Prof Hamid Ghany

Last Mon­day, British Prime Min­is­ter Sir Keir Starmer made two an­nounce­ments. First, he an­nounced that he was re­sign­ing as leader of the Labour Par­ty. Sec­ond, he an­nounced that once the Labour Par­ty had cho­sen a new leader, he would then re­sign as Prime Min­is­ter.

This se­quence of events has been fol­lowed with greater fre­quen­cy over the last ten years, ever since David Cameron re­signed as par­ty leader and Prime Min­is­ter fol­low­ing the out­come of the Brex­it ref­er­en­dum in June 2016, in which his pre­ferred out­come was de­feat­ed. In 2015, he won an out­right ma­jor­i­ty for his Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty at the gen­er­al elec­tion.

There­sa May emerged as par­ty leader af­ter the process for se­lect­ing a new leader was com­plet­ed. By 2019, her in­abil­i­ty to de­liv­er Brex­it led to her res­ig­na­tion as par­ty leader and af­ter a con­test­ed lead­er­ship elec­tion, Boris John­son emerged as par­ty leader and was ap­point­ed Prime Min­is­ter.

How­ev­er, by 2022, Boris John­son re­signed as par­ty leader and sub­se­quent­ly as Prime Min­is­ter fol­low­ing al­le­ga­tions of par­ties at Down­ing Street dur­ing the COVID-19 lock­downs, which he had de­nied. Liz Truss won the con­test­ed lead­er­ship elec­tion and was ap­point­ed Prime Min­is­ter days be­fore the death of Queen Eliz­a­beth II.

Truss last­ed just over 40 days in of­fice and re­signed over con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing her gov­ern­ment’s bud­getary pro­pos­als fol­low­ing the au­tumn bud­get state­ment by her Chan­cel­lor of the Ex­che­quer, Kwasi Kwarteng. She re­signed as leader of the par­ty and was suc­ceed­ed by Rishi Sunak when he won the lead­er­ship con­test un­op­posed.

Sunak served from 2022 un­til he lost the Ju­ly 2024 gen­er­al elec­tion to the Labour Par­ty led by Starmer. The Labour Par­ty won 412 seats out of 650.

With such a mas­sive elec­tion ma­jor­i­ty, Starmer was ex­pect­ed to last for the full five-year term. Yet, af­ter just two years, he is re­sign­ing as par­ty leader in the face of grow­ing un­pop­u­lar­i­ty and is like­ly to be re­placed by Andy Burn­ham, who just won a by-elec­tion and was sworn in as an MP last Mon­day. It is high­ly un­usu­al for some­one to win a by-elec­tion one week and, pos­si­bly a cou­ple of weeks lat­er, be hand­ed the keys to 10 Down­ing Street.

There was a time when the West­min­ster mod­el in the UK was re­gard­ed as the gold stan­dard for po­lit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty in the for­mer colonies of Great Britain that even­tu­al­ly gained their in­de­pen­dence from them.

At the time of be­com­ing an in­de­pen­dent state in 1962 and be­com­ing a re­pub­lic in 1976, the ar­gu­ments for the re­ten­tion of this mod­el were very clear. We do not have an ex­act repli­ca of the West­min­ster mod­el, which I have la­belled the West­min­ster-White­hall mod­el be­cause of the cut-and-paste sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween the ex­port ver­sions of the West­min­ster mod­el that do not line up with the ac­tu­al West­min­ster mod­el it­self.

Those cut-and-paste ver­sions were done by civ­il ser­vants in White­hall with the con­cur­rence of po­lit­i­cal del­e­ga­tions from the for­mer colonies in con­sti­tu­tion­al con­fer­ences held at ei­ther Marl­bor­ough House or Lan­cast­er House.

The West­min­ster con­ven­tions on the ap­point­ment of a Prime Min­is­ter in Com­mon­wealth Caribbean con­sti­tu­tions have been based on ei­ther

(i) the leader of a par­ty that com­mands the sup­port of a ma­jor­i­ty of seats in the elect­ed House, or

(ii) the MP who can com­mand the sup­port of a ma­jor­i­ty of elect­ed MPs.

T&T opt­ed for the first ver­sion, where­by the par­ty was made the key in­sti­tu­tion for de­ter­min­ing who the PM should be. It was based on the lead­er­ship of the par­ty be­fore mak­ing the ap­point­ment of any­one to the of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

Pro­vi­sion has been made for sit­u­a­tions where there is no “undis­put­ed leader” of a par­ty with a ma­jor­i­ty or no par­ty com­mands the sup­port of a ma­jor­i­ty. These writ­ten pro­vi­sions were de­signed to mir­ror the un­writ­ten West­min­ster con­ven­tions sur­round­ing the ap­point­ment of a PM.

In March 2025, Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo ac­cept­ed an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of our con­sti­tu­tion that down­played the re­quire­ment for lead­er­ship of the par­ty as the pri­ma­ry fac­tor for ap­point­ing a PM in a sit­u­a­tion in which Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­signed as PM, but not as leader of the PNM that had a ma­jor­i­ty and re­mained an elect­ed MP in the House.

Stu­art Young was ap­point­ed PM un­der sec­tion 76(1)(a) of the Con­sti­tu­tion on March 17 and then he dis­solved Par­lia­ment on March 18. Af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tion, Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo ap­point­ed Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar us­ing the very same sec­tion 76(1)(a).

The con­tra­dic­tion be­tween these two ap­point­ments, made un­der the same sub-sec­tion, is glar­ing. Kan­ga­loo first gazetted that she “as­signed”, on May 1st, the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the of­fice of PM to Per­sad-Bisses­sar and then gazetted an­oth­er an­nounce­ment on May 22nd that Per­sad-Bisses­sar had been “ap­point­ed” PM on May 1st, some three weeks af­ter ad­min­is­ter­ing the oath of PM. Was this ap­proach dri­ven by the con­tra­dic­tion?

Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI. He was se­lect­ed by the THA to guide the dis­cus­sions on To­ba­go au­ton­o­my.