Prof Hamid Ghany

Last week, the Unit­ed King­dom got its sev­enth Prime Min­is­ter in ten years when Sir Keir Starmer re­signed, and King Charles III in­vit­ed for­mer Man­ches­ter may­or Andy Burn­ham to form a gov­ern­ment.

All of this was dri­ven by the par­ty. Starmer re­signed as leader of the Labour Par­ty right af­ter Burn­ham won the Mak­er­field by-elec­tion.

Burn­ham’s me­te­oric rise to the pre­mier­ship was con­firmed by the fact that he won the by-elec­tion on June 18 and be­came Prime Min­is­ter on Ju­ly 20. All of this was en­gi­neered by the par­ty ma­chin­ery as Starmer’s res­ig­na­tion as par­ty leader led to nom­i­na­tions to fill the va­can­cy that was cre­at­ed. He won the par­ty lead­er­ship un­op­posed.

The timetable was care­ful­ly chore­o­graphed for Starmer to go to Buck­ing­ham Palace on the morn­ing of Ju­ly 20 to ten­der his res­ig­na­tion to King Charles III. That was fol­lowed by Burn­ham then go­ing to Buck­ing­ham Palace right af­ter to re­ceive the for­mal in­vi­ta­tion from the King to form a gov­ern­ment.

The Cab­i­net was put to­geth­er by Mon­day evening for a meet­ing of the Privy Coun­cil on Tues­day morn­ing, which was fol­lowed by a meet­ing of the Cab­i­net lat­er on Tues­day.

Par­lia­ment went in­to its sum­mer re­cess on Ju­ly 16th, so PM Burn­ham will not face Prime Min­is­ter’s Ques­tions in the House of Com­mons un­til Sep­tem­ber 2nd af­ter Par­lia­ment re­sumes on Sep­tem­ber 1st.

He will more than like­ly spend the sum­mer re­cess work­ing on a va­ri­ety of pol­i­cy is­sues for when Par­lia­ment re­sumes in Sep­tem­ber.

Com­par­a­tive­ly, we have on­ly ever had a change of prime min­is­ter, oth­er than by the re­sult of a gen­er­al elec­tion, on two oc­ca­sions. The first was the death of Dr Er­ic Williams in March 1981 and the sec­ond was the res­ig­na­tion of Dr Kei­th Row­ley as PM, but not as po­lit­i­cal leader of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, in March 2025.

In both in­stances, the ap­point­ment of the suc­ces­sor PM was based on pres­i­den­tial dis­cre­tion. In the case of Williams, Pres­i­dent Sir El­lis Clarke formed the opin­ion that George Cham­bers was most like­ly to com­mand the sup­port of a ma­jor­i­ty of MPs from among the three Deputy Lead­ers of the PNM, name­ly Ka­malud­din Mo­hammed, Er­rol Ma­habir and George Cham­bers.

In the case of Row­ley, the Pres­i­dent re­ceived a let­ter from 21 PNM MPs in­di­cat­ing their sup­port for Stu­art Young to be­come the Prime Min­is­ter, while Dr Row­ley re­mained among them as po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM. The PNM then had two lead­ers in the House, one who was their po­lit­i­cal leader and the oth­er who was the leader of their cau­cus.

Two lead­ers in the same House.

The dif­fer­ence be­tween Young in T&T and Burn­ham in the UK was (i) the split be­tween the par­ty lead­er­ship and the pre­mier­ship in T&T and (ii) the com­bi­na­tion of the par­ty lead­er­ship and the pre­mier­ship in the UK. Burn­ham’s path­way to the pre­mier­ship was through the par­ty. Young’s path­way to the pre­mier­ship was through pres­i­den­tial dis­cre­tion with­out par­ty lead­er­ship.

As a par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy, the ap­point­ment of a PM is di­rect­ly con­nect­ed to lead­er­ship of the par­ty with a ma­jor­i­ty. That is an un­writ­ten con­ven­tion in the UK and is a writ­ten con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sion in T&T. De­vi­a­tions from this re­quire dis­cre­tion by the Head of State.

In the UK, there is a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion for a Cab­i­net to in­clude a PM and the Lord Chan­cel­lor at min­i­mum; hence, in our writ­ten con­sti­tu­tion at in­de­pen­dence, a gov­ern­ment had to in­clude a PM and an At­tor­ney Gen­er­al as the lat­ter was the clos­est to the Lord Chan­cel­lor in the UK.

It is this lat­ter point that makes any threat to elim­i­nate a Prime Min­is­ter and/or an At­tor­ney Gen­er­al a very se­ri­ous mat­ter. Any re­moval of a PM will re­quire the ap­pli­ca­tion of pres­i­den­tial dis­cre­tion to ap­point a suc­ces­sor.

Such dis­cre­tion of the Pres­i­dent per­mits the choice of any MP who, in the “own de­lib­er­ate judge­ment” of the Pres­i­dent, is most like­ly to com­mand the sup­port of a ma­jor­i­ty of MPs un­der sec­tion 76(1)(b). The ex­er­cise of that “judge­ment” is based on the per­son­al opin­ion of the Pres­i­dent and has had a che­quered past.

In March 1981, Pres­i­dent Sir El­lis Clarke felt that George Cham­bers was more like­ly to com­mand the sup­port of a ma­jor­i­ty of MPs than Ka­malud­din Mo­hammed or Er­rol Ma­habir.

In De­cem­ber 2001, Pres­i­dent ANR Robin­son felt that PM Bas­deo Pan­day’s com­mand of 18 MPs was less wor­thy than Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Patrick Man­ning’s com­mand of 18 MPs in de­cid­ing who should be ap­point­ed PM.

The ap­pli­ca­tion of pres­i­den­tial dis­cre­tion un­der sec­tion 76(1)(b) makes any threat to any PM in our sys­tem a dan­ger­ous mo­ment that can per­mit any MP be­ing ap­point­ed PM by the Pres­i­dent un­der sec­tion 76(1)(b), re­gard­less of their par­ty af­fil­i­a­tion.

Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI. He was se­lect­ed by the THA to guide the dis­cus­sions on To­ba­go au­ton­o­my.