Should ex-PMs quit the Commons?

We are only a year and a bit into the current Parliament, but already 11 Labour MPs have announced they will not be contesting the next General Election. Tribune's Barckley Sumner has posted the full list on Labour Home.

As Barckley himself notes, one name not currently on the list is that of Tony Blair, but it is widely assumed that, in view of his decision not to fight a fourth election as leader, he will not be contesting Sedgefield again either. Indeed, his agent John Burton appeared to confirm this in an interview with the Newcastle Journal's Ross Smith about 18 months ago.

The practice of former Prime Ministers standing down at the election immediately following their departure from No 10 is a relatively recent constitutional development. Margaret Thatcher started it, leaving the Commons in 1992, two years after her defenestration as Premier.

Likewise, her successor John Major, who famously took the view that when the curtain falls, it's time to leave the stage, quit the Commons as soon as decently possible, at the 2001 election which followed his landslide defeat at the hands of Mr Blair in 1997.

But there are other historical precedents. David Lloyd George, who was ousted as Premier in 1922, stayed on as an MP for a further 23 years, while Winston Churchill remained on the backbenches for nearly a decade after his retirement from No 10, and was pushing 90 when he finally left the Commons at the 1964 election.

More recently, Sir Edward Heath stayed on for 27 years after his eviction from No 10 before stepping down in 2001. It became known as "the longest sulk in history," but I suspect he was motivated not only by a determination to outlast Thatcher, but by a genuine desire to see the Tory Party return to the sort of centrist politics he espoused.

Sadly for him, he died only a matter of months before David Cameron took over as party leader and began the long march back to the centre ground.

I suspect that Sir Edward's example is one that subsequent premiers have been keen to avoid. But nevertheless, I am by no means sure that ex-premiers leaving the Commons at the first available opportunity is necessarily a good thing for the country.

I think our national legislature is much the poorer for the loss of the accumulated wisdom of those who have "been there and done that." It also makes politics less interesting.

I would have paid good money to hear John Major, whose government New Labour successfully tarred with the brush of sleaze even though it only ever involved very minor figures, ask Mr Blair a PMQ about the cash for honours affair which, by all accounts, will shortly result in him being personally questioned by Scotland Yard.

It's also a shame from her own point of view that Mrs Thatcher was not in the Commons when Britain was forced out of the ERM. She had, after all, always resisted joining, only being persuaded to do so by Mr Major and Douglas Hurd, and it is just about conceivable that she could have got her old job back.

Perhaps the wisest example to follow is that of those former premiers who opted for a happy medium, staying on till the election after next following their initial departure from office.

These include Harold Wilson, although he slightly blotted his copybook by voting for Michael Foot rather than Denis Healey in the 1980 Labour leadership election, and James Callaghan who stayed on until 1987.

When Churchill died in January 1965, Wilson, who was then Prime Minister, concluded his tribute in the House with the words: "We in this House, at least, know the epithet he would have chosen: He was a good House of Commons man."

Sadly, that could never be said of Tony Blair. And his contempt for the institution is reflected in his decision - if such it be - to leave it.

Kenyon Wright, right, right

This was supposed to be embargoed until 5am tomorrow morning, but as reported in today's Glasgow Herald and on the Campaign for an English Parliament Newsblog, an English Constitutional Convention under Canon Kenyon Wright is to be launched at the House of Commons tomorrow afternoon to call for a "strong" English Parliament as part of a federal UK.

Canon Wright was of course the chair of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the 1990s which helped pave the way for Scottish devolution, and was also, like me, a supporter of the North-East Constitutional Convention established in 1998 under the chairmanship of the then Bishop of Durham, which aimed to establish a North-East Assembly as a precursor to English regional government.

In the press release announcing tomorrow's event, Canon Wright acknowledges that he was formerly an active campaigner for the regionalisation of England, but that he now believes only the establishment of a Parliament for England will answer "the so-called West Lothian Question."

He explains: "Two things have changed my personal view. First, it is now clear after the North East Referendum, that regional government is a non-starter in the foreseeable future, and we cannot wait for further change. Second, I have become convinced that England has a growing sense of national identity as strong as ours, and therefore that an English Parliament, if the people want it, is as much your right as we claimed it to be ours."

It is very hard to disagree with any of this. I myself reached the same conclusion within nine days of the referendum result, in a Newcastle Journal column published in November 2004 entitled England Expects a Fair Crack of the Whip.

People have asked me since how I could possibly be in favour of an English Parliament if I was also in favour of regional assemblies, but the point was that something needed to be done to give England/the English regions a stronger political voice as well as a fairer funding deal, and, bizarre as it may now seem, regional government looked for a long time like the most politically plausible means of achieving that.

Other members of the Great and the Good who have lent their support to the Convention include Iain Dale of the blogosphere, who recently cryptically hinted that he was up to something on the English devolution front and is clearly now one of the main proponents of the idea within the Tory Party.

His party leader, of course, disagrees, preferring to put his faith in the unworkable policy of English votes for English Laws. Canon Wright will argue tomorrow that simply banning Scottish MPs from voting in the Commons on English legislation will "create more problems than it solves."

It will also be interesting to see what Dr Vernon Coleman brings to the party. I still have a (review) copy of his book I Hope Your Penis Shrivels Up, in which he expresses the view that all supporters of foxhunting should be "buried from the neck down in the fast lane of the M4."

Whilst not fundamentally disagreeing with the gist of those sentiments, I suspect that slightly more sophisticated arguments will be required if the campaign is to succeed in getting an English Parliament firmly on the national political agenda.

That's enough Blunkett

As I have said all along, David Blunkett's diaries were chiefly memorable for their entertainment value, and so entertaining did I find them that I devoted my Saturday Column and Podcast to the subject this weekend.

In years to come, there will be a great political counterfactual to be written along the lines of "What would have happened if David Blunkett hadn't met Kimberley Quinn?" I suspect the consensus of future historians will be that he would have given Gordon Brown a very close run for his money in the 2007 Labour leadership contest, and might even have become Prime Minister.

"David Blunkett coulda been a contender, as Brando might have put it. Instead, he’s in danger of becoming a becoming an embarrassment to the party he once helped rebuild.....In the space of a fortnight, he has put himself in the doghouse not just with Mr Blair, but also with Mr Brown."

And the doghouse is where, I expect, he will now remain. As Clement Attlee once said about Harold Laski - or was it Herbert Morrison? - "A period of silence from you would now be welcome."