Peter Bone, who has now been called at three PMQs in a row, is obsessed with who would succeed the Prime Minister if he died or were incapacitated. Andrew Neil has been indulging this nonsense, drivelling on about the United States, about France, about Germany, and so on. Someone should tell the pair of them, Bone a Cornerstone Group MP, that Britain is, you know, a monarchy. The Queen would appoint someone, who would then require a Commons majority in order to do anything. That is how it works.
As for Bone's concern that Nick Clegg might become Prime Minister, I am surprised that that is not already the case. Lloyd George was able to insist on the Premiership as the price of the support of his tiny faction of Liberal MPs, mostly his relatives, for the allocation of Ministerial positions to the Conservatives. Labour will either win outright in 2015, or else be the single largest party in a hung Parliament. In the latter event, Nick Clegg could and would insist on becoming Prime Minister even if, as would not be the case, everyone else around the Cabinet table were a member of the Labour Party.
In the extremely unlikely event that the Conservative Party were the single largest, then Clegg could reasonably present its failure to win an overall majority as the electorate's judgement against David Cameron, and again demand the Premiership.
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I had read this rather differently. I don't think Peter Bone is seriously concerned about Clegg's becoming PM. Rather, he is being mischievous, trying to tempt the PM into either endorsing Clegg as a possible successor or repudiating him. Either would suit Bone, who wants either to divide Liberals from Tories, or to divide Cameron from his backbenchers. This is because Bone, like you and I, suspects that there is not much difference in anything that matters between Cameron and Clegg.
ReplyDeleteI read this differently too. I read that Bone was concerned who would succeed the Prime Minister if Bone died or was incapacitated! I wondered who was Peter Bone and why is his health relevant to whoever is Prime Minister. I had to read the first sentence twice, but then I'm a bit tired (as in sleepy, not the euphemism) tonight.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, though the question is mischievous, it touches on an important question, though this was not created by the coalition but by the practice now of the parties electing their leaders from the party members, not the parliamentary parties. It takes time to organize these elections, while if the PM died the Queen would presumably want a replacement right away. What does she do while remaining politically neutral? There is no constitutional provision for an interim PM, while if she tries to guess who would win the party election and appoints the frontrunning candidate, she is interfering in party politics, and internal party politics at that.
With the current government, the answer really does seem to appoint Clegg as a sort of interim PM, with the understanding that the new Tory leader can demand he step down once the Tories have held their election. And as pointed out there is precedent for PMs not coming from the largest or even second largest party in the Commons.