Explosive Cabinet resignations
A history of dramatic walk-outs
Michael Heseltine
Heseltine resigned as defence secretary in 1986 in a row with Margaret Thatcher over the Westland affair. Heseltine stormed out of a meeting at Number 10, saying his views on Westland were being ignored and that the “trust between the prime minister and her defence secretary no longer exists”. Heseltine prowled the backbenches for more than four years before challenging Mrs Thatcher in a leadership battle.
Geoffrey Howe
Howe was deputy prime minister when he delivered a ferocious indictment of Margaret Thatcher’s leadership style in a speech on Nov 13 1990. With a final devastating flourish he threw the door open to a leadership challenge by declaring: “The time has come for others to consider their own response to the tragic conflict of loyalties, with which I have myself wrestled for perhaps too long.” Thatcher resigned 15 days later.
Clare Short
On March 9 2003, Short repeatedly called Tony Blair ‘reckless’ in the lead-up to the war with Iraq. Her resignation seemed inevitable. But nine days later the international development secretary was
still in her post, announcing that she would remain in the cabinet and support the government’s resolution to go to war. Two months later, on May 12, Short finally quit, accusing Blair of lying to her and to Parliament.
Robin Cook
Cook was leader of the House when he resigned on March 17 2003, in doing so becoming the first minister to quit Tony Blair’s cabinet over the war with Iraq. Cook’s resignation speech in the Commons was electrifying but it failed to detonate the wave of resignations for which he might have hoped.
Tom Watson
Labour’s deputy leader was a junior minister when he and six parliamentary private secretaries signed a letter in September 2006 demanding Tony Blair name a date for leaving office. Blair labelled him “disloyal, discourteous and wrong”. Blair eventually quit in June the next year.
James Purnell
Purnell, an arch-Blairite, was pensions secretary when he tried to trigger Gordon Brown’s resignation as prime minister with his own resignation. In an explosive letter, in June 2009, Purnell urged the prime minister to “stand aside to give our party a fighting chance of winning”. Brown stayed put and lost the following year.