Spinoff from a thread, http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=798167, here I learned what a Home Secretary is, and that it is part of the Grand Extra Special Minister club, with Prime, Foreign, and Chancellor. [Note to self: find out what a Chancellor is.]
The US cabinet post of Secretary of the Interior was mentioned, and I thought of an Onion article where either he, or some other lower-rank cabinet member, kept making a pest of himself by reminding everybody he was 12th in line by the order of succession to US President in a national emergency.*
In the US, under certain circumstances, if the US President cannot carry out his functions, it goes VP, Speaker of the House, SecState, and then…I forget, but SecDef is there soon enough and the other Cabinet positions.
What is the Brit set-up for, God forbid, such an emergency need for leadership?
*Inow see they ran that joke again, even better for my cite: Secretary Of Interior Takes Presidential Oath Of Office ‘I Still Can’t Believe The President, Vice President, Speaker Of The House, President Pro Tem, Sec. Of State, Sec. Of The Treasury, Sec. Of Defense, And Attorney General Were All In That Hot-Air Balloon,’ Says New President Sally Jewell
I am not a scholar of British politics, but by my interpretation: The British Prime minister doesn’t have the kind of personal and codified power the President has. He’s simply the head of the current government, and the government as a whole can take care of the job until they’ve decided who the Queen should appoint to the position.
Yes, I thought of how that question, like so many of mine (and others here) is predicated on US government design ab initio.
Brit government and politics to my muddied mind seems always like this giant herding of cats, and perhaps looking at extreme need for procedural control–by anyone’s lights–would again highlight the different built-in systems.
Hell, if the Brits don’t have succession schemes down pat, no-one does. I think the most amount of words spilled in GQ on on Brit government have been by and prompted by Brits and their avid US followers on bizarro royalty scenarios.
That’s my understanding. The case hasn’t arisen since Palmerston in the nineteenth century, though a couple in the 20th resigned due to ill-health only shortly before they died (and Churchill probably should have done in 1953, but everyone covered up for him).
Given that nowadays all the parties have rules about how they elect their leaders, my guess is that the Cabinet would simply recommend someone to act as caretaker PM until the party had chosen a new leader, and that in the meantime everything else would carry on as before. The governing principle is always “The Queen’s government must be carried on”.
Some PMs have formally given a colleague the title of Deputy Prime Minister, usually to delegate supervision of various Cabinet and inter-ministerial committees, so in such a case, that person would presumably be the caretaker. Otherwise, up to the Cabinet, though most likely it would be someone who is not actually going to contest the party leadership election and can therefore be trusted just to be a caretaker keeping things ticking over.
The US president is elected by the public on a rigid schedule. There is no provision for calling an election any other time. The prime minister, on the other hand, can be voted in or out of office by a vote of Parliament, which could take as little as five minutes. No need for an elaborate succession plan; just vote in his (or her) deputy – or someone else.
I am not denigrating your post, but here you are: “some PMs,” and “presumably,” and, I dare say, “caretaker” are highly debatable terms when a nuke button has to be pushed or the designs of the caretaker are of the hunchbacked Lord Protector type.
In the past, there has usually been a Deputy Prime Minister. Nick Clegg held the job until 2015 as part of the deal to create the coalition government. He was not replaced.
It’s not clear who would step up if the PM was assassinated - My guess would be the Home secretary, but that may only be for a few hours until the party in power nominated someone. Most government things in this country take an interminable time to get through all the legal processes, but in times of crisis Parliament can be surprisingly quick on its feet.
Indeed, but those in a designated order of succession may not be sound of judgement either, likewise there’d be no less possibilty of paralysis in decision-making.
Essentially a caretaker would have to be appointed, which to me 9 times out of 10 would be the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Even when there have been Deputy Prime Ministers, the Chancellor is generally seen as more senior.
You omitted President Pro Tem of the Senate, but there’s precedent for that omission: In Madame Secretary Season 2 Episode 1, the incompetent Pres pro tem is bypassed (with no court order or executive certification) to swear in Madame Secretary as Acting President.
When I was in grade school, we memorized “St. Dapicale” which gives the cabinet posts almost in the order of succession. (I think “St. Dapiacle” was the correct order, but Dapicale is easier to pronounce?)
P, for Postmaster General, has been booted out of the Cabinet, and more cabinet posts have been created, so now it’s “St. Daiaclhhteevh.”
Other than Survive and Protect and a few well-placed letters in some submarines, did the British government develop any special plans for succession as part of continuity of government if London were to get nuked?
As for continuity of people, well, “L-sub-T equals L-sub-zero e to the minus-T-over-two-N”! (And if you get that one… )
To summarise what was said then, there might well be no pressing immediate need to appoint a replacement while the governing party selected a new leader. Nuclear decapitation was another matter, but the working assumption was that there’d be enough warning of a crisis that both the PM and the Queen would be in (separate) secure locations already. The PM would probably have been advised to designate two ministers as having the authority to launch any counterstrike in the event of his or her death. It’s never (quite) reached the stage where anyone has been so designated.
In the UK, the problem of emergency succession comes in two parts, because there are two positions that you need to worry about: head of state and head of government. (In the US system, both positions are wrapped into the position of the President.
In the case of the head of state, i.e., the monarch, there’s a very long list of who would succeed, based on several acts of parliament, going back to the Act of Settlement 1701. Under those acts, the list is currently headed by the Prince of Wales, followed by the Duke of Cambridge, Prince George of Cambridge and Princess Charlotte of Cambridge. (If either Prince George or Princess Charlotte succeeds there would be a regent, who currently would be the Duke of York, the next in order of succession.)
In the case of the head of government, i.e., the Prime Minister, the decision would be made by the Queen to appoint an interim Prime Minister until the party with a majority in the House of Commons could meet to decide on a new leader. She would almost certainly appoint a senior cabinet minister, but might make the decision after consulting with several leaders of the governing party.
The problem of succession to the position of Prime Minister occurred in Australia in 1967, when the then Prime Minister, Harold Holt, disappeared, presumed drowned. The Governor-General appointed John McEwen as interim Prime Minister, as the most senior cabinet minister, even though he was not a member of the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party would have the right to choose the next PM as the senior partner in the Liberal/Country Party coalition, and they did choose a new leader about 3 weeks later.
Oh yes, I thought of that too re the every-second- counts scenarios.
For example, it took time to round up the Chief Justice to swear in LBJ next to a bloodied Jackie (that immortal photograph)
Which raises the question/fact that LBJ in the preceding moments was, like some classified information, born President then Constitutionaly in the absence of secondary accreditation by legal codified authority.
A question which has immense hijack possibilities. But this OP is more about “who does everybody scramble to find first.”
I’m glad to see that some succession crises–potentially one even now as this thread progresses–are avoided and continuity is maintained:
Larry the cat escapes Downing St. eviction
The US blog most affiliated spiritually with the Tories, the National Review Online, had some background on this and how it reflects on the glory of British succession in general:
…Brought in to deal with the rat problem that caught public attention after a rat was seen in front of the house on live TV, Larry has added charm and a “strong predatory drive” to the Prime Minister’s home, and the Tories rightly judged that the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office was too vital of a position to leave vacant. Larry’s stateliness and hunting ability contrast sharply with Jeremy Corbyn’s Jacobin cat “El Gato” (“the cat” in Spanish), who is not even provided with the individual dignity of a real name.
Hopefully the first of many, this is a wise choice by the May government, since sacking Larry would be highly offensive to conservative principles. In his Reflections of the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke wrote, “By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of summer.” Committed to uniting the twin goals of pest control and the continuity of the commonwealth, May and the Tories are sending the right signal in turbulent times.