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How do you depose a Prime Minister? It's a question that intermittently grips Britain and makes 10 Downing street even chillier. So how hard is it really? And can they be impeached like our transatlantic friends? Are you ready to get into the fiddly nitty gritty of British politics? Let's go. So how do you depose a Prime Minister? The answer comes down to one word confidence. In the United Kingdom, a Prime Minister doesn't hold office because of a direct national mandate. They hold office because they can command the confidence of the House of Commons. And that is the central rule. If you understand that, you understand how and why they fall. There are two key One is a Prime Minister is booted out by a general election, so a party or coalition other than that of the Prime Ministers wins enough seats, command the confidence of the House of Commons in a public vote. That is a straightforward democratic reset. Prime Minister, out you go, new one comes in. The second path is where things get very interesting, and this is when it happens between elections, when a Prime Minister is replaced mid term by someone from their own party. Since 1945, more than half of the UK's prime ministers first took office between elections. So midterm handovers are not anomalies, they're actually likely. In Britain, the core principle is if confidence goes, the Prime Minister goes. And there are three ways that loss of confidence manifests. The first is a party leadership challenge. The second is a parliamentary vote of no confidence. And the third is political collapse via mass resignations or some kind of huge credibility failure. And there's the historic relic of impeachment, familiar to our American friends, of course, and we'll come back to that. So the first way, the party removes them. This is the most common modern route. Political parties, of course, like to be special, and they have their internal rules for removing leaders under Conservative Party rules. If one third of Conservative MPs submit letters of no confidence to the chairman of an esoteric committee called the 1922, it triggers a no confidence vote in the party leader. It used to require 15% of MPs, but the that number was increased to deter faction fighting in this revolving door of prime ministers. The vote is a secret ballot among Conservative MPs, and if the leader loses, they're replaced. If they win, they're immune from another challenge for a year. But surviving can still be politically fatal. Theresa May won her confidence vote in 2018, but her authority was damaged irreparably and she resigned months later. Boris Johnson also survived a party confidence vote in 2022. But then this deluge of Cabinet resignations made his position untenable. The key point here is winning is not the same as surviving. Politically, it's a Pyrrhic victory. The Labour Party has different rules, so a challenger must secure nominations from at least 20% of Labour MPs. The incumbent leader automatically appears on the ballot. Labour members and affiliate groups like trade unions are able to vote. Gordon Brown faced pressure in 2008, but plotters failed to produce a serious challenger. In practice, for Labour Prime Ministers, the real pressure mechanism is cabinet resignation. Now to the second route. The House of Commons can remove them. This is the constitutional beating heart of the whole affair. The Leader of the Opposition can table a motion of no confidence stating explicitly that the House has lost confidence in in the government. If the government loses, the Prime Minister must resign or trigger a general election. This is rare, though. The last time this actually brought down a government was James Callaghan in 1979. His minority Labour government lost by 311 to 310 votes. Knife edge. And the vote triggered a general election that the Conservatives won under Margaret Thatcher. Before Callaghan, the previous defeat was 1924. So why does this not happen very often? Well, MPs of the governing party are reluctant to publicly vote against their own government on the floor of the House of Commons. You see, voting secretly against your leader in a secret ballot inside the party is one thing. Voting publicly with the opposition to collapse your own government is quite another. In fact, leaders sometimes quite call confidence votes pre emptively if they're on the back foot to try and clear the decks. Third, we have Cabinet resignations, which is like the modern guillotine. In reality, it's the most decisive method. If senior ministers resign en masse, declaring a loss of confidence, the Prime Minister's authority is in tatters. This is how Boris Johnson fell in 2022 after surviving a confidence vote. Mass resignations made his position untenable. It's also how Liz Truss, Britain's shortest serving Prime Minister, was forced out. Her mini budget triggered this economic turmoil, her credibility evaporated and the resignations poured in. And it's why Tony Blair stepped down mid term after sustained internal party pressure following Iraq. You see, there was a loss of authority and once that dissipates, survival becomes impossible. What about impeachment? Now we step firmly into history. Most people associate impeachment with the United States. Donald Trump was impeached twice and acquitted by the Senate before him. Bill Clinton was impeached and acquitted. Impeachment in America has Been a fixture in the last 30 years in Britain. It is a medieval fossil. Impeachment originated in 1376, during the Good Parliament. The House of Commons impeached William Latimer, a noble and a diplomat, for financial irregularities, which is a very British way of saying that he was accused of selling a castle to the enemy and taking bribes to release enemy ships and also pocketing fines, which were for the King. The list goes on. But the most famous impeachment was Warren Hastings, which was in 1788. And he was tried before the House of Lords for seven years. And the trial was led by the famous statesman and political philosopher Edmund Burke, who accused Hastings of tyranny, corruption and high crimes and misdemeanors against the people of India. Hastings was acquitted in 1795, but the last completed impeachment trial was Henry Dundas, the first Viscount Melville. In 1806, he was accused of misappropriating public money while he was Treasurer of the Navy. He was also acquitted, but his political career was ruined. Since then, nothing. Attempts were floated regarding impeachment in 2004 against Tony Blair over Iraq, but they didn't go anywhere. And what's the reason for that? Well, because since the 1740s, when Sir Robert Walpole, regarded as the first Prime Minister, resigned after losing the confidence of the House of Commons, impeachment has been superseded by this idea of parliamentary responsibility. As in, people will expect Parliament to boot out the Prime Minister instead of going through an impeachment process. And there are also other things like public inquiries and collective cabinet responsibility. So there are other routes. Impeachment is legally extant, but politically it is obsolete now. But have we forgotten someone? Could the monarch remove a Prime Minister? Technically, yes. The monarch is the only person with the formal authority to appoint or dismiss a Prime Minister. Historically, these powers have been used, but the Last time was 1834, when King William IV dismissed Lord Melbourne because he was worried. The King was worried that Melbourne's party, the Whigs, would lead him towards the slippery slope of democracy and take power away from the Crown. Doesn't age well, does it? But we can't judge by our standards. So the Cabinet Manual makes it clear that any monarch tried to use such powers today would violate the Convention. The sovereign must not be drawn into party politics. So. So the King or Queen does not ever depose a Prime Minister in modern Britain. But they do accept resignations, though. So, to sum up, a UK Prime Minister falls when they lose confidence, they lose an election, they're out, they lose their party confidence and the faith of their party, they're out. They lose the House of Commons. They're out. They lose their Cabinet. They're out. Impeachment. That is just theoretical. And the monarch, practically impossible. 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