You can almost picture the scene in CCHQ, as a dozen BBC News alerts go off at once – the PM has announced he will not be seeking a third term. Aides immediately clear the media lines – it is not a gaffe, but an “unplanned declaration”. Read: it wasn’t in our grid, and we had no idea he was going to say it. Immediately the parallels with Blair’s resignation have been drawn – if he remains in power come May 8th, will Cameron’s second term be dogged by questions as to the date of his resignation?
Currently, the official line from CCHQ is that Cameron intends to serve a full second term as PM. It seems difficult to understand how this would work in practice however. Hypothetically, the punters would go to the polls in May 2020, effectively voting blind, if there is no indicator of who the natural successor to Cameron would be. The alternative to this however, is that the Tories spend the final months of the next parliament engaged in a leadership contest. The probability of the contest ending amicably is somewhat low, and on the timescales used in the 2005 elections, the Tories would spend two months arguing amongst themselves and then presenting an untested leader to the electorate. If he went earlier, and gave a new leader time to bed down before going to the polls, then there would still be a significant period of time in which Cameron’s successor would be serving as an unelected PM. We all know how that ended for Gordon Brown. Indeed, a 2014 report from the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee suggested that any future changes in PM between elections should be subject to a “vote of confidence” in the Commons, in order to deliver some accountability, such was the backlash from Brown’s tenure at Number 10.
Times Red Box ran some polling earlier in the week that appears to imply that voters are not entirely bothered by the announcement either way. But the damage to the Cameron’s leadership, or any party leader for that matter, is most likely to be inflicted by your own party, not an electorate en masse. Cameron being heckled by pensioners is not going to force his hand to go any sooner, but some well-timed letters to the 1922 Committee may do. By not only announcing that he intended to stand down, but that he suspected he would be succeeded by either Osborne, Johnson or May, Cameron has no doubt invoked the ire of other Tory frontbenchers who see themselves as potential leadership candidate (messrs Javid and Hammond spring to mind). Should the Tories not secure victory in May, the calls for his resignation will become deafening with alarming speed. Similarly, the greatest threats to Miliband’s leadership of Labour over the course of this parliament have come from backbench (and frontbench) sniping, rather than waves of discontent sweeping the nation. It seems somewhat perverse, but rather than being accountable to the electorate, it is Westminster’s propensity for navel gazing that does the most to oust any political party leader.
But in some ways, we have a more engaged electorate than ever before, who will increasingly demand more of their political party leaders. Yes voting numbers have been steadily declining for decades, but every time an individual takes to social media to sound off about anything and everything from MPs expenses, the NHS, immigration or the lack of school places in their area, they are engaging in politics, just on their own terms. Look at Labour’s new Response Team – a concerted effort to take political debate onto social media, where these discussions are happening, because they have few other options of countering the anti-politics sentiment. The incoming intake of MPs will recognise this more acutely perhaps than the party stalwarts, and will struggle with the concept of an unelected or inexperienced PM as much as the average voter on the street, if only for want of appearing like “one of them.”
So Cameron will continue to insist that his declaration was a straight forward answer to a straight forward question, and colleagues will rally around and insist that he is the man for 2015. But it seems unlikely that should he secure victory in May, the next parliament will not be filled with clandestine meetings of camps Osborne, Johnson and May, gently nudging Number 10 for the precise date of Cameron’s departure. Allowing leadership questions to drag on throughout the parliament is bad for morale. But allowing an untested leader to take charge of the country is worse, at least in terms of public credibility. So while strategists may insist this was Definitely Not a Gaffe, unless there is an unexpected runaway victory come May 8th, Cameron appears to have already signed his resignation letter.