Could it Happen Here?: The Day a Prime Minister Refuses to Resign

by Peter Hennessy, Andrew Blick

Overview

Does the United Kingdom’s constitution sufficiently protect its democracy from a rogue prime minister?

In light of the resurgence of the far Right across Europe and some of the rhetoric of the 2024 General Election, which carried whiffs of political authoritarianism, Could It Happen Here? explores the possible consequences of a British prime minister refusing to leave office. Mapping out the processes that might occur after such an eventuality, the responsibilities of key players in the United Kingdom’s democratic system, and the integrity of that system after years of stress, Peter Hennessy and Andrew Blick analyze the United Kingdom’s “unwritten” constitution and provide a crucial recommendation for protecting and strengthening the resilience of its parliamentary democracy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781914979194
Publisher:	Haus Publishing
Publication date:	07/08/2025
Series:	Haus Curiosities
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	103
File size:	187 KB

About the Author

Peter Hennessy is the Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of several books, including the postwar trilogy Never Again: Britain 1945–51, Having It So Good: Britain in the Fifties, and Winds of Change: Britain in the Early Sixties. His most recent work is On the Back of an Envelope: A Life in Writing, also published by Haus. He is a fellow of the British Academy and an honorary fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge. He sits in the House of Lords as an independent crossbench peer. Andrew Blick is professor of politics and contemporary history in the Department of Political Economy, King’s College London, where he codirects the Centre for British Democracy. He is the author of Electrified Democracy: The Internet and the United Kingdom Parliament in History and Beyond Magna Carta: A Constitution for the United Kingdom. Before entering academia, he worked in the UK Parliament and at Number 10 Downing Street. His PhD on the history of special advisers in the UK government was supervised by Peter Hennessy. He is director of the Constitution Society, an educational charity for the promotion of knowledge of constitutional issues.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1
1. The Limpet Prime Minister: A System
Under Threat 5
2. Protecting the System 18
3. The Ten-Year Stress Test 53
Conclusion 86
Notes 88

Editorial Reviews

"There has been plenty of preparatory work done for the populist who wishes to disregard procedural constraints, which are, in any case, weaker than we might like. This is the predicament explored in Peter Hennessy and Andrew Blick’s comprehensive and quietly frightening new book Could It Happen Here?: The Day a Prime Minister Refuses To Resign. Hennessy and Blick’s imagined day of reckoning is a right-wing populist prime minister refusing to leave office after defeat at the polls. It triggers a revolution in fancy dress: “The Speaker refuses to take the Chair. They order the Clerks not to sit at the Table. The Mace is not carried into the Chamber.”

Hennessy and Blick show that the UK, the famously undocumented state, is guarded at a moment of crisis by nothing more than the “good chaps” theory that the people in power would act with integrity. But, in the event of a Farage victory, why would that assumption hold? Confronted with some bad chaps, the good chaps might fold one by one."
 

Prospect Philip Collins