All our Prime Ministers are unelected

Some good news to start with: Larry the Cat, who is not the Camerons' cat but a civil servant tasked to get rid of mice and rats (the four-legged ones) in Number 10, is staying on to take his rightful position under the new Prime Minister. I had always assumed that the Camerons were more of a dog family but kept a cat because of the difficulties of canine life in Downing Street. Not a bit of it. Larry is part of the government machine as is Palmerston, the Foreign Office cat. Sadly, being a civil servant not a politician, he cannot become the Prime Minister. Not yet, anyway.

The other piece of good news is that not writing about the supposed fight over children between May and Leadsom over the week-end meant that I do not have to write about it at all. By  Monday morning it was all over and Andrea Leadsom had pulled out of the contest. Did she jump or was she pushed? We do not know for certain but can make our own assumptions.

What we do know is that she was comprehensively stitched up by the media and, specifically, by the paper of record, the Times. All the stories that had been spread about her turned out to be untrue and Rachel Sylvester admitted that she had introduced the issue of Leadsom having children and May not into the conversation. The little we know from the tape (most of it is still in the secret archives of the paper of record) confirms that. Leadsom was probably naive not to insist on seeing that article before it was published and one could argue that alone shows that she is not ready for Number 10. But do we really want a situation in which less than honourable hacks decide who can and who cannot become party leader and Prime Minister? I find that appalling as I find it appalling how many people continue to believe and repeat the headlines even though doubts about the veracity of the story emerged very early.

Another curious aspect of the whole brouhaha has been outlined by Ross Clark in the Spectator: A traditional family life is now a handicap. Angela Eagle can explain that being gay, working class and a northern lass gives her some kind of a special insight into the country's mentality; Theresa May can (slightly more justifiably) excite people's sympathy because apparently she could not have children; but try talking about your children and implying that perhaps bringing them up does give you some qualifications and empathy with a very large proportion of the population and you are dead in the political arena.

How outrageous that Jeremy Corbyn’s challenger should bring her class, her geographical birthplace and her sexuality into the leadership debate, suggesting that they would make her a more suitable leader than Corbyn. Or maybe it isn’t outrageous that someone should draw on their personal experiences while campaigning for office. I certainly haven’t come across anyone else making the point I have just made, and neither did I hear anyone protesting when Stephen Crabb talked about his council house upbringing while launching his leadership bid, nor when Sadiq Khan went on ad nauseam during the London mayoral election about his father being a bus driver.

In which case why was it such a scandal when Andrea Leadsom suggested that being a mother gave her valuable experience for being Prime Minister? If being northern and working class makes you better able to understand a section of the population then surely being a parent helps you understand the demands on millions of other parents. Moreover, having to juggle the needs of work and childcare and still follow a successful career surely shows the world that you have valuable skills in time-management.

And we accept all this manipulation. Truly we get the media and the politicians we deserve.

Having got all that out of the way, let me turn to the inevitable cries that have already started: Theresa May is an unelected Prime Minister. We had them when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister. He, too, was unelected. Well, of course, they are. All our Prime Ministers are unelected. We do not have a presidential system and we do not vote for Prime Ministers. We vote for MPs and through them for parties in the sense that the party with the largest number of MPs forms the government, choosing the leader according to their own rules.

Ah yes, I am told, but Theresa May (or Gordon Brown) did not lead their parties in an election. True.
A surprising number of Prime Ministers did not do so, when they were appointed to their jobs. Usually I start with 1940 when Churchill became an unelected Prime Minister but, for once, I shall go a little further back.

So here is a list of appointed Prime Ministers from 1916:

1916: Lloyd George becomes PM without an election when Asquith falls
1922:  Andrew Bonar Law became PM after the 1922 Committee revolt against the Coalition but called an election almost immediately
1923: With Bonar Law resigning because of his terminal cancer Stanley Baldwin is appointed PM. He, too, called an election soon after his appointment, which was inconclusive and led to a vote of no confidence, which, in turn, led to
1924: Ramsay Macdonald being appointed to be PM
Baldwin's second term came after he had led the Conservative Party to a huge victory but
1935: Baldwin was appointed Prime Minister of the Coalition government as Ramsay Macdonald's health was failing; he then won an election but
1937: Baldwin resigned and Chamberlain was appointed PM.

Before anyone starts making stupid comments about Neville Chamberlain let me say it quite forcefully that had there been an election in 1940 as intended, the Conservatives under him would have been returned triumphantly.

And so we come to 1940, from which the situation is a good deal more clear-cut with no real problems with the few coalitions we had.

1940: Churchill appointed PM and, obviously, could not call an election. In any case he leads a war-time coalition that is not dissolved till spring 1945 when Attlee demands an election, not something WSC was keen on. Labour landslide. Churchill loses one more election in 1950 and Conservatives are returned in 1951 though only just and without a popular mandate, which does not matter under our system.
1955: Churchill finally retires and Anthony Eden is appointed PM. He called an immediate General Election and increased the Conservative majority considerably. Well, we all know the sad story of Eden's premiership.
1957: Harold Macmillan is appointed PM. Did not call an election till 1959 which he won.
1963: Sir Alec Douglas Home is appointed PM after Supermac's resignation. Calls election in 1964 and loses though only just by five seats.
1976: James Callaghan is appointed PM after Harold Wilson completely unexpected resignation. Calls election in 1979 and loses.
1990: John Major is appointed PM after the drama of challenge to Thatcher and her resignation. Calls election in 1992 and wins.
2007: Gordon Brown appointed PM after Tony Blair's rather protracted resignation saga. Calls election in 2010 and loses.
2016: Theresa May appointed PM after David Cameron gambles on the EU referendum and loses, resigning immediately. No need to call an election especially as we now have fixed term Parliaments.

For the sake of brevity I have written of PMs losing or winning elections. Of course, it was the party they led that did so. Let me reiterate my two points:

1. None of our Prime Ministers are elected and
2.  Quite a few of our Prime Ministers even under the modern party system were appointed as their predecessors resigned. Some called an election immediately, some delayed; some then led their parties to victory, some did not.

Clearing the ground

Every now and then I am moved to write a blog that puts most of my readers into the position of the proverbial grandmother who is being taught how to consume an egg or two without using her teeth. I apologize to those who are particularly annoyed but feel that a little ground needs clearing. The immediate cause of this rant discussion of basic facts is someone trotting out the old chestnut on another forum that Gordon Brown was not even elected to be Prime Minister. When I stopped raving and tearing my hair out in fury I replied in words of utmost simplicity and tried to explain that we do not elect Prime Ministers in this country. Why is that so difficult to understand?

So, let me try to clear some of that ground. We do not have a directly elected Executive in this country. Maybe we should but that is another story altogether. Once out of the EU or standing beside its debris we might change our constitution and create a system that would, indeed, elect our government directly rather than indirectly through Parliament. So far I have not seen a single proposal that would create anything but a Premiership that was even less accountable than it is now.

Let me go through it all again: in the General Election we vote for individual MPs on a first past the post system and the party that collects the largest number of MPs, should it find itself in a position of being  able to form a government, does so. Who becomes Prime Minister in those circumstances is up to the party in question to decide. Whoever is the leader of that party is summoned by Her Majesty and asked  to form the next government. Presumably, she also adds sotto voce "and God help you".

This does not run smoothly all the time and there have been various  occasions when the party in question, being in an overall minority in the House of Commons, has to make choices: its leader can form a minority government with the certain knowledge that there will be another election within a few months; he (the one time we had a she the question did not arise) can form a minority government with the full support of one of the smaller parties, usually the third one; or he can team up with another party to form a coalition, a tricky but not particularly unusual course of action in modern British politics.

As a matter of fact, there was no talk of any coalition during the 2010 election and it was formed against the wishes of elected representatives of both parties as well as those of the electorate. So, if any government is unelected, it is this one.

The argument about Gordon Brown runs as follows: when it is pointed out that his party happens to have won unequivocally three elections, with two of them as landslides, the response is that he was not the leader at the time so people did not vote for him. (They did, as it happens, in his own constituency but let that pass.) This is true and, perhaps, the Labour Party would have done better to hold some sort of a leadership election when Tony Blair announced his resignation. However, I repeat, that is up to them.

A new Prime Minister taking over in the middle of a parliamentary term is a very common occurrence. In 1935 Stanley Baldwin replaced Ramsay Macdonald, called a general election, which gave the National Government  another huge victory. Baldwin was replaced by Neville Chamberlain in 1937. An election was going to be called in 1940, which the Conservatives would have won, but events intervened. Instead, another "unelected" Prime Minister came to power, Winston Churchill. No election till 1945, which was called with great reluctance on his part and which resulted in a Labour landslide. Then there was another Labour victory and in 1951 a grudging Conservative one.

Chuchill hung on till 1955 when he was succeeded by the "unelected" Anthony Eden, who called an election and increased the Conservative majority. The Suez debacle led to his resignation and he was succeeded by the "unelected" Harold Macmillan who resigned in 1963 to be succeeded by the "unelected" Sir Alec Douglas-Home.

Moving right along, we have an "unelected" Prime Minister in James Callaghan in 1976 and in John Major in 1991 1990. Quite a common occurrence in fact and nobody has ever called them unelected in the past, possibly because people were better versed in the British constitutional rules.

Let me also add that until 1965 the Conservatives did not elect their leaders, who simply emerged after a great deal of negotiation behind the scenes. Labour did elect but there was just as much negotiation behind those scenes before the vote went through.

Apart from Eden, all the post-war Prime Ministers who took over between elections, continued in place to the last possible minute after which the party they led was either returned with a smaller majority as in the case of Macmillan and Major or lost as in the case of Douglas-Home and Callaghan. No particular conclusions can be drawn from that.

I trust I have cleared some ground.

Gladstone's influence

On another blog I shall be reviewing Dick Leonard's interesting but not entirely adequate double biography of those two Victorian political titans, Disraeli and Gladstone, The Great Rivalry. It is generally accepted that they created modern British politics though the party Gladstone left behind lasted a considerably shorter time than did the one Disraeli left.

There is one other aspect of Gladstone's political activity that, perhaps, is not emphasised often enough and that is his long service as Chancellor of the Exchequer. This is what Dick Leonard says:

There are many who consider Gladstone to be the greatest man ever to have held the premiership ...... Few, however, would challenge his pre-eminence as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He held the post for far longer than any of his successors, serving four times, twice in conjunction with the premiership, for a total of 12 and a half years. He effectively created the post as it exists in modern times, and none of his successors has rivalled the impact which he made.

Before his time, the Prime Minister still wielded substantial financial powers in his function as First Lord of the Treasury, and the Chancellor played only a secondary role, comparable to that of the chief Secretary to the Treasury today. Gladstone subsumed to his office all the financial powers formerly wielded by the Prime Minister and clearly established that the Chancellor should normally be seen as the second person in the government, even though the office remained - in formal terms - junior to those of the sercretaries of state.

In the words of [Roy] Jenkins, one of his most successful followers in the office, he gave his annual budgets 'such a sweep and force that their presentation became a fixture of the national life to Derby Day or the State Opening of Parliament'.

There is some incoherence in that: what exactly does he mean by describing Gladstone (and subsequently Churchill) as being the "greatest man ever to have held the premiership"? Were they the greatest Prime Ministers? In what way were they the greatest men?

Furthermore, I beg leave to disagree with the judgement that Roy Jenkins was one of the successful post-Gladstone Chancellors.

However, the main point here is what the effect of Gladstone's undoubtedly highly influential chancellorship has been and that, alas, one cannot call healthy. Budget Day has, indeed, become one of the great events in the political calendar but the most obvious result of that is the budget is not seriously discussed in any detail. Disraeli's budget of 1852 was voted out and the government fell. Can anyone seriously imagine something like that happening nowadays?

Not only is the Budget always voted through but it is always voted through as a whole - the many different sections are not separated out either for serious debating or voting purposes. Or, in other words, thanks to Mr Gladstone's activity and influence, Parliament or, to be precise, the House of Commons lost its power over the finances that the Executive needs, the very issue over which battles of various kinds were fought between the Legislative and the Executive or between Parliament and the Crown. Ironic, is it not that it should be a great leader of the Liberal Party who should be responsible for that development.