on (in which case Johnson is almost certainly toast) or the members make their choice and the MPs have to live with it?
MPs whittle it down to two for the members to votes on. I think he would be barred as a candidate from the start, but even if not, after this week it would be inconceivable that the Parliamentary Tory Party would not find two more suitable candidates to put to the membership.
At 11:41 this morning on the BBC Twitter account with BBC video:
“He needs to go, he can’t cling on in this way”
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer says if the Conservatives don’t get rid of Boris Johnson, “Labour will step up and bring a vote of no confidence because we can’t go on with the prime minister”.
At 14:47 this afternoon on Sir Keir Starmer QC’s Twitter account with a Labour Party video:
“We are stuck with a government that isn’t functioning.
The Prime Minister needs to go completely – not cling on for a few months.
Britain needs a fresh start. If the Tory party doesn’t get rid of him, Labour will act in the national interest and bring a vote of no confidence.”
Only the Labour Party video makes no reference to a vote of no confidence.
Sir Keir Starmer QC and Lady Starmer have been in the Royal Box at Wimbledon this afternoon.
Did Sir Keir leave the new intern in charge of the office for the afternoon?
Of course, Sir Keir Starmer QC was the man who told the Guardian at the end of 2020, on the eve of endorsing Boris Johnson’s oven ready deal, that he did not expect to be talking much about Hard Brexit in 2021 and felt that Brexit would not be an issue at the time of the next General Election.
I am not sure he is the change our country needs right now.
In that case, where do you think that would leave us John?
A helpful and very clear piece. One note of caution, you refer to “the greatest political mess in living memory, if not modern history”.
I agree about living memory, but historians regard the “modern” period as beginning around 1500 CE. By 1800 CE it is already “late modern”.
It depends
My Modern History degree started in 284 AD!
More common is the division between “Early Modern” and “Modern”
As a constitutionalist, I take “modern” to be post-Stuart
Oxford, David? I take anything after 1832 to be modern politics……..
Now on a more serious note, as you point out, we have had three dreadful PMs in a row, who have each made colossal mistakes. We can argue about which order of demerit they should be in, but they have all been in the bottom three of UK PMs. And the really scary thing is, that although the new PM may not have the moral turpitude of Johnson, the policies that the new person may promote are really likely to be even worse than Johnson’s.
Brace, brace, I believe you say.
“Who was the worst prime minister” is a good parlour game, and the recent three bad’uns came after the long run of Thatcher and Major and Blair and Brown, at least two of whom are in the top rank and the other two are not in the bottom rank.
Cameron made several big mistakes (we may also reassess the cost and benefit of his austerity policies in the longer run) and May will forever be tarnished by “Brexit means Brexit”. For me, his personal qualities make Johnson clearly the worst – getting Brexit “done” and then trying to undo his “oven-ready” deal, the serial failures over Covid, and the damage he has caused to the body politic before he was expelled. (If he has been expelled.)
But I think we need a bit of historical perspective to see things more clearly. Eden? North?
I’ve seen a few people claiming there’s no constitutional precedent for an acting prime minister: is this true, and what implications would that have should Boris resign (or be forced out) in short order, given a Tory leadership election won’t happen immediately?
There is some precedent – Wellington in 1834: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington_caretaker_ministry
Brown, Cameron and May all carried on until their replacement was selected
Thatcher too, albeit only for a few days. According to footnote 13 on page 19 of the Cabinet Manual:
This is picked up in paragraph 2.10, which says:
This does in fact seem to be the way it usually happens nowadays.
Brexit was sold by the Tory right. It was a simple idea, with more power they could deliver more to us in the future. It sold well, so more benefits in the future were promised, all could be yours whatever it was, providing you bought the concept.
Since the future is always bright, the buyers did not care about delivery details. Brexit was an investment for their grandchildren with their hopes. And so the maximalist Brexit was delivered by the super salesman at its core, his greatest success to date, maximum benefts to all who made it possible. The reality of economics is now delivering the inefficiencies to all in the UK which were previously ignored while other things were more important. Will the Tories become a rational party again soon considering that Johnson replaced rationalists in the Tory MPs by so many followers with early shares in the Brexit Ponzi scheme?
I’m glad you have recalled the role of Cameron in creating our current ills – traipsing around Europe ‘renegotiating’ our membership of the EU and coming back with, as I recall. a limit on the amount of money that Poles resident in the UK could send to their children at home.
Neither Cameron nor Johnson is a serious person.
A small, absurd but telling, symptom of the degeneracy they have bequeathed is an atmosphere in which Suella Braverman thinks she is intellectually and morally fit to lead our country.
On which topic, how can Suella Braverman both be a figure who has to give impartial, non-political advice, and attempt to be the leader of a political party.
Unlike her predecessors, she doesn’t even see the problem.
Worth a DAG blog, I think. Unless there has already been one on the topic.
I have to ask – has he really resigned as leader of the Conservative Party? He says he has spoken with the Chairman of the 1922 Committee but he is not the person who would receive the resignation. I believe the person to receive it should be the Chairman of the Conservative Party who, after the resignation of Oliver Dowden, is Ben Elliott who is not an MP but rather a donor to the Party. Someone needs to ask him if he has received the resignation.
Yes.
In a funny kind of way we should be very thankful that Johnson is just a self-serving buffoon rather than an evil genius – he has shown how easily it might be for such an evil genius to subvert the UK’s democratic constitution (he’s done a half decent job on that with just being a buffoon!).
Well, quite
Thank you DAG. So much to digest here. We have been spared the most acute constitutional crisis, but we are still in crisis. Nothing is safe until Johnson has not only resigned but returned the seals and moved out of Downing Street. I would not trust his shenanigans further than I could throw him and given his heft that is not far. He must be truly gone.
It the Party that has the mandate, not an individual whom the electorate (saving his own constituents) did not vote for. We do not have a Presidential system no matter how much Johnson might crave it.
Brexit is not done – witness the ongoing attempt to break the NIP and the fact that the UK still has not instituted checks on imports from the EU. The damage, however, is ongoing and permanent.
Maybe Cameron is / was a huge fan of Kipling’s “If”, but risking the the fate of the country on “a single turn of pitch and toss” is no way to run the affairs of State.
Finally, the prospect of Braverman as PM truly makes me shudder…
The best answer that I can propose is to recognise that parliament fell into breach of the Human Rights Act in 2016 and that everything it did since was illegitimate.
A slightly less drastic use of the Human Rights Act would be to demand a general election right away.
The law says they must “Ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature.”
Johnson claims he still has the mandate: he should test it in the ballot box.
Under our electoral system it is the Conservative Party that has the mandate.
Is Johnson resigning as Party Leader really enough ?
He should be resigning from Parliament to spend more time with his family (wherever they may be).
It is as if the British public have not twigged the issues at stake here.
It is a short term imperative that Johnson is prevented from remaining as PM for anything more than a couple of days. This is because, as we have seen, the PM has powers over the agendas and behaviours of the members of his government that are poorly constrained and over which there is no appeal other than to undertake to remove him.
So, if were done, when ’twere done, ’twere best were done quickly.
What are the constitutional implications of the current Conservative govt winning a VONC tabled by The Labour and Lib Dems, given that the PM has resigned as Leader if Tory party but not if Government?
Boris could still do liberalism good by splitting the far right. UKIP is looking for a new leader :)
I don’t think it’s fair to consider Cameron or May to be worse than Johnson. While they made huge mistakes, they were ones that a leader trying to do the right thing might do. Johnson has gone further in never seeming to have any higher priority than his own interests.
I think I might be willing to listen to your arguments in support of Cameron trying to do the right thing.
May, on the other hand, hit rock bottom and started digging. With an excavator. She ignored professional advice, triggered Article 50 before the nation was ready to do so, then tied the nation’s negotiating hands behind our back with “red lines”.
Put another way: May turned a drama in to a crisis.
Johnson then poured a few cans of rocket fuel on the wreckage and lit the match.
May was known as a Remainer, so probably felt she had to implement Brexit and be seen to do so satisfactorily to the Brexiteers. However, she was attempting the impossible. Brexit meant a border between London and Paris ( a hardcore Brexiteer could have got away with Brexit in name only, but that would have been seen as dishonest if done by May). However, there could be no border between Paris and Dublin (in the EU), Dublin and Belfast (Good Friday Agreement etc), or Belfast and London (both United in the UK). This is logiclaly impossible, so she could never have succeeded. The sensoble course would have been to negotiate an agreement and hold an AV referendum which included options for Brexit with the agreement, Brexit with no agreement, and cancel Brexit.
But I think the true proof that May was not as bad a Johnson is that various people are saying Johnson should not stay on until his successor is chosen – that was never suggested for May. And, in fact, one of the names I have seen suggested as the interim PM is May. I certainly think she would be preferable to letting Johnson stay.
What happens if Starmer brings a vote of no confidence in the PM. Would the Tory MPs really vote against the PM? We would have the situation of Parliament expressing confidence in the PM that the Tory MPs have just ousted.
Doesn’t seem anything much will change in terms of divisive politics and brexit lies.
I just watched Bridgen declare that the next PM would have to be a brexiter. So still governing for a reducing and ageing constuency that must continue to be fed on lies and delusion.
So the Brexit Poster Boy Resigns without saying he Resigns. Like many l want him gone today. I’m sure a Removal Van Company could have been found.
Trumpian to the last and blaming others for his downfall thwarting his 14 million populist Mandate whilst refusing to take any responsibility for his behaviour and his Government. What a time to be alive and watching a reality tv version of In The Thick of It as well!
At least l don’t have to come down to No10 and help offer to carry him out of Office. Yet l feel we have the misfortune of waiting for the Telegraph and Daily Mail to pick the next PM and Democracy still the Victim with these Neo Libs.
Can it get any worse? I hope not. *Looks around anxiously*
Have to disagree.
Cameron completely goofed the Brexit vote but he had many successes, led competently and was respectful of the system.
May was an absolute disaster in every way. And she lost a major constitutional prerogative case. She essentially ignored cabinet government and listened only to her voices. But she too follows the system
Boris capitalized on political paralysis to spin his way to a Brexit deal that involved lying to Northern Ireland and pretty much giving the EU everything it wanted for the type of Brexit Boris was pursuing. Implementation was a shambles with Covid providing a smokescreen. Almost immediately Boris tried to break the treaty and continues to do so. He also lost a constitutional prerogative case but had already abused the system and was essentially dressed down by SCOTUK. The GE was a success but was as much about the self destruction of the Opposition as anything plus the single issue of Brexit. Vaccines were a success – no thanks to Brexit but rather to Bingham – but much of Covid was a muddle with multiple scandals for HMG from the PM down. Boris lied to the House and sent his allies to lie for him again on Pincher. Ukraine is a “success” but apart from that HMG has been a shambles and the last crisis took the system to new all time lows.
So it’s a close call between May and Boris for being the worst ever. Probably Boris based on the combination of incompetence and immorality.
Will the Privileges Committee be proceeding with the investigation into whether the PM deliberately lied to the House?
Agree with your take on the Crime Minister’s predecessors.
Sir John Curtis has said that there is no longer any point in fighting for the centre as the voters have polarized.
This weeks New Statesman leader says structural change is needed.
Last week’s Lexington column in The Economist suggested that the polarization in the USA was so strong that Republican voters opted for Trump not for the man- indeed despite him, but because they hated wokism so much- Trump as the enemy of my enemy. Lexington also suggested that while both sides were partisan, the right were more so as they feared losing what they had gained- even if by electoral means not quite fair & square- and they knew it. Over here, my strong impression is that many of the boomer pensioners are also alright Jack and are grimly gripping what they’ve got, dreaming of Hovis villages. But multiculturalism is here to grow, provided we do not nuke or toast the Hovisland first.
Democracies cannot work if the losers cannot accept the result which is all the harder when social medias make us doubt that we are all in this together.
Fixing this is a tall order, but we first need to bin the existing first past the post system which no longer fits. Is it beyond us to find an electoral system which weeds out the zealots to avoid mosaics of mini-groups babbling in government, but reduces the scope for unilateral power accorded by the present system?
“The 2016 referendum was an exercise in party management, and it was from that egg that Brexit first emerged…”
I don’t quite buy this – sure, it’s a matter of fact that Cameron was terrified of UKIP.
Unfortunately, the EU ‘rot’ and the egg that actually created Brexit was, and is, complicated.
Firstly the Heath deceit of what the EEC would eventually become and then, the cherry on the cake,the Maastricht Treaty that begat the euro.
The old biblical saying ” you reap what you sow” is so apposite in regard to Brexit.
Put simply, Brexit just corrected a 45 year old anomoly.
It’s the acceptance of the this anomoly and correction thereof that is so difficult for most remainers & rejoiners to understand.
Truth is, we the UK were never aligned to the Monnet/Salter/Schuman model.
“Firstly the Heath deceit of what the EEC would eventually become …”
The trouble is, john, that the argument you are trying to construct is based entirely upon flimsy talking points that Europhobes have adopted as their cherished foundation myths, in spite of them being violently at odds with reality.
Who, for example, wrote and published this in December 1972?:
“The Community which we are joining is far more than a common market. It is a community in the true sense of that term. It is concerned not only with the establishment of free trade, economic and monetary union, and other major economic issues —important as those are— but also, as the Paris Summit meeting as demonstrated, with social issues that affect us all — environmental questions, working conditions in industry, consumer protection, aid to development areas and vocational training.
“… we are committing ourselves not only to a series of policies or institutions but to a close partnership with our western European neighbours in which we will all work together rather than separately.”
“far more than a common market” … “economic and monetary union” … “social issues” …”environmental questions” … “working conditions in industry”
All that stuff that you complain was hidden and lied about is stated there explicitly, literally word for word, even if you couldn’t be bothered to read even the preamble or first page of the ‘Treaty of Rome’. *You* may have taken some animus against the EU, but to claim it was misrepresented to an unsuspecting public is fatuous nonsense, especially when the contemporary texts can easily be found online.
By contrast, here is what the NO campaign stated unequivocally in the first paragraph of their Referendum leaflet in 1975:
“[I]t sets out by stages to merge Britain with France, Germany, Italy and other countries into a single nation.”
So who actually lied? Or, to put another way, when do I get my valuable Franco-Italian Euro-passport?
One can go around the buoy numerous times as euphiles do.
Sir Con O’Neill, then Heath’s chief EEC negotiator wrote/said in respect of the loss of UK sovereignty “swallow the lot, swallow it now” – unfortunately this advice in an FCO note only came out after 30 odd years.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/11/09/swallow-the-lot-and-swallow-it-now-britain-is-and-was-deluded-about-its-negotiating-power-with-the-eu/
I’ve no doubt that we Brits will be continually lied to by the EU in the foreseeable future.
Yeah
Your part of the UK only mate. The backward longing lookers. Within 15 years us selfish myopic boomers will be gone and the yoof of today by then in control will be left to right the ship.
If you think the EU or Eurozone will be around in 15 years – the house of jenga that is the Eurozone might not last even that long.
What makes you say that?
The Eurozone has an inherent design fault – its called a non optimal currency union for a good reason – to be optimal it needs a Eurozone Treasury, full and perpetual mutualised debt – most taxes would therefore be decided at the Euro Treasury/Euro Commission proto government level – the net effect would make the nation state obviated – there would be no need for a Germany, or a France or Italy ….the national Parliament ‘s would be subsumed under a genuine European Parliament with joint EC/Euro Treasury/ECB fiscal powers.
The challenge is that when the voters of member states realise the breaktaking loss of national sovereignty that will be we entailed it’s likely that the EU/Z project ( as we know it) will possibly self destruct.
The willing self destruction of a country or nation state per Monnet/Shumann/Salter is, in my view, even a bridge too far for most EU voter’s.
I guess for some Brexiters the endgame still is the demise of the EU. Which to me is a bit silly, for what are those Brexiters going to rail against when the EU is finally gone ;) ?
And while there is a lot of consideration in those circles of “the breaktaking (?) loss of national sovereignty” to “the EU/Z project (?)” one would welcome a bit of thought in equal measure towards the truly breathtaking loss of national sovereignty the Scots and Northern Irish people are experiencing in relation to the Brexit vote.
Excellent post and sums up the situation exactly. Contrary to the Tories’s claims that “he got the big calls right” – Johnson will get his coveted place in history for one thing – taking an 80 seat majority political party to its demise in 30 months – you have to acknowledge that’s some achievement.
I can’t see the Conservative Party continuing in its present form – there are no plans or policies ; no successor who will satisfy the different factions within its ranks but more importantly it’s supporters are now a dwindling set of elderly white bigots shored up by the racist UKIP / BNP thugs.
I always claimed BREXIT would do for the Conservatives and nothing has happened to change that view.
And why that is not enough for good government to return.
A good rundown of the failings of the Johnson government. But it seems to me the Johnson government had an ‘oooh errr’ moment when they looked at the reality of Brexit and then had another ‘oooh errr’ moment when they looked at the options open to them to govern the UK. There were no electorally and ERG and NI and EU acceptable options. They were faced with an attempt to make 2+2 = 7. Reality cannot be fooled for more than a decade or two.
We (may) get rid of Johnson but so what. Even if the wheels and levers of power are operated in a competent and honest way the circle cannot be squared. 2+2 cannot be made to equal 7, something will have to give way. The next operative of the wheels and levers will face the same problems. They may not lie as egregiously but lie they will have to because they dare not upset the DM/DT.
The fundamental problem is not really Brexit – that was imho a displacement activity. The fundamental problem is how to run a small but potentially dynamic country that does not want to face the realities of being dynamic or the realities of not being dynamic. A bit stuck but we have fooled reality that way for 50 years.
I rather fear the worst is yet to come. A very pertinent question is just why exactly did Johnson fall right now?
It’s clear that it was the result of a sudden coordinated move against Johnson by the Brexit-Jacobins who up to then had kept him in place.
At the start of the week Lord Frost tweeted that Johnson must go because he no longer could deliver Brexit. A curious statement given that Brexit is done. However it’s now failing – as anything built on a foundation of lies will fail – but the answer of the Brexit-Jacobins is ‘Johnson was not ruthless enough, more revolution is needed’.
A who’s who of the ERG piled on to Johnson culminating in Bernard Jenkin the ERG leader chairing a committee meeting that he allowed to become a piece of ritual humiliation of the PM rather like a naughty boy called into the headmaster’s office. This was very unusual for Sir Bernard who heretofore has always been very deferential to Johnson and particularly zealous in shutting down opposition members asking the PM awkward questions whereas this time Jenkin gave all members carte blanche to give Johnson a good kicking and on occasion put the boot in himself culminating in his final statement telling Johnson to run along home where the party grownups were all waiting to tell him to resign. Johnson looked stunned as it was then in my opinion that he realised the revolution had turned on him.
So why do this? Because the hardliners have a new leader already picked out. A “True Conservative” who will get the guillotines going.
However Johnson’s insistence on staying on as caretaker PM during a months long leadership campaign is very much not what the revolutionaries want.
Just at the end of yesterday it was reported in the Guardian that Andrew Bridgen MP has written to the 1922 Committee chair Sir Graham Brady insisting that the leadership election be fast tracked and that it be limited to two choices and at a maximum only a 3 week campaign. In his comments to the press Bridgen also wants the two candidates to be Brexiters and from the right wing of the party.
The absolute fear of the Brexit-Jacobins is that a longer and open campaign will result in the many doubts about Brexit surfacing and from them a candidate who favours rebuilding bridges with the EU gain traction.
At various times in the Johnson era Mrs May’s leadership looked like a beacon of sanity (it was not) and in my opinion once the new ERG approved overlord is installed we will be doing the same about the Johnson era i.e. looking back fondly.
A columnist in the Telegraph said exactly this yesterday when commenting on EU leaders statements saying they hoped the end of Johnson presaged a better relationship with the EU – the Telegraph journalist saying it will be the exact opposite and a policy of total war with the EU.
a brilliant, pithy distillation of these disastrous past six years
bravo!
The problem for Boris Johnston is that he lives in an intellectual vacuum with no regard for anything other than Boris Johnston. When he ditched his mentor Domenic Cummings he was left with nothing, no policies, no plans, no future.
It has just taken a little time for the reality of the situation to catch up!
“Brexit was begat by the Conservative and Unionist Party.”
This is I think the first time I find myself somewhat disagreeing with a factual assertion in one of David’s posts.
I would offer the alternate that it was the sole decision of David Cameron, then leader of the Conservative Party, to include the commitment to a referendum on EU membership as part of the party’s 2015 election manifesto, which included in part,
“We will then put these changes to the British people in a straight in-out referendum on our membership of the European Union by the end of 2017.”
Honestly, I can’t say if this commitment was made at the behest of or in concert with the Unionist Party”, but I believe it was likely fairer to say that the reason that Cameron made this commitment in 2015 was less to do with the Unionists and more to do with UKIP. Nigel Farage had become a burr under the saddle for Cameron and was so successful at tempting voters to defect from the Conservatives in Tory heartlands that although UKIP stood no real chance of achieving majority, they could easily have split the traditional Conservative cote and thus allowed Labour or the Liberal Democrats to sneak past with the right-wing vote split.
Cameron’s strategy (and I might be being particularly generous to imply that he had one) was to try and silence UKIP ‘for once and for all’. The problem that he had with that ‘strategy’ was a profound inability to read the mood of the nation, leading him to get a completely unexpected result – one that cost him his leadership of the Conservatives.
“Cameron’s strategy (and I might be being particularly generous to imply that he had one) was to try and silence UKIP ‘for once and for all’.”
If only he had had some experience from which salient lessons could be drawn … say, for example, throwing red Europhobe meat to the nuttiest of the Tory back-benchers on the assumption that it would sate and shut them up once they had helped him become leader, only to discover that he had emboldened them to an unprecedented degree by anointing them party king-makers!
A couple of commenters above have mentioned the possibility that Johnson could have potentially stayed in power by calling a snap general election – as a way of appealing over the heads of his party to “the people”, whom he genuinely believed still liked and appreciated him.
Certainly some of the comments being put out by his team in the last hours seemed to suggest this kite was being flown, and there was plenty of press speculation about it, especially following Johnson’s ambivalence when challenged directly about this in the Commons Liaison Committee on 6 July:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/07/06/snap-general-election-what-will-call-boris-johnson-confidence/
https://www.nationalworld.com/news/politics/snap-election-boris-johnson-confidence-vote-win-uk-3723230
I realise this is very much “alternative history” now, but could you tell us whether – constitutionally – such an option was ever even possible? Would it be open to a future PM in a similar position?
None of the articles I have read are particularly clear on this, though I noted this aside from Tim Ross in Politico a couple of days ago: “As the walls closed in around the prime minister this week, his advisers discussed triggering a snap election to keep him in office. It was senior members of the civil service who told them that would not be allowed.”
But why not? I thought that calling an election was always regarded as one of the best cards in the hand of a PM? If this is not possible, by what authority is it ruled out? Is it one of those famous “unwritten” constitutional conventions? Or – as the Telegraph seems to hint – something to do with the Queen?
From a European perspective, national political crises are quite frequently “resolved” by going to the country – though, it is true, these crises usually involve a clash between opposing parties, rather than an internecine feud within one party!
And of course, from a democratic perspective, such an option would seem eminently sensible. For all that the UK is a “parliamentary democracy” (a remark trotted out sagely as if it somehow puts an end to all debate), it still feels wrong that a handful of MPs get to choose a new Prime Minister on behalf of the whole country – especially when their own election (which supposedly grants them the “legitimacy” to choose on our behalf) is now three years in the past.
From where I sit, it almost feels as if the Conservative Party has successfully pulled off a trick, built on “tradition” and “past practice”, which allows it to present what is in essence “palace intrigue”, an entirely internal process, as a national spectacle – gently conning us all, including the mainstream media, into accepting that we are somehow witnessing a national democratic exercise.
The political micro-effects of this theatre trick are already apparent in the leadership contest – a race to the right (which for many of us equates to a race to the bottom), and a debate conducted on a handful of “Tory” issues which do not represent the full spectrum of policy choices open to a future Prime Minister.
Thanks for any insight – and apologies if you have already covered this!
There is a view that Johnson trying to call a GE wouldn’t get past the Lascelle principles
https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/255547
Might even be covered in one of the earlier posts.
Hi John, and thanks for this.
It’s fascinating and scary to learn that part of our (unwritten) constitution is a pseudonymous letter to the Times written in 1950. Wow. Tell that to the Europeans with their high-falutin’ Constitutional Courts!
So many questions… but primarily: how does a pseudonymous letter – even one “understood” to be from the King’s Private Secretary – become elevated into a “constitutional convention”?
And should such a “convention” – even if one accepts it has really been established – bind a Prime Minister 70 years later?
Weird though this procedure was, even for the British Establishment in 1950, let’s assume it was Sir Alan (or “Tommy” as he was apparently known) who wrote this letter, and that he really did speak for the King.
But surely he was merely floating a proposal, and one which was rooted in the circumstances of the time? He was suggesting a set of principles which *might* guide THIS King in THESE circumstances (namely the 1950 general election).
The point, surely, is that no monarch has ever actually refused a PM’s request to dissolve – still less given their reasoning for doing so – and therefore surely no precedent has been set, “Cabinet Manual” or no “Cabinet Manual”?
I’m no constitutional lawyer, but – unless Boris’s people actually sounded out the Queen and were told she would refuse – the use of the “Lascelles Principles” to block him on this occasion sounds like constitutional bullshit to me.
What he could have done, had he been better advised, would be to put this so-called “convention” to the test. He could’ve asked the Queen for a dissolution – and then stepped back to see what she said.
The ambiguity around the powers of the Crown, if they serve any purpose at all, must surely be to leave Her or Him free to step in – in some unknown future situation of great extremity – to act for the good of the nation.
In my humble view, a general election now – regardless of Boris’s tawdry motivation of clinging to power – would have been the more democratic outcome. And therefore “good for the nation”.
But I’d still love to know what all the Constitutional lawyers think! I suppose DAG must have covered this in the past, but sadly there’s no search engine on his blog…