With Nigel Farage standing down as leader of Ukip and Chris Evans quitting Top Gear on the very same day prompting speculation they might be doing a job swap, we have reached peak resignation. In light of the recent pile-up, including everyone from the prime minister to the national football team manager throwing the towel in, here’s our guide to the perfect P45 and the current rules of resignation.
1. Don’t go straight after a defeat
Who knew Ed Miliband and David Cameron had anything in common? But both men took mere hours to stand down after bracing defeats. In Cameron’s case, this meant traducing the approximately two million times he had said he wouldn’t resign in the event of a leave win.
In Miliband’s case? It meant Corbyn. Might be an idea for politicians to hang on a little while afterwards to smooth things over. But politicians are like kids: they pick things up, break them, then move aside and act like it wasn’t their fault.
2. Do go in numbers
The animals, they went in two-by-two. Shadow cabinet members? They tripped over each other scrambling for the door. Parachutes opened, Ubers were ordered. Except for Andy Burnham. Who stood resolute: a Sims character mixed with Action Man.
In the resignation version of “pics or it didn’t happen!” MPs tweeted their letters. Jess Phillips’ was probably the best, because it read like she wrote it on the notes app when tipsy and that it was directed at a former lover. Signing off with: “take care”. We all know this means: please don’t text me again.
Letter pic.twitter.com/lDqcL7d8k2
— Jess Phillips MP (@jessphillips) June 27, 2016
3. Get in, get out
Following the exodus of Labour’s shadow cabinet, Pat Glass MP was appointed shadow education secretary, a position she called her “dream job”. But two days later Glass resigned too, leaving Corbyn’s cabinet looking – I’m sorry – half-full. (Glass has since announced a second resignation, saying she will not stand for a another parliamentary term as an MP.)
4. Hedge your bets
Nigel Farage likes to resign for stints of time and then “unresign”. Last time he resigned he lasted three days. (He also likes to “concede” and then “unconcede” referendum results.)
This time Farage has said he wants “his life back”. I can’t tell you how galling this is coming from a man who sunk everybody else’s joy of life when he sailed on a flotilla screaming about sovereignty and jingoistic rhetoric, contributing to the climate we find ourselves in.
Curiously, Farage’s current resignation doesn’t include his position as MEP. So perhaps he is pro-Europe after all?
5. Ruin everything first
I am looking at you Roy Hodgson. We are all looking at you. (See also: another Euro 2016 sword-faller, Spanish coach Vicente del Bosque.)
6. Via op-ed
Sure, you could do the whole HR meeting in a room that smells like sodden wool, or, OR, you could just get word out via the New York Times. In 2012, Goldman Sachs banker Greg Smith resigned in a piece entitled: Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs. It’s possible Smith wrote this in a drunken haze and meant to keep it in his drafts folder but accidentally sent it to the opinion editor of a newspaper. Smith is not the only banker to resign via broadsheet comment pages. I refer you to this incredible example in the FT, which includes the line: “What I have learned about the hedge fund business is that I hate it.” See also the tell-it-how-it-is email that obviously gets leaked.
7. With cake
For some reason, people keep resigning via cake. But then people keep doing everything via cake: coming out to their parents, telling their gay kids it’s fine, announcing their babies. Cake is for leaving parties, not the actual deed itself. Be an adult. Be Nigel Farage.
8. Go viral
If you’re the type to resign via the medium of dance then, honestly, how many will truly mourn your loss? You’re probably the kind of ‘joker’ who spikes the water cooler with WKD and chews on biros before flashing a blue-toothed smile. The only person who ever laughs at this is Rob in accounts. You are Rob in accounts.
In 2014, Marina Shifrin resigned from her job with a video that went viral: “An Interpretive Dance For My Boss Set To Kanye West’s Gone.” To be fair, Shifrin’s video was whimsical and amusing. What was not was the cynical “response” video from her former employer. West’s record label has since pulled the audio, so that particular video now features middle-managers swinging their lanyards to deathly silence. Cached search results are a brutal, brutal thing.
9. Quit before you begin
Also known as: the Boris. (But make sure you do it in a speech so hammy that it definitely doesn’t show you up for the attention seeker you have always been.)
