Tom Griffin (London, OK):In the wake of Charles Clarke's attack on Gordon Brown last week, the weekend commentary evinced a widespread view that the Labour party is paralysed, doomed under Gordon Brown, but incapable of getting rid of him.
In the latest edition of Tribune, Labour MP Peter Kilfoyle underlines the difficulties:
The actual constitutional mechanisms covering prime ministerial resignations are unclear. What if Brown is forced out in favour of candidate A; goes to the Palace, but recommends candidate B as his successor? Worse still, what if the ex-Prime Minister believed the only way to pre-empt a messy succession campaign for the party in government was to recommend a dissolution of Parliament to the Queen?
These are pertinent questions because, unlike the Tories, Labour does not have a clear and efficient way of removing its leader. Our current system was designed precisely to deter a challenge to an incumbent. On the other hand, it had assumed an election when there was a vacancy. The unelected succession of Gordon Brown to replace Tony Blair ran counter to that assumption and weakens Brown’s position.
It is an interesting question what would happen if Gordon Brown asked for a dissolution under the circumstances Kilfoyle describes. The Queen's own website has this to say:
The Prime Minister of the day may request the Sovereign to grant a dissolution at any time. In normal circumstances, when a single-party government enjoys a majority in the House of Commons, the Sovereign would not refuse, for the government would then resign and the Sovereign would be unable to find an alternative government capable of commanding the confidence of the Commons.
This of course does not quite cover the situation. If Gordon Brown called for a dissolution in the face of a parliamentary groundswell against him, it would not necessarily be clear that there was not another figure capable of commanding the confidence of the Commons. The Queen might choose to emulate George V, who refused Stanley Baldwin a dissolution in January 1924, instead calling on Ramsay MacDonald to form the first Labour Government. Or of course she might not.
Given the vagaries of Britain's unwritten constitution, Kilfoyle's scenario would be a rare opportunity for a decisive display of the personal power of the monarch.
