What is a vote of no confidence?
- Published
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is facing a potential leadership crisis, after Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick resigned over the government's plans to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda.
What is a no-confidence vote?
It's a vote in which MPs from all parties decide whether they want the government to continue. It can trigger a general election and see a new prime minister appointed.
While any MP can propose a no-confidence motion, there's no guarantee their request will be granted.
However, if the leader of the opposition - currently Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer - introduces the motion, convention means the government must provide parliamentary time for a debate.
The wording is usually: "That this House has no confidence in Her Majesty's Government."
The motion only needs a simple majority to pass: one more MP needs to vote in favour than the number voting against.
If the government wins, it carries on as before.
At present, the government has a majority of 58 in the House of Commons, external, so a lot of Conservative MPs would need to to vote against their own government for the motion to succeed.
What happens if the government loses?
If the government loses, two things could happen.
In normal circumstances, you would expect Parliament to be dissolved and a general election to be called.
It is also possible that the King could invite somebody else to form a government - someone who could win a vote of confidence in the House of Commons.
That would be very unusual.
It last happened in January 1924, when Stanley Baldwin's Conservatives decided to assemble a new Parliament rather than resigning, after losing their majority in a general election.
His government was defeated in a vote of no confidence and King George V asked Labour's Ramsay MacDonald - leader of the second biggest party - to form a government instead.
But almost a century later, it's not clear how that would work.
Conservative MPs could agree on a different leader themselves, whom the King could then invite to form a new government.
Rishi Sunak is the second prime minister of King Charles III's reign
In principle, the monarch could even refuse to dissolve Parliament for an election.
Under the Lascelles principles (devised by Sir Alan Lascelles, private secretary to King George VI in 1950), the monarch could decline to do so if:
the existing Parliament was still capable of doing its job
a general election would be bad for the economy
another prime minister could be found who could get a majority in the House of Commons
But these scenarios would put the monarch in a very difficult position, and it is not clear how they would play out.
Would the PM have to resign?
If the government loses a confidence vote, the situation is similar to that of an election in which no one party wins a majority.
That means that the existing prime minister would only resign if it's clear someone else can command the support of the House of Commons.
However, if an alternative government is ready to take over, convention suggests that the PM should stand down.
But there is nothing clearly stated in law that says that they must do so.
Failing to step down would risk bringing the King into the dispute, as the monarch appoints PMs and, in theory, can dismiss one who behaves unconstitutionally.
What happened in previous no-confidence votes?
It's very rare for a government to lose a no-confidence motion.
It has only happened once since World War Two.
That was in 1979, when the then Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan's minority government fell and was replaced by Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives at the subsequent general election.
James Callaghan was the last PM to lose a no-confidence vote
Except for the period between 2011 and March 2022, when the Fixed-term Parliaments Act was in place, prime ministers have been able to call a general election whenever they want.
That means they can avoid a potential no-confidence vote by simply calling an election.