When did Labour last depose a leader?

Today the Labour leadership result will be announced. And it's already clear a lot of people won't be happy with the outcome, whichever way it goes. But what can they do about it?

I'm not overly familiar with the current Labour Party Rule Book so I don't know the formal procedure for challenging a sitting leader. But I suspect many in the Labour Party don't know it off by heart either and some may be rapidly researching it.

But the problem is not how easy it is constitutionally to depose a leader but rather whether Labour has the culture and the will to do it. And past form suggests not.

When I've asked fellow politicos the question "Who was the last Labour leader to be formally deposed?" there have been three answers:

• Ramsay MacDonald
• George Lansbury
• Pass

Neither of these men is the correct answer. Ramsay MacDonald abdicated rather than was deposed. When in August 1931 his second government was facing collapse over budget cuts he concluded that he could not credibly oppose the expected Conservative or Conservative-Liberal replacement government in implementing a policy he had pursued and so decided to relinquish the leadership. As it happened, he wound up as the head of a National Government that drew members from all three parties and implemented the policy himself but broke with Labour in the process. But that was walking away, not a deposal.

George Lansbury is the other popular answer but he also wasn't deposed. In 1935 Labour was torn over the issue of how to respond to European militarism in the wake of Italy's invasion of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) with Lansbury opposing even sanctions. Other frontbenchers who held this position resigned, including both Sir Stafford Cripps, widely seen as Lansbury's political heir, and Lord Ponsonby, Labour's leader in the Lords, leaving Lansbury increasingly isolated. The party conference of that year was a turbulent affair with Lansbury opposing a pro sanctions resolution on pacifist grounds and then being shredded in a speech by the Transport & General Workers' Union leader Ernest Bevin.

But neither Bevin nor the conference toppled Lansbury. At the time, the power to elect and remove the Labour leader lay in the hands of the Parliamentary Labour Party alone. Lansbury tended his resignation but it refused by 38 votes to 7. This was no Nigel Farage style evasion of a promise but a genuine offer rejected, partially out of continued affection for Lansbury but also a fear that the next leader would be Arthur Greenwood, widely seen as Bevin's puppet. (Nowadays a trade union leader's mouthpiece is the heavy favourite for the deputy leadership.) However, Lansbury felt his position was untenable and insisted on stepping down. The MPs turned to the deputy leader Clement Attlee, expecting him to be a stop gap until the looming general election returned a wider choice but instead he proved to be the party's longest serving leader.

So just who is the last leader to have been deposed? It was the now little remember John Robert Clynes in 1922.

It may surprise people today but the concept of a "leader of a political party" didn't really emerge until many years after parties were established. There had long been leaders of parties in one of the Houses of Parliament but even then their authority didn't stretch over members in the other House unless they happened to be the current or ex Prime Minister. They had no position over the party in the country. Only slowly did parties come to create formal posts of a leader. (In other countries the "leader" is often still divided - e.g. in Germany three different people may be the chair of a party, the leader in the Bundestag and the candidate for Chancellor. And don't even try working out who is the "leader" of the US Republicans.) In the early years what we would now identify as the Labour leader was split across the chair of the parliamentary party, the chair of the party on the National Executive Committee and the party Secretary. The post of leader was created in 1922.

Clynes had been Minister of Food Control in the Lloyd George Coalition before Labour pulled out and then served as chair of the parliamentary party since 1921 in a Parliament where Labour was lacking many of its biggest names after the 1918 election. He led the party through the 1922 election at which it became undisputedly the leading Opposition party for the first time but then faced a challenge for the leadership from former parliamentary leader Ramsay MacDonald, who had returned to the Commons after a four year absence. In a close vote MacDonald defeated Clynes by 61 to 56. Clynes became MacDonald's deputy and served as Lord Privy Seal and Deputy Leader of the House of Commons in the first Labour government (as was then standard the Prime Minister was the Leader of the House but in practice MacDonald was busy, serving as his own Foreign Secretary) and then as Home Secretary in the second Labour government.

This was not the last time a big name was absent from Parliament when a leader was initially chosen. After the 1935 general election Herbert Morrison was one of the challengers to Clement Attlee but unsuccessful. (Attlee's 20 year long leadership was in part prolonged by a desire to age Morrison out of hope.) Tony Benn lost his seat in the 1983 general election and so missed the chance to stand to succeed Michael Foot; he returned in a 1984 by-election and eventually challenged Neil Kinnock in 1988 but was unsuccessful. David Miliband is currently out of Parliament but that hasn't stopped speculation about his returning to replace Jeremy Corbyn if the latter is elected. We can expect some similar speculation about an Ed Balls return at some stage in the next five years, no matter how silly it may seem or how much he denies it.

But for now Clynes remains the last Labour leader to have been deposed and that was 97 years ago. Labour do not have a culture of toppling leaders and that will make it hard to muster the effort to topple this one.

Coalition forming

No party wields a majority in the House of Commons. The incumbent Labour government is tired. Labour has offered to change the voting system to the Alternative Vote in order to stay in office. The Prime Minister has been rushing back to London from his home in Scotland. There is a major market crisis and the public spending deficit desperately needs to be cut. Political and financial speculation is strong. The leaders of the parties enter negotiations. And then...

Yes August 1931 was an interesting time in this country. What, did you think I was talking about something else?

What was different was the government that emerged. A special "National Government" that drew together politicians from all three parties was formed under Ramsay MacDonald with the Conservative leader, Stanley Baldwin, and the acting Liberal leader, Herbert Samuel, both putting partisan considerations aside (including the bill for the Alternative Vote being allowed to quietly die) and serving under them. The politicians put country before party and the government slowly managed to turn the country round.

The election count - get it right not get it first

I have just seen Iain Dale's Diary: Election Night Bill Needed in which he's now calling for legislation to have all the counts done immediately on the night. You'd think from all this "Save Election Night" campaigning that things have been done this way since time immemorial.

But as some my readers will remember, there have been many parliamentary elections when the votes haven't been counted until the next day. In 1945 the votes weren't counted for a whole three weeks. I have no idea if the 1945 equivalent of the blogosphere got worked up about this. (The reason for such a lengthy delay was that time was needed to collect the votes of servicemen overseas.) At most other elections there have been many constituencies that have not counted on the night, usually because of the time it takes to bring all the ballot boxes together - has this caused uproar and fraud? Seats in Northern Ireland have almost always counted the next day after all!

Nor have governments always changed immediately on the day after polling. In 1929 polling day was on May 30th but Ramsay MacDonald didn't kiss hands until June 5th - was there widespread outrage at Stanley Baldwin still being in office for a few days?

And in many other countries the final result, and the change of leadership, often takes days on end. In the last Australian election polling was on November 24th but the formal result took nearly two weeks to finalise, and Kevin Rudd's government wasn't sworn in until December 3rd. In the last US Presidential election some of the counting went on into December.

Counts in Australia, the United States and many other countries take so long for one main reason - postal votes (and other forms of distant voting) do not reach the count by the end of polling day. The requirement is usually that the vote be sent by polling day, not that it be received by then. There are also other arrangements for remote voting in various countries, including one provision that allows a voter to walk into any polling station in the country on polling day, provide proof of their address and receive valid ballot papers for their local polling station that they are away from. Again these votes take time to make it back to the relevant count.

The way the count is done in many countries differs from our methods. Instead of taking all the ballot boxes to a central location and counting them on one site, they are often counted at the polling station and the individual results declared. The ballot papers can, of course, be recounted at a central location if the result is close and/or there are disputes over the rulings on questionable papers. This isn't so different from the European Parliament or devolved parliaments or Greater London Authority elections where for all the list elections and the London Mayoralty the votes are counted at several different locations.

Now in none of these cases did civilisation collapse just because the final election result wasn't available on the night. And in all of them the provision for postal/overseas/absent ballots meant that it wasn't possible.

Which brings us to the UK counts. Whilst simple cost and travel logistics are and always have been reasons for some seats not counting on the night, there is a new factor - the massive increase in postal voting on demand. With postal votes arriving even at the end of polling day the system going to come under a much greater strain than before in order to carry out accurate verification. That is going to make the whole thing take longer, increasing the risk of mistakes because the counting staff are ever more tired.

Speedy, sloppy election results benefit no-one. And if the election is incredibly close and hinges on one or two very tight seats, is it really in anyone's benefit if there are disputes and questions about the results in those seats because of the judgement calls made in a hurry to get the result out on the night?

If this means a lameduck government leaves office on a Saturday or Sunday rather than a Friday, so what? And yes it will mean political junkies don't get the full fun of results at 3 o'clock in the morning, but democracy should not be run as a spectator sport.

(And we've barely touched on the cost. Are the "Save Election Night" campaigners willing to personally stump up for the overtime rates? Or do they expect it to come out of our council taxes?)

So let's stop worrying about whether the vote is counted on the night or the next day and put election accuracy first. It may take a little longer but it will be well worth it.

British Obamas? Yes we've had a few

Peter Cuthbertson has contributed an interesting post CentreRight: After Obama, could it happen here? Yes, in 1868 noting that the UK had a Prime Minister from an ethnic minority 140 years ago. But many people now no longer list Jews amongst ethnic minorities and so forget Benjamin Disraeli.

I also remember a moment of the Question Time US election special when someone in the audience said that the United States is the only place where someone raised by a single mother could become leader. Again the UK has been there long ago, when in 1924 Ramsay MacDonald became Prime Minister.

So how long will it be before we see a non-white Prime Minister? It's hard to say because leaders rarely suddenly emerge in British politics but rather spend some time in the Commons first, and to describe someone as "going to be Britain's first [something] Prime Minister" is a kiss of death to a career. But I think after the next election we will be seeing several potentials on the front benches. This country is used to being led by non-white Britons - look at sport! All we're awaiting is the right candidate in politics.

(P.S. I've been told that by the US definition of these things we've already had a black Doctor Who. Can you guess who? And no, it's not Lenny Henry.)