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2022 was a fairly dramatic year when the Prime Minister had to resign. We published info about that as it happened and you can read it below. Then in September there was even more drama but this time tinged with sadness when Queen Elizabeth II passed away. We decided to put up a special page about the death of our monarch. It is here

I have decided to bring forward the history of 2022 and, rather than wait till the end of the year, add a little piece now. More will come in January 2023. My reason for doing this is the events in the United Kingdom at the beginning of July 2022. Before I do that I want to try to explain a few things about how England is governed. The rules under which nearly all countries are governed are called a constitution. All but 3 countries have a written constitution. For example, and you may have heard about this, the second amendment to the United States of America constitution says that the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. This is the argument that goes on in the USA about whether people should be able to keep guns.

The three countries with no written constitution are Israel, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. They are governed by something known as custom and practice and rulings made by judges. Custom and practice means if it has happened before it should continue to happen.

The United Kingdom is a parliamentary democracy. This means that people elect representatives (MPs) to a parliament to make laws and govern. However, the Head of State of the UK is the current monarch. The monarch has the power to appoint a Prime Minister. Convention is that They will usually appoint the person who is the leader of the party with the most MPs. After the 2019 election, that party was the Conservative party and that person was Boris Johnson. As such the late Queen invited him to form Her government. Remember that it is always referred to as Her (or now His) Majesty's government.

Once a person accepts the offer from the monarch, that person forms a cabinet (group) of people to head various departments like education, health etc. These people are known as ministers. There are usually about 20 MPs or so in the cabinet, the actual number depending on the Prime Minister. Within each department are other MPs who are not in the cabinet but help the Minister to make sure that department functions properly. No minister could do all the work needed to run a department in the same way that a Prime Minister could not run all the necessary parts of a government. These other MPs are known as junior ministers. In all there are about 160 or so MPs who work as ministers, junior ministers or in other positions and get paid some more money than simply that of being an MP.

Following various events in recent months MPs in the government had begun to lose trust in Boris Johnson. Part of the reason was that they thought he had been not always telling the truth. Starting on Tuesday night, 5 July, some people started to resign. The first two to go were actual cabinet ministers. Saqid Javid, the Minister in charge of health and Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, the man who looked after the country's finance, set taxes, decides on benefits etc. While this was a problem, Boris Johnson immediately appointed replacements but during Wednesday and Thursday morning almost 60 ministers and junior ministers resigned, including the person who had been appointed the new Minister of Education. She actually held that role for less than 36 hours.

With all these resignations it meant in order to govern they would need to be replaced but many of those people and even those still in cabinet told the Prime Minister he should go. He therefore made a speech outside 10 Downing Street to announce he was resigning as leader of the Conservative party and that, once a new leader was elected, he would stand down as Prime Minister. He said that might be in the autumn as it can be quite a long process to elect a new leader.

However, despite what many people were saying and indeed reporting, he did not, indeed could not, resign as Prime Minister on that date. To do that he would need to go to the monarchn and say he could no longer form a government and therefore could not govern. He has not done that and has chosen a new government. He is, in effect, a caretaker Prime Minister and, as such, according to convention (that word again), there are certain things he cannot do. Convention says that a caretaker government, Prime Minister and Ministers, will remain in office but should not announce new policy, make new appointments, sign new contracts or take decisions of long-term consequence unless not doing so would be against public interest. This convention is possibly why Boris Johnson appointed a new cabinet before he announced his resignation as Conservative leader. Once that was done he could not really make major appointments, although he could easily have argued it was necessary to have a cabinet in the public interest..

I hope that explains a little bit about what has just happened (I am writing this on 8 July 2022) and we will add more when we know more. But to make it clear Boris Johnson is still Prime Minister, albeit a caretaker one, as of now.

UPDATE - July 12th 2022

It was decided yesterday how the new leader of the Conservative Party and therefore the new Prime Minister will be chosen. The format for the election was laid down by an organisation called the 1922 committee. This is made up of Conservative back–bench MPs, that is those who do not hold any position in the government. The rules were very similar to recent elections but were designed to ry to make things happen as quickly as possible.

All candidates must declare themselves today. They must have 20 other MPs who support them. There will then be a vote of all Conservative MPs on Wednesday. Any candidate who gets less than 30 votes will be eliminated. There will then be another vote of MPs on Thursday and this time the candidate with the fewest votes will be eliminated. Eventually, for the first round of voting, there were eight candidates; Rishi Sunak (ex Chancellor under Boris Johnson), Liz Truss (the current Foreign Secretary), Penny Morduant (minister of State for Trade), Nadhim Zahawi (current chancellor) and Suella Braverman (current Attorney General). The other three candidates have not been in the recent cabinet (Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch) with Jeremy Hunt who lost to Boris Johnson in 2019 being the final one.

Votes will then take place next week, again with the candidate with the fewest votes being eliminated, until there are just two candidates left. These two will then be voted for by members of the Conservative party, not just MPs. It is thought there about 200,000 members and these people, through both a postal or digital vote, will select the new leader. Yes, that does mean that about 0.3&percent; of the population will choose our next Prime Minister.

The new leader will be announced on September 5th 2022 and it is thought whoever it is will go to see the Queen within 24 hours and be asked to form a government, thereby becoming our 56th Prime Minister. For older people, the next PM after this one will presumably be called Heinz (ask a parent or grandparent).

UPDATE - July 13th 2022

The first voting among Conservative MPs took place today. The results were:-

Rishi Sunak - 88 votes

Penny Morduant - 67 votes

Liz Truss - 50 votes

Kemi Badenoch - 40 votes

Tom Tugendhat - 37 votes

Suella Braverman - 32 Votes

Nadim Zahawi - 25 votes

Jeremy Hunt - 17 votes

Under the contest rules Jeremy Hunt and Nadim Zahawi failed to get 30 votes and so are eliminated.

UPDATE - July 14th 2022

The second vote among Conservative MPs took place today. The results were:-

Rishi Sunak - 101 votes

Penny Morduant - 83 votes

Liz Truss - 64 votes

Kemi Badenoch - 49 votes

Tom Tugendhat - 32 votes

Suella Braverman - 27 Votes

Under the contest rules Suella Braverman drops out. The next round is on July 18th. You can see that there were 42 votes to be re-distributed. Two candates actually received less votes in the second round.

UPDATE - July 18th 2022

Guess what, the next round was on the 18th July. Another candidate gone. Check the votes and see who gained and who lost. There should have been 27 extra votes. There's another round tomorrow and there will be 30 votes up for grabs.

Rishi Sunak - 115 votes

Penny Morduant - 82 votes

Liz Truss - 71 votes

Kemi Badenoch - 58 votes

Tom Tugendhat - 30 votes

Under the contest rules Tom Tugendhat drops out.

UPDATE - July 19th 2022

Next round was on the 19th July. Another candidate gone. Check the votes and see who gained and who lost. There should have been 30 extra votes. There's another round tomorrow and there will be 59 votes up for grabs.

Rishi Sunak - 118 votes

Penny Morduant - 92 votes

Liz Truss - 86 votes

Kemi Badenoch - 59 votes

Under the contest rules Kemi Badenoch drops out.

UPDATE - July 20th 2022

Final round and two will be left and the Conservative MPs say in who leads them will be over. The two who are left will spend the summer talking to those ordinary Consevative party members.

Rishi Sunak - 137 votes

Liz Truss - 113 votes

Penny Morduant - 105 votes

Conservative MPs want Rishi Sunak by quite a margin but Liz Truss sneaks into second place.

UPDATE - September 5th 2022

The new Prime Minister, to be appointed tomorrow, is Liz Truss. Final votes:-

Liz Truss - 81,326 votes

Rishi Sunak - 60,399 votes

172,437 members were eligible to vote and 82.6% did.

But Boris Johnson is still PM until tomorrow when he will go to Balmoral and tell the Queen that as he is no longer leader of the biggest party, he can't form a government. Of course unless She was out walking the corgis, she may already know. Then Liz Truss will pop in to Balmoral and the Queen will by then have found out what is going on and She will ask Liz Truss to form a government, Her Majesty's government, and to be the Prime Minister. Following the death of Queen Elizabeth just two days later, Liz Truss's government immediately became His Majesty's government.

Ms Truss will then appoint various ministers and off we go again. The summer holiday is over. Back to work. Wait, if I wrote this, which I did, I'm already back at work.

On October 25th 2023, after being Prime Minister for 49 days, Liz Truss resigned. She and her Chancellor had made some bad decisions and confidence was lost in her government. Talking of lost, she was replaced by Rishi Sunak who had lost the party election to her. More about this can be found by logging in to Owlbutcast and checking out some episodes there.
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