2018 was a year of rubbish resignations

“Never resign! Wait until you’re fired!” was Winston Churchill’s advice to political colleagues. Unfortunately for today’s frontbenchers looking for a way out, Theresa May has been in no position to sack anyone – no wonder, then, that so many have found themselves making their own way to the door.

If nothing else, 2018 will be remembered for giving us a record number of government resignations, with a staggering 17 departures throughout the year (nearly three times the previous year). Of course there’s no surprise for guessing what triggered most of them – but even then, it’s surprising how little impact these Brexit resignations have had. Could it be that British politicians have forgotten how to resign well?

The worst offenders have to be the four Brexiteers – David Davis, Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab and Esther McVey – all of whom left the cabinet without winning any serious concessions in the process.

Davis and Johnson were the first to go, quitting in the wake of the long-awaited Chequers summit. With the Prime Minister finally unveiling her Brexit vision, it was always going to be a high-stakes weekend, but the unfolding drama turned out to be even more exciting than anticipated.

A quick recap of the facts: cabinet had arrived at Chequers to be told there were only two options – back the plan or resign. In a rare flourish by No. 10, it was made clear to ministers that anyone resigning would lose their ministerial car – leaving them forced to take a taxi in full view of a pack of scoop-hungry journalists.

Having failed to coordinate in advance, and without their special advisors and mobile phones, Davis and Johnson fell headlong into May’s trap. Both agreed to her proposals – a rejection of the terms for which they had campaigned. Johnson even raised a toast to the prime minister, joking ‘if only people could see how united we are now.’

For Davis, it took less than 24 hours to realise his mistake, and that his authority as Brexit secretary had been fatally undermined. Although most journalists took his grumbles with a pinch of salt – he had already chalked up five resignation threats in six months, and so entrenched was the pattern of ‘threat and retreat’ that there was genuine surprise when he finally took the plunge. The news leaked out on Sunday night, too late for the political programmes and for the next day’s newspapers. It fell flat. 

Johnson quit the next day, faring little better. Speculation had been raised when he failed to turn up to a Cobra meeting, with Twitter users excitedly asking #wheresboris. The answer, as it happened, was that he was posing for a photograph signing his own resignation letter – an unprecedented flourish designed to make headlines.

Curiously, given their stature and profile, these twin resignations made less trouble (at least immediately) for the prime minister than the more recent departures of less well-known frontbenchers, Raab and McVey, both of whom quit over the Brexit withdrawal agreement.

Crucially, their departures had the support of backbench Eurosceptics, who saw the departure of two Brexiteers as an opportunity to mount a challenge to the prime minister. When two other ministers and three junior apparatchiks decided to follow, it seemed the game might be on.

As if on cue, backbench Brexiteer leader Jacob Rees-Mogg called an impromptu press conference voicing his lack of confidence in the prime minister and calling on colleagues to submit the 48 letters required for a vote of no confidence. A handful of backbenchers followed suit.

Giddy reports suggested five further cabinet ministers were teetering on the edge – most significantly Michael Gove. After war-gaming all scenarios with his wife and aides and rejecting an offer from May to take up the poisoned chalice of Brexit secretary, he stepped back from the brink – at least for the time being.

Gove’s decision to stay put kept the others in place. But the danger for the prime minister wasn’t over, with the European Research Group claiming they now had enough letters to trigger the leadership contest. It turned out to be untrue.

This botched coup dealt a crushing blow to the ERG’s reputation. The farcical episode was embarrassing for the Tories, but thoroughly enjoyed by Labour MPs who, harking back at their own failed coup in 2016, gleefully smirked that the Brexiteers were even worse at defenestration than they were.

But if the Brexiteers failed to achieve much with their resignations, it’s worth saying that Remainers hardly fared better. In July Guto Bebb’s resignation and demand for a second referendum went almost unnoticed, with one newspaper forgetting to include him in their own tally of resignations.

But it’s Philip Lee – the former justice minister – who surely scoops the prize for this year’s most pointless resignation: quitting in protest at the government refusing to allow MPs a say over the final Brexit deal, just hours before No10 agreed to do exactly that. His statement had flopped even before the day was out.

More effective was Jo Johnson, brother of Boris and committed Remainer, whose resignation and accompanying call for a second referendum was striking in the manner it was delivered. By posting a video online, rather than a formal letter, Johnson racked up some two million views within a few days. Given the prime minister seems recently to have abandoned the convention of publicly replying to resignation letters, perhaps Johnson was on to something.  

And how did those non-Brexit resignations fare?  As you might expect, they were a mixed bag.

Amber Rudd was forced to quit as Home Secretary in April after inadvertently misleading the select committee investigating the Windrush scandal. Yet her loyal support for the prime minister won her a return to the cabinet just seven months later. She even enjoyed a ‘gap-summer’ interrailing across Europe in the interim.

Greg Hands, former trade minister, resigned in protest at the expansion of Heathrow airport – in doing so, placing a political bomb under neighbouring MP Boris Johnson who, like Hands, had promised his constituents he would walk over the issue. As it turned out, it failed to detonate.

Sports minister Tracey Crouch also staged a principled and effective exit, resigning after the treasury delayed moves to curb fixed-odds betting terminals. Not only was her resignation hailed across the political divide – and even by the Archbishop of Canterbury – it also helped deliver a near-instant reversal of the treasury’s decision.

Finally it seems apt that a year of unprecedented resignations also saw the departure of Tory grandee Lord Carrington, the last surviving member of Churchill’s government and a man who famously undertook one of the most honourable political resignations of the twentieth century over the Falklands War.

Coincidentally, Lord Carringon died – aged 99 – on the same day that Boris Johnson, one of his many successors as foreign secretary, decided to resign. In his eulogy at the funeral, Lord Carrington’s son, Rupert, recalled that his father had remained an avid follower of politics right until the very end.

When he heard the news that Johnson had resigned, it was said to have brought a broad smile to his face. A lighter reaction, one suspects, than the prime minister.