It has become clear that Sir Keir Starmer is incapable of carrying out the role of Prime Minister. It is too big for him, and he seems neither to have the drive nor the intellect to fulfil his responsibilities. Yet he clings on as if he were a limpet.
Since the war, ten prime ministers have left office when their party was in charge, and were replaced by a new leader without a general election. These ten are Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Wilson, Thatcher, Blair, Cameron, May, Johnson and Truss. Given the current political situation, I thought it would be interesting to consider whether there were any common factors that ensured that they went, or was each circumstance different?
Wilson is clearly an exception. He went of his own free will, a fact considered so extraordinary for any politician that a whole welter of conspiracy theories have grown up around his reasons for going. These range from absurd ones about the security services, to a knowledge of the onset of dementia. In truth, it seems as if he felt he had done it for long enough and was of an age to retire.
The first three, Churchill, Eden and Macmillan, all resigned because of human frailty. Churchill on the grounds of age, Eden and Macmillan for health reasons. None of them really wanted to go, so the excuse was cover for something else.
Essentially, Churchill knew that he was too old and that his most senior colleagues wanted him to go and had done for some time. Eden especially had become impatient in a manner that would have been familiar to watchers of Gordon Brown fifty years later. The heir apparent unable to wait any longer. Churchill, because of the war, was allowed to go with the greatest dignity and possibly could have remained a little longer, but he had been afflicted by a major stroke and must have known his powers were failing.
