Should the Queen appoint as Prime Minister the winner of the Conservative Party leadership election? Not necessarily, argued Professor Meg Russell and Professor Robert Hazell in a recent paper, covered in the Guardian last Sunday. If a handful of Conservative MPs defect, Russell and Hazell say, the winner may not be able to command a majority in the House of Commons, in which case Theresa May should remain in office and supervise a process to find some other person who does command the House’s confidence.
Russell and Hazell go further, and argue that if the next government loses a vote of no confidence in the autumn and an election follows, the new Prime Minister would be constitutionally obliged to apply to the EU for an Article 50 extension.
These are important claims and Russell and Hazell are heavyweight constitutional scholars. Their arguments deserve serious consideration, which we provide in a new paper for Policy Exchange, published today.
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