In her seventy years of reign Elizabeth II has dispatched with fourteen prime ministers, from Winston Churchill to Boris Johnson, resigned today.
Ten of them belonged to the Conservative Party and four to Labour. One of them, Labor’s Harold Wilson, served two separate terms as Prime Minister for a Conservative legislature. The list of British Prime Ministers includes two women, Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May, both Conservatives.
Winston Churchill, who had already been prime minister during World War II (1940-1945), returned to office in 1951, when the father of the current queen, George V, who died on February 6, 1952, was still reigning. Elizabeth II’s reign began shortly afteralthough she was not officially crowned until June 2, 1953. Churchill resigned on April 5, 1955.
He was succeeded by the Conservative Anthony Eden, who remained in power until 1957.
After Eden’s resignation, the next on the list was Harold Macmillan, also a Conservative, who occupied 10 Downing Street until 1963, when a health problem forced him to leave office.
He was then replaced by Alec Douglas-Home, equally Conservative, Prime Minister until 1964.
The first Labor head of government during the reign of Elizabeth II was Harold Wilson, who held two terms, the first between 1964 and his resignation in 1970, and the second between 1974 and 1976, the year in which he resigned for the second time.
Between Wilson’s two terms, the position was filled by Conservative Edward Heath. In 1976, following Wilson’s departure, a Labor party was again appointed Prime Minister, James Callagham, but his government fell in March 1979 after losing a vote of confidence in the House of Commons, the first since 1924.
The defeat in the motion of censure precipitated the celebration of new elections won by the conservative Margareth Thatcher in 1979.
The one known as the Iron Lady has gone down in history as the first woman to hold the head of the British government and his mandate, which lasted eleven years, until his resignation in 1990, has been the longest during the reign of Elizabeth II.
Thatcher was succeeded by John Major, also a member of the Conservative Party, Prime Minister until 1997.
After Major, the Labor Party returned to Downing Street led by Tony Blair, who held the post until 2007, when he submitted his resignation to the Queen.
His post was filled by another Labor Party member, Gordon Brown, between 2007 and 2010.
After the Labor interlude, the Conservatives retook the government in 2010 with David Cameron, who resigned in 2016 after his defeat in the referendum on his country’s exit from the European Union.
His successor, Theresa May, also failed to survive Brexit. May remained prime minister between 2016 and 2019, when she resigned after being unable to carry out the exit from the EU.
In May 2019 Boris Johnson replaced May and the following December revalidated the position after obtaining a large electoral victory for the Conservatives.
