The official position remains that the cabinet collectively, not the prime minister, is in charge. The Cabinet
Manual, a document first published by the government in 2011 to give an account of the way it operates (and
which some suggest is the closest thing to the written constitution we do not have), insists that ‘Cabinet is the
ultimate decision-making body of government ‘.
There are many reasons to suppose that this position remains correct. Prime ministers possess few formal
powers when compared with other departmental cabinet ministers. A further problem is that some cabinet
ministers are tending publicly to attack the decisions and statements of other cabinet ministers. Some cabinet
ministers have also publicly disowned previous decisions that must have already been agreed in cabinet.
However, cabinet as we know it will decline in importance. Group discussion will give way to bilateral talks
between the leaders of the factions that comprise the government. If cabinet cannot hold together, it will start to
matter less, not because it is subordinate to the will of an individual prime minister, but because it lacks a
collective will of its own.
Extract from The Guardian Newspaper, 2013
Analyse and evaluate and compare the arguments in the above article over the importance of the Cabinet to
government policy making (25 marks)
The extract argues that the Cabinet has great importance still to government policy making, however this
importance is gradually declining. It is important to note that the extract shows two sides of the argument, one
side emphasising the significant powers that cabinet ministers have on government policy making and the other
on the decline of importance that the cabinet holds towards government policy making. The extract argues that
the importance of cabinet to government policy making is demonstrated by the fact that departmental cabinet
ministers possess lots of formal powers, even in comparison to the PM. Also, the extract states that cabinet has
great importance in government policy making since the cabinet collectively is in charge, not the PM. However,
the extract also admits to the decline of the cabinet’s importance due to the rise of bilateral talks which have
been increasingly taking the place of group cabinet discussions. Furthermore, when cabinet is in disagreement
the will of an individual prime minister is what is important, because cabinet does not have its own collective
will. The extract was written in 2013, just a few years after Blair’s resignation, hence the extracts' emphasis is
on the rise of bilateral meetings, since Blair was known for having a preference for bilateral meetings between
him and his cabinet ministers instead of full cabinet meetings. The extract is also written at the time of the
Cameron/Clegg coalition government, which is significant because Cameron was the one that wrote up the
Cabinet Manual, which supposedly states how cabinet should function as a whole, making this extract a good
comparison to how Cameron hoped his cabinet would be run to how it is actually being run. This extract is
however, from the Guardian which can be considered as a mainstream left-wing newspaper, so whilst it is
writing to inform it will most likely also have a strong political agenda, so the extract cannot be considered as
completely subjective. After reading the extract, I agree on the whole that the importance of the cabinet to
government policy making is in decline, and the cabinet is continually losing its importance to policy making
with the growth of the power of individual prime ministers.
First of all, the cabinet is important to government policy making due to the fact that departmental cabinet
minister do possess a lot of power, if not the same as the prime minister, 'prime ministers possess few formal
powers when compared with other departmental cabinet ministers'. It is evident that this is the case, as cabinet
ministers running their department make decisions without the Prime Minister before then reporting back to the
rest of the cabinet in their next meeting. For example, now in 2020 Gavin Williamson, the Minister of Education
will make his decisions in regard to his department, the Department of Education, before bringing those
decisions back to cabinet. Therefore, individual cabinet ministers have lots of power in terms of government
policy making because lots of the policy put forward are made from within the individual departments rather
