Andrew Mitchell's resignation is the latest in a long series of resignations over the last 30 or so years.
Virtually every position in the Cabinet has had casualties of scandal, political differences or even simply personal decisions to move on in life; over the last 30 years. The only Cabinet posts I can find (various changes in the structure pof cabinet necessarily simplify this) exempt from the curse of unexpected resignation appear to be Health, MAFF/Defra, and Scotland. As most unexpected departures have been as a result of personal problems rather than political differences, it’s not as if these positions are somehow particularly unpolitical or uncontroversial and its this that marks them out.
The time of departure shown below, is of necessity an estimation, sometimes quite an extreme one, but is trying to capture if there is a particular pinchpoint in the weekly schedule that precipitates a resignation. There are really too many factors that are driving resignations to draw too many conclusions, but one factor that united quite a few is the role of PMQs in bringing things to a head (note that the days of PMQs changed from Tuesday and Thursday until 1997 when it reverted to the Wednesday pattern we’ve become used to) – whether the focus of PMQs made it clear that a minister couldn’t survive, or a wish to avoid them being the focus of the one bit of the political week that’s guaranteed to make political bulletins, doesn’t stand out quite as much.
The other, perhaps rather sad point to note, is quite how few of these departures are through political differences rather than some scandal or other; and how those handful of departures are big political characters. Lawson and Howe’s departure falling out with Thatcher over Europe, Heseltine and Brittain’s over Westland (itself a subtext for a row about Europe), and Peter Carrington’s over the Falklands (maybe that rare example of a minister taking responsibility for something that happened outside his direct control) were all over big political issues and were big political characters (maybe not Brittain but certainly the rest of them) in their own right.
| Post | Name | Reason for Resignation | Time of Week | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Chancellor | Nigel Lawson | Policy | Thursday 1800 | 26 Oct 89 |
Foreign Secretary | Lord (Peter) Carrington | Policy | Monday 0900 | 5 April 82 |
Home Secretary | David Blunkett | Personal scandal | Wednesday 1800 | 15 Dec 04 |
| Defence | Liam Fox | Personal scandal | Friday 1600 | 14th Oct 11 |
| Defence | Michael Heseltine | Policy | Thursday 1100 | 9th Jan 86 |
Education | Estelle Morris | Personal | Wednesday 1900 | 23rd Oct 02l |
| Trade & Industry | Cecil Parkinson | Personal scandal | Friday 0700 | 14th Oct 83 |
| Trade & Industry | Leon Brittain | Policy/Scandal | Friday 1800 | 24th Jan 86 |
| Trade & Industry | Nicholas Ridley | Personal scandal | Saturday 1200 | 14th July 90 |
| Trade & Industry | Peter Mandelson | Personal scandal | Wednesday 1200 | 23rd Dec 98 |
Work & Pensions | Andrew Smith | Personal | Monday 2100 | 6th Sept 04 |
Work & Pensions | David Blunkett | Personal scandal | Wednesday 0900 | 2nd Nov 05 |
Work & Pensions | Peter Hain | Personal scandal | Thursday 1600 | 24th Jan 08 |
Work & Pensions | James Purnell | Policy | Thursday 2200 | 4th June 09 |
| Culture | David Mellor | Personal scandal | Thursday 1600 | 24th Sept 92 |
| Local Government & Transport | Stephen Byers | Personal scandal | Tuesday 1400 | 28th May 2002 |
| Northern Ireland | Peter Mandelson | Personal scandal | Wednesday 1300 | 24th Jan 2001 |
| Wales | Ron Davies | Personal scandal | Tuesday 1700 | 27th Oct 98 |
| Wales | Peter Hain | Personal scandal | Thursday 1600 | 24th Jan 08 |
| Chief Secretary | David Laws | Personal scandal | Saturday 1800 | 29th May 10 |
| Leader of the Commons | Geoffrey Howe | Policy | Thursday 1800 | 1st Nov 90 |
| Leader of the Commons | Robin Cook | Policy | Monday 1200 | 17th March 03 |
The list is necessarily very subjective and I may refine it on reflection. Was Charles Clarke simply removed from the Cabinet in a routine reshuffle, or was he sacked/resigned? Both Norman Fowler and Peter Walker left the Cabinet, both for wholly personal reasons, both at times outside of the normal reshuffle schedule but also calculated to be as low profile and easy for their Prime Minister as possible.
Other obvious question marks about exclusion from the list above are people like Jonathan Aitken (maybe given how he went about his departure there is no-one ‘like’ Aitken) – I seem to remember quite clearly how he resigned during his famous ‘sword of truth’ press conference, but the records I can find imply he left office during a more routine reshuffle.
