Sir John Curtice
speaker
115 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 19 Jul
Sir John Curtice’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Oh, no, far from unusual.
Indeed, the majority of changes of Prime Minister in post-war British politics are
have occurred during the middle of a parliament rather than as the result of somebody winning a general election.
And of course, it's been particularly true.
Most recently, we had Rishi Sunak taking over from Liz Truss, who herself had taken over from Boris Johnson, who took over from Theresa May, who took over from David Cameron.
These were all changes of prime minister that occurred without a general election taking place.
But, of course, you can go back further.
John Major taking over for Margaret Thatcher, Jim Callaghan taking over from Harold Wilson.
And so I'd assume taking over from Howard MacMillan.
Of course, I'd assume indeed it's the last person.
to have become Prime Minister and evidently going in that direction without being a member of the House of Commons.
In his instance, he was a member of the House of Lords and had to resign from the Lords and also fight a by-election, but in that case with the backing of his party.
And with a view to becoming prime minister, Andy Burnham, of course, although not Keir Starmer's idea, fought the making field by election one, and that's paved his way now to becoming prime minister.
So there's a very interesting parallel there to some degree with all the way back to 1963.
Yeah, we always have this argument every time.
It happens, and it's already said, it happens regularly that somebody becomes prime minister without winning a general election.
It's not a surprise if one or more opposition parties say, I want a general election.
Actually, the Conservatives are not saying that they think Mandy Boehm should have a general election straight away, although they do think perhaps there should be one for 2029.
The truth is, it's not obvious that it's in anybody's particular interest at the moment to hold a general election because it's not obvious that anybody would come close to winning.
Reform, of course, has been ahead in the opinion polls in the UK now for well over 12 months, going back to the spring of last year.
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