Of course in any Westminster system the MPs can effectively dump the leader if they’re willing to go so far as to vote against their own government in a matter of confidence. No way any PM survives as party leader after that. That would generally require pretty extreme circumstances, but it’s absolutely possible.
It needn’t wait until that point. There are no end of ways both formal and informal of signifying levels of discontent (not that every leader takes the hint in good time or reacts to it in a way that would strengthen rather than weaken their position). “Who’s Up/Who’s Down” is a game with many subtle currents, and usually starts within weeks of a new leadership team taking over!
But as I understand, the UK MP’s can vote to get rid of their leader while they are the governing party.
The point of the other route - no confidence - is that it is a nuclear option. A government that loses a confidence vote must call an election. The only exception is (if you are not Israel) if it has been a very short interval since the last election, the president/king./governor general may opt instead to ask the next biggest party to form a government if they can muster the confidence of a majority of the house. However, this is usually a scenario for a tight minority and a number of smaller parties. (And is one of the few situations where that head of state has a modicum of personal discretion whether to call an election if the PM asks).
And of course, if the reason to dump the leader is the unpopularity of the government, forcing an election when you are far down in the polls is a true nuclear option.
The debate after one election was “how long between elections?” Most pundits suggested somewhere around 9 months or more. 6 months was too soon to call a second election, a year too long to offer the option to a different party. AFAIK the rules don’t allow for losing a confidence vote, changing leaders and the same party becoming government without an election. Many parties would be happy to avoid frequent elections due to the cost and volunteer fatigue, so sometimes the threat of an election is a tactic for minority governments to force through legislation unpopular with the opposition parties. Another election ploy is “whose fault is it we have to have another election so soon?”
Well, sort of. There have been cases of monarchs refusing to appoint certain people as cabinet ministers. Usually it’s settled behind the scenes before a formal advice is tendered.
King George VI told Attlee not to make Hugh Dalton Foreign Secretary in 1945.. (It’s in the transcript).
In 1945, he asked his new Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, leader of Britain’s first majority Labour Government, who would be his Foreign Secretary, and in the words of the King’s diary, the Prime Minister suggested Dr Hugh Dalton. The King disagreed, saying that foreign affairs would be the most important subject for the new Government, and that Ernest Bevin should be appointed. The King disliked Dalton. Indeed, Dalton was the only member of the Cabinet whom he did dislike, and it is fair to say the King was not unique in disliking Dalton – most people did. But the King’s view was not based mainly or even entirely on that. He thought Bevin was a bigger man. In the end, Attlee did make Bevin Foreign Secretary and Dalton Chancellor. In his memoirs, Attlee insisted the decision was his own. That might have been to protect the King, we will never know, but the King certainly believed that he himself was responsible for the substitution of Bevin for Dalton as Foreign Secretary.
He also
and in 1951, the King successfully objected to Anthony Eden being given the title of Deputy Prime Minister in Winston Churchill’s peacetime Government, on the ground that it would limit his prerogative of appointing a Prime Minister when a vacancy occurred.
As I recall from a biography of Bevin, the King didn’t dislike Dalton just on some distant whim or his political opinions - Dalton’s father had been a clergyman and official in the royal household and the son was well-known to the family. Dalton’s consolation prize was to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, but had to resign when he let slip to a reporter something about his budget before he’d announced it in Parliament (considered a serious offence in those days); so maybe he would have been a liability at the Foreign Office. Certainly hard to imagine him being the success Bevin was.
There was an incident in Canada, decades ago, where the finance minister the day before the budget was at a press conference and rifled through the new budget book. TV Cameras were sharp enough to capture a few legible pages of the budget, and the printers were up all night printing a revised budget, changing the revealed items so he would not have to resign.
The budget secrecy is based on the fact that the budget often announces new tax and spending measures, and someone with a bit of foreknowledge might make a decent profit over knowing what aspects of business might be affected. It’s not like the USA where budget measures are debated back and forth in public for ages before being passed, and may or may not get approved in house or senate.
Note as mentioned before, the money bills, like budget especially, are confidence measures - a government who is defeated on the measure must resign.
Marc Lalonde:
Would you consider this more or less serious than leaving confidential cabinet material at your girlfriend with ties to organized motorcycle gangs house?
Revealing details of the Budget before it was announced in the House used to be a resigning matter, but nowadays most of the Budget seems to be trailed in advance and nobody seems to all that worried. Taxes, such as petrol duty, which used to go up at ‘six o’clock tonight’ rarely do now, anyway.
I can see why it could be an issue, but Dalton’s case was hardly a major issue - he let something (quite general?) slip to a reporter barely minutes before he was due to announce it in Parliament. It was rather more about Parliamentary amour propre than any potential for corruption (and it didn’t help that he made enemies more than friends).
Nowadays, I wouldn’t be surprised if it became the norm for the budget to be announced outside in Downing Street.
I recall that when petrol went up by a penny a gallon (that’s an old penny = <½p) there was a queue of motorists waiting to fill up when I went home from work. Given that the most they would save would be the equivalent of 5p, one wonders why they did it.