It Could Be Said #27 Parties Don't Kill Prime Ministers, Cabinets Do
If the Cabinet is as loyal as it looks, then Boris Johnson is almost certainly safe
Well, that’s one way to tell him Happy Monday – Tory MPs welcomed the Prime Minister back from spending the long weekend on call with the announcement that he would be facing a Vote of No Confidence. But all is not lost for Boris Johnson, because history says that whilst backbenchers can raise the issue of the leadership, it is the Cabinet that resolves it. And they seem to be staying loyal.
Some Very British Coups
One of the oddities of British politics is that the way we all think it’s supposed to work, where the people choose and change the Government, doesn’t happen very often. Since 1922, there have been thirteen changes of Prime Minister during a parliamentary session, two more than have occurred because of an election. Most of these have been Prime Ministers retiring due to ill-health or old age, but several were when they were forced out by their colleagues.
The most famous is of course the one from which the Tory Party’s backbench committee takes its name; the 1922 meeting of Tory MPs and Peers which resolved to end the coalition with David Lloyd-George’s Liberals, and with it, Austen Chamberlain’s leadership of their party. But far from being a revolt led by backbenchers, the most noteworthy speeches during the meeting came from Stanley Baldwin, President of the Board of Trade, and Andrew Bonar Law, former party leader. It was this divide amongst senior Tories that doomed the coalition and paved the way for Bonar Law to return as leader.
This is a recurring pattern in British political life, that it is the Cabinet which decides whether a leader should or shouldn’t go. William Gladstone oversaw the departure of first the Whigs and then the Radical Unionists from the Liberal Party but was able to maintain his grip on the Liberal Party’s leadership. It was only when he badly lost an argument in cabinet over naval expansion that the Grand Old Man finally went into retirement. In life, Winston Churchill had rarely been a favourite of the Conservative Party that he had once abandoned, and even after the Second World War many suspected that his deputy Anthony Eden would be better placed to win back power. But like Gladstone, he only entered retirement after his Cabinet lost patience with him.
You might think that’s ancient history now that we live in a world where political parties have formal rules for their leadership elections, rather than allowing meetings in members clubs or the monarch to make it up as they go along. But that would be wrong. Tony Blair never lost a formal vote of confidence, and as we discovered a decade later, wouldn’t have had to go even if he had. Instead he was forced to resign because of a coordinated series of ministerial resignations. Likewise, it was renegade ministers surprisingly adept marshalling of the Outer argument in the EU Referendum that left David Cameron no choice but to leave government.
Even when formal processes are engaged, it is the Cabinet not backbenchers whose voice carries the most weight. Margaret Thatcher twice faced leadership challenges, and rebuffed both, even winning a clear majority of MPs against Michael Heseltine in 1990, that if not for a technicality1, would’ve been enough to win outright. It was only after discussing things with her cabinet, did she realise that her position was too precarious to risk the do-over. She would bitterly remember those meetings as “treachery with a smile on its face”.
John Major was more successful, spectacularly resigning the leadership to bring forward a challenge, and so disrupt a right-wing plot to hijack the budget come November2. He bribed, cajoled, and intimidated the various Michaels that were his likeliest successors and achieved a reasonably comfortable victory over his former Welsh Secretary. He enjoyed a sleepy end to his premiership, with only Heseltine as Deputy Prime Minister injecting some dynamism into proceedings.
Theresa May was less fortunate, with her similarly comfortable victory deciding nothing. There were several reasons for that which suggest that a Johnson victory may be similarly short-lived. Like Anthony Meyer’s challenge to Thatcher in 1989, both Votes of No Confidence were called early enough in the parliament, that MPs have time for a do-over, should the need arise. Like Thatcher in 1990 and May in 2019, Johnson can’t follow Major’s option of masterful inactivity due to facing more challenging economic circumstances and pressing political concerns.
There is however one crucial difference. Just like how Thatcher’s position was undermined by Nigel Lawson and Geoffery Howe’s resignations, May had been suffering from a steady drumbeat of principled cabinet resignations throughout her premiership, and the Brexit talks with Labour seemed poised to provoke even more. It was this that emboldened the 1922 Committee to threaten her with another Vote of No Confidence3. Johnson on the other hand, deliberately excluded his internal enemies from the cabinet upon becoming Prime Minister in 2019 and has been rewarded with a team that has seemingly stayed loyal throughout the various scandals linked to the mismanagement of his Downing Street residence and office.
So Tory MPs are taking a genuine step into the unknown when they vote later today. This is an attempted putsch for which no cabinet minister has fired the starting gun. If (as seems likely) they fail, Tory MPs should not assume they will get another chance next year. After all, if the Cabinet is willing to stay loyal after everything that has happened, is there anything that could move them to breaking with Johnson? Indeed is it not more likely that after another year of bad economics and worse politics, that an exhausted Tory Party decides that the next election is lost and it would be better placed to rebuild in opposition?
And we all know how that played out for John Major’s Tories….
The then Tory leadership election rules stated that the winner had to have a lead of 15% of the electorate. There had been a clarification in 1989 that this meant all those entitled to vote, not simply those who voted. Without this clarification, Thatcher would have easily cleared the threshold. Instead she was four votes short.
The then Tory leadership election rules provided for a leadership challenge every November. Major had got wind of a plot by John Redwood and potentially other right-wing cabinet ministers, to resign in advance of the budget that same month, and use a “Shadow Budget” as the basis for a leadership challenge.
Tory leadership election rules state that after successfully defeating a Vote of No Confidence, a leader cannot be so challenged for another year. By May 2019 there were the votes within the 1922 Executive to amend the rule and reduce the protected time to just six months.