{"id":760586,"date":"2026-09-05T07:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T07:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/760586\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T07:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T07:18:10","slug":"keir-starmer-boris-johnson-why-are-they-on-the-chiltern-hundreds-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/760586\/","title":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer, Boris Johnson: Why are they on the Chiltern Hundreds list?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Thanks to a law dating back to 1624, Members of Parliament (MPs) in the UK are not technically permitted to resign.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Unless they die or are expelled, they must become disqualified if they wish to retire before the end of a Parliament,&#8221; according to the UK Parliament website.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This is because back in the 17th Century, MPs often accepted the role reluctantly, so leaving the job was not to be encouraged.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A &#8220;parliamentary loophole&#8221; was created to get around this, according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/historyofparliament.com\/2026\/07\/09\/how-does-an-mp-resign-the-chiltern-hundreds-the-manor-of-northstead\/\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">History of Parliament blog, external<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;An MP can do this by requesting, and accepting, office as either the Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds, or Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead,&#8221; wrote Dr Martin Spychal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Both offices (or jobs) are nominal. They exist in name only, have no responsibilities and are unpaid.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Anyone with these titles is disqualified from being an MP \u2013 originally in order to prevent royal influence on politics \u2013 but later used by parliamentarians who were unhappy with their lot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thanks to a law dating back to 1624, Members of Parliament (MPs) in the UK are not technically&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":760587,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-760586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/760587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}