Originally Posted by Britannist

Yes, you are right Arden, If it happened it would one of the most significant things to have happened in UK politics. Has it ever happened before? Not since I've been following politics it hasn't.

Eurosceptic Conservative Mr. Iain Duncan-Smith was, of course, the most recent opposition leader to come and go between elections without fighting a General Election as the leader of his party. A shame this happened to him - I always liked him.

But as you imply, Arden, if the same thing happened to Prime Minister Gordon Brown (appointment and departure without fighting a General Election) it would be something that he most certainly would never have planned would be his political epitaph (i.e. the first Prime Minister in the modern era to come and go without leading his party into a General Election).

Looking back, one wonders why someone/some people in the Labour Party didn't make some serious effort to remove (by persuasion or by a formal leadership contest) James Callaghan as Labour Prime Minister in 1978 when his party had slumped in opinion polls and it looked as if Conservative opposition leader Mrs. Thatcher was going to defeat them (which, as we know, she did the following year). Maybe, with the 'winter of discontent', Labour MPs thought that the damage had been done and replacing Mr. Callaghan as party leader would not have done much to improve their electoral fortunes before the 1979 General Election.