Since we’ve seen a handful of MPs resign from the House of Commons lately, this might be a nice time to talk about what an MP has to do to escape MPdom. Because like everything else in Britain, it’s wrapped up in tradition and more complicated than you’d think.

Officially speaking, MPs can’t resign. A 1624 law locks them into their jobs unless they’re expelled, disqualified, or dead. Since relatively few politicians are willing to squeeze their feet into those uncomfortable shoes–I’m not a politician, but the dead part would make me hesitate–and since over the course of a long and complicated history some MPs were deeply committed to getting out of the job, a workaround was invented: they can be appointed to one of two “paid offices of the Crown. These are the Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds and the Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.” 

The small print says that accepting either position disqualifies them as MPs. So without dying or being expelled, they get to push open the fire exit without setting off alarms. Neither position is paid, but they do become the recipients of a shitload of capital letters. 

Irrelevant photo: roses in a nearby town.

What does a former MP have to do if they’re  appointed to one of those positions?

Nothing. The jobs are long past their best-before date and have been kept alive only to allow MPs an exit that doesn’t involve death, expulsion, or uncomfortable shoes, although MPs–especially those of the female variety–are free to wear uncomfortable shoes if they so choose. I disapprove, but hey, who asks me? They’re not my feet.

What are the Chiltern Hundreds?

The hundreds are divisions of government and taxation–or at least they were back in the Anglo-Saxon long ago. In terms of size they stand somewhere between a village and a shire.

What’s a shire? 

It’s the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of a county.

The Britannica says the hundred was probably an Anglo-Saxon area of a hundred hides, with a hide being the amount of land it took to support a family. Each hundred would have a court to settle  criminal cases and disputes between neighbors. Originally, everyone who lived within the hundred would be expected to attend, but gradually they came under the control of the lords. By the time you get into the medieval period, if a crime was committed, the hundreds were collectively responsible unless they could cough up the perpetrator, or someone who’d pass for the perpetrator.

The hundreds weren’t formally abolished until 1894, although by then they’d pretty well lost all relevance.

A bit more history

I’m not clear on whether the 1624 resolution established the rule against resignation or built an escape hatch. Parliament’s website seems to be arguing both sides. On the one hand, it says many MPs saw serving in Parliament as an obligation, not an honor or opportunity to be chased after. So members weren’t encouraged to step down. On the other hand, Parliament didn’t usually stay in session for more than a few weeks, so ”a procedure for resignation was hardly necessary.”

Take your pick. 

It goes on to say that if an MP accepted a paid office from the crown, he (and at this point he would’ve been a he) could no longer be expected “to scrutinise the actions of the Crown or the Crown’s government,” so he’d have to step down.

Did I say “step down”? It was nothing so gentle: “All Offenders herein shall be expelled this House.”

So take that, you offenders.

Once upon a time, lots of crown stewardships roamed the land and could be used this way. They paid actual money and had actual responsibilities. Only two survive and they exist only as a back door out of the House of Commons. You can think of them as a nearly extinct species. They only surviving pair are preserved in the zoo that is the Parliament.  

Are there any other ways out of the job?

Yup, and although some are appealing and some are not. An MP can bail out of Commons:

• By becoming a member of the House of Lords. 
  • A couple of the MPs who left with Boris Johnson were hoping for that promotion, and when their names were crossed off the list felt–okay, I’m speculating here, but it looks to the casual observer like they felt cheated. Here they’d been expecting a job that pays £332 plus travel expenses and access to subsidized restaurants on any day they show up, plus the occasional loan of an ermine robe, and then they’re told they didn’t get the job? Hey, that’s hard on the old ego. https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/how-do-house-of-lords-expenses-work/ 
• By becoming a police and crime commissioner or a member of the National Assembly for Wales, the Northern Ireland Assembly, or a non-Commonwealth legislature (except the Houses of the Oireachtas of the Republic of Ireland). 
  • The Houses of the Oireachtas? That’s Ireland’s parliament. Exactly why you can be a member of that and not be disqualified as a British MP is way over my head.
• By being “sentenced to be imprisoned or detained indefinitely for more than a year in the United Kingdom, Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, or the Republic of Ireland; or if they are convicted of treason.”
  • Sometimes, you know, you’re better off just showing up at the goddamn job you already have, no matter how much you hate it. 
• By going bankrupt, but only under some circumstances.
  • Please don’t ask which circumstances or why those and not others.  
• Or, as we’ve seen, by accepting “one of a number of offices which are incompatible with membership of the House of Commons.”

So on the off chance that you wake up some morning and find that against your will and despite all your protestations you’ve been made a Member of Parliament, don’t despair. It doesn’t have to be a life sentence. The Chiltern Hundreds would be happy to act as your host, for however short a time.

How do members of the House of Lords resign? By writing a nice little note to the Clerk of Parliaments and then going out for a cup of tea. Or, of course, they can get their mothers to write the note: “Please accept Lord Supper-Dish’s apologies for withdrawing from the House of Lords. His time is currently occupied helping the police with their inquiries.”

But once the door slams behind the ex-lords, they’ll find that champagne’s more expensive on the mean streets of the real world than it is in the Lords’ subsidized eating and drinking establishments. The transition’s a tough one.

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And having nothing to do with any of that, if you’ve read or will be reading my new novel, A Decent World, it would really help if you’d leave a review on Goodreads of Amazon. Or if you have a blog and want to review it yourself, that’d be great. Anything that makes it visible, from social media to graffiti, helps.

Except possibly the graffiti.