It is a striking fact that most prime ministers are evicted not by the electorate but by their colleagues—or because they give up. The likelihood is that, whether in the next month or at some point thereafter, Boris Johnson’s premiership will end similarly.
In the past century, we have seen 24 instances of a prime minister falling from office. Only ten followed the clear loss of an election or referendum—one of Baldwin’s three resignations followed an election when he led what was still by far the largest party—whereas 13 essentially involved eviction by their colleagues or by infirmity (or, as with Harold Macmillan in 1963, by a mixture of the two).
Of the 24 prime ministerial resignations, only two were completely unforced: Bonar Law in 1923 and Harold Wilson the second time round in 1976. Law was dying. The reason for Wilson’s resignation is still debated. Maybe, as he insisted, he had simply had enough after five elections, 13 years as Labour leader and two stints in No 10. Maybe he felt the onset of the Alzheimer’s which ultimately laid him low. Probably, again, it was a mixture of the two.
Of the other 12 who left without losing an election, most were more or less forced out by their Cabinet colleagues or parliamentary party, lacking enough support to keep going until another general election even if they wanted to do so.
For all that I urged Tony Blair to continue in 2007, it would have involved a bitter struggle with Gordon Brown and other critics, and he’d had enough. In retrospect, if he hadn’t succumbed I think he would have won a fourth election victory. But then so too might Thatcher—against Neil Kinnock, whom she had already defeated once—if she hadn’t been forced out in 1990. We will never know.
Margaret Thatcher is still the only leader to have been formally voted out of office by their own party’s MPs. She actually won a majority against Michael Heseltine, but was caught by a rule requiring a supermajority. However, equally dramatic was the resignation of Lloyd George in 1922, who was evicted by a formal vote of Tory MPs on whom he depended for his coalition majority. And Theresa May was gone six months after a confidence vote among Tory MPs in 2018, which she won only by 200 to 117. She would probably have been voted out by those same MPs had she not resigned before another vote could be held a year later, under the same Tory party rules as still apply today.
Of the others, Chamberlain, Eden and Cameron were forced out after catastrophic failures which were very personal. Chamberlain, in his bowler hat and starched collar, pursued appeasement and was worsted by Hitler. Eden oversaw the Suez crisis and was worsted by Nasser. Cameron called the Brexit referendum and was worsted by a motley crew led by Farage and… Johnson.
So, Johnson’s fate? It is important to note that there are probably two opportunities for Tory MPs to vote him out before the next election. If a no-confidence vote is held this summer or autumn, there is likely still time for another next year. Thatcher was first challenged in 1989, a year before the fatal ballot, demonstrating her mortality in the face of the poll tax and her increasingly erratic handling of Europe. If the greased piglet in No 10 escapes this year, there are plenty of traps which could get him before a general election in 2024.
Johnson has three things going for him. There isn’t a single clearly unpopular policy which would change if he went. There isn’t an alternative leader who is clearly more popular. And he isn’t clearly on course to lose the next election.
His position is most like Lloyd George’s in 1922. Many of his colleagues and media assassins just find him too morally bankrupt—although the Welsh Wizard, for all his government’s selling of peerages and knighthoods virtually on the open market with a price list, had a zillion times more achievements to his name and was evicted largely because, in the words of Baldwin, he was “a dynamic force,” and “a dynamic force is a very terrible thing.”
Actually, Johnson too is a dynamic force, and with him it can also be a very terrible thing. The irony is that his most dynamic failure by far—Brexit—isn’t the one likely to get him, but rather, as with Lloyd George, the extraordinary dynamism he puts into evading the rules which govern normal prime ministers. And he might yet be saved by his dynamic response to the invasion of Ukraine, a huge but almost entirely unexpected crisis.
What ultimately determines the fate of prime ministers is—in a phrase often attributed to Macmillan—“events, dear boy, events.” And there are plenty more of those to come.
