The new PM will have to face the Commons – the big question is when
There is no recent precedent for a PM taking over mid-parliament without a majority
Aweek from today, Theresa May will leave Downing Street for the last time and head up Whitehall, through Admiralty Arch and along the Mall to hand her resignation to the Queen at Buckingham Palace. She doesn’t have to. It is not necessary to be party leader to be prime minister. Churchill wasn’t, at least to begin with; Neville Chamberlain kept his party role until just before his death a few months after standing down in May 1940.
Nor do you have to be the leader of the biggest party in the Commons to be PM. Ramsay Macdonald wasn’t. The Tories had 470 seats out of 615 but the Labour leader stayed in No 10 because it suited everyone during the economic crisis of the early 1930s (though he was expelled from his party). The biggest influence on Macdonald retaining the premiership and the Conservatives accepting this arrangement was George V. Following the Great Crash the King persuaded the politicians to form a National Government which lasted until 1935.
Might his granddaughter have an unexpected role to play next week? After all, we are witnessing not just a political moment but a constitutional
one, too. There is no recent precedent for a prime minister taking over mid-parliament without a Commons majority. Plenty of premiers have resigned and been replaced, most recently David Cameron by Theresa May and before that Tony Blair by Gordon Brown. But they inherited parliamentary majorities which made their positions secure.
The nearest parallel was James Callaghan succeeding Harold Wilson in 1976 with a wafer-thin majority which was quickly eroded by defections and by-election defeats, resulting in a pact with the Liberals. Boris Johnson (or, less likely, Jeremy Hunt) will assume office with no overall majority, no popular mandate and the backing of about 90,000 Tory members depending on the turnout.
In the Commons, even with the support of the DUP’S 10 votes, the new PM will have a working majority of just three. If it is Boris Johnson then Dominic Grieve may resign the whip; and the majority will all but vanish if the Tories lose the Brecon and Radnor by-election on August 1. Since the DUP’S confidence and supply agreement is with the Conservative Party, not the Government it should seamlessly transfer across. But that won’t be enough if disgruntled Tories are prepared to topple their own government.
According to the Cabinet Manual setting out the rules and conventions under which the Government operates, “(its) ability to command the confidence of the elected House of Commons is central to its authority to govern”. But how does the Queen judge that the new prime minister meets these requirements when his party does not possess a majority?
Her Majesty was persuaded in 2017 to let Theresa May form a government after the general election on the understanding that there was a deal with the DUP. Yet this had not actually been agreed at the time and it was subsequently reported that the Queen felt she had been misled. But even if Mrs May had lost her majority, the Tories remained the biggest party, so their leader was the only realistic option to be prime minister in the absence of a coalition on the other side able to form a government.
Not since 1834 when William IV sacked Melbourne’s majority Whig government has the Sovereign made use of reserve powers to dismiss a prime minister or to make a personal choice of successor. The accepted test of whether a government can last is not the Monarch’s to apply, therefore, but Parliament’s in a vote of confidence.
The big question facing MPS next week, therefore, is when that might happen. Although the new Tory leader is to be announced on Tuesday, Theresa May does not propose to resign until Wednesday and is intent on taking her final PMQS before heading off to the Palace. The Queen will then invite whoever Mrs May recommends to succeed her to kiss hands.
The Commons is due to adjourn on Thursday for the summer recess, which means the new prime minister will not have to face MPS unless he chooses to. John Bercow, the Speaker, says he was assured by Julian Smith, the Chief Whip, “that there is no intention… to prevent the new prime minister from appearing before the House before it rises for the summer recess.”
But Mr Smith was not in a position to make that pledge on behalf of an incoming prime minister. Indeed, the only mechanism that would force a reluctant PM to face the House would be a motion of no confidence next Thursday. But will Labour table one?
It seems bizarre that the Opposition would let a new premier with no majority take over without testing his control over Parliament; but they are more likely to see what happens to Brexit over the summer rather than risk losing the vote and bolstering the incumbent. In any case, Labour doesn’t want an election right now any more than the Tories do.
The new PM could conceivably table a vote of confidence in his own government as John Major did in 1993. Oddly enough, if he lost it would not automatically trigger an election. Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act (FTPA) that can only happen in the event of an explicit no confidence motion, which presumably Labour would then table.
A prime minister can no longer “call an election” by requesting a dissolution from the Queen. That prerogative power was removed by the FTPA. In the unlikely event that Johnson or Hunt want to go to the country they would need the support of two thirds of MPS. But if there is to be an election, it is more likely to be forced than volunteered.
Assuming the new PM gets past next Thursday, the next moment of danger comes when the House returns on September 3 for two weeks. There is then another two-week recess for the party conferences, with MPS back on October 9. The opposition may wait until then to see whether Boris, if he is in No 10, has made good on his pledge to stare down the EU negotiators and get a new Brexit deal. But a move to topple him will have to be made before October 31. The question is when. Timing is all.