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Prime Minister and CabinetBefore the 1960s, the British system was described as having ‘Cabinet Government’.
What is this?
Until the 1960s most, if not all, textbooks would describe the British system of government is cabinet government’. Since then,
however, the concept of cabinet government has changed over time and been replaced by the motion of ‘prime ministerial
government’. It is necessary that we consider the traditional idea of cabinet government.
These are the following
The cabinet represented the collective identity of the government
All important domestic and many foreign policy decisions were made within the cabinet.
In order for a policy to be official, it would need full cabinet approval.
Any disputes within the government would be resolved within the cabinet.
The PM was considered as primus inter pares (1st among equals), meaning that he had a higher status than his
colleagues, but also implying that he could, and often was, outvoted within the cabinet.
The changing of the UK cabinet
What began to happen in the 1960s was that the PM became increasingly dominant within the government. 2 of Wilson’s
cabinet colleagues, Richard Crossman and Barbara Castle, began to speak and write openly of ‘prime ministerial
government’.
This was not because they were Wilson’s political opponents within the Labour Party, but because their experience of cabinet
government was not what they had expected it to be. It certainly did not correspond to the textbook descriptions that they had
to read.
So. it was Wilson who started a process of degradation of cabinet government that continues to this day.
Prime Minister In office
Harold Wilson (1964-70) He soon learned how he could dominate the whole governing process, the cabinet
especially. With the help of a small, close-knit team of allies, the cabinet Secretary (the
most senior civil servant who came to serve the PM almost exclusively), a few trusted
private advisers (known in Wilson’s day as the kitchen cabinet from where it often met to
discuss strategy in Downing street) and his own force of personality he could control the
political agenda from Number 10.
Wilson manipulated the agenda of cabinet meetings, reached the private agreements
with ministers before the meetings so as to control the probable outcome and even, it
was reported, had the accounts of the meetings (the secret cabinet ‘minutes’) written to
suit his own conclusion. So even senior cabinet colleagues began to feel that matters
were outside their control, even though they sat at the apparent centre of power.
In the same period (the 1960s and early 1970s) the role of the media was becoming
increasingly important. TV, radio and the press were taking over the Parliament as a the
main forums within which political issues were being presented. Wilson was perhaps the
1st PM who understood the power of TV in particular. Meanwhile the media were
choosing to centre on the PM alone as the spokesman for the whole government. It was
therefore almost inevitably the MP would increasingly be both the presenter and the
maker of government policy.
Margaret Thatcher(1979-90) She took the prime ministerial domination to a new level. By 1983, when she had
removed most of her political opponents from the government and had own decisive
victories over Argentina in the Falklands War (1982) and in the general election that
followed it, Thatcher appeared to dominate the whole government machinery. Even
more than Wilson, she possessed great strength of purpose and came to be either
feared or respected by her colleagues. The cabinet seemed to opera as it had always
done, but it was packed with her supporters and she controlled its meetings just as
Wilson had done. She was respected abroad, almost as much as Churchill had been,
and the media concentrated their attention on her almost exclusively. Even the most
senior of her colleagues in cabinet felt marginalised by her and most of them left
government in angry circumstances at one stage or another. Nevertheless it was
ultimately her own cabinet that removed her in 1990. Tired of her unshakable support for
the highly unpopular local poll tax, they replaced her with the mid-mannered and
apparently reasonably John Major.
John Major(1990-97) Excited political commentators heralded Thatcher removal with the talk of the ‘return of
cabinet government’. Indeed, John Major himself promised to restore ‘collective’
decision making, and for most of this period in office he had to put up with a
quarrelsome cabinet that contained some of his deadliest enemies. Surviving close
votes of confidence in HoC and a leadership challenge in 1995, he held on in power for
7 years. But Major’s period in office was not the return of cabinet government, as many
thought it was. The cabinet certainly did not operate as it had done in pre-Wilson days.
Rather it proved to be an obstacle in the way Major’s attempts to solve the country’s
economic difficulties and to adopt a coherent policy towards the European Union. It was
less a collective decision-making body, more a battleground in which warring factions
within the Conservative Part played out a damaging was of self-destruction. It has taken
more than a decade for the Conservatives to begin the process of repairing the damage.
, Tony Blair (1997-2007) To prove that Prime-ministerial government had not disappeared, Tony Blair he set
about restoring personal control. Combining Wilson’s manipulation of the government
Labour machinery with Thatcher’s media supremacy and adding his own brand of domination
by controlling the flow of information to the governing community, he took prime-
ministerial control to new heights. This reality was barely disputed by commentators and
politicians alike. Blair's style of leadership was often described as ‘sofa politics’, a
reference to his practice of settling issues with individual ministers and officials privately
and informally. Sofa politics was seen as a direct challenge to cabinet government. Blair
also dominated Labour policy, with the exception of economic management, which he
left to his close colleague, Gordon Brown, the Chancellor
Gordon Brown (2007-10) Gordon Brown could never dominate as Blair had done. From the beginning of his
premiership he was hampered by a lack of media and public support as well as a gap of
his legitimacy since he had nevel faced the electoral elections as party leader. He was
therefore commonly described as an ‘unelected’ PM. He did exercise a high level of
control over international affairs and became a leading statesman in the fields of world
poverty action and climate change. He was also able to deal effectively with 2
leaderships challenges, neither of which gained any significant support. But Brown
suffered from world events, mostly beyond his control. The credit crunch of 2007-08 and
the recession of 2008-09 consumed his premiership ti a crippling extent and he was
unable to stamp his authority on the country. He did exercise similar control over
Whitehall and his party as Blair had done, but he never achieved his predecessor’s
presidential status.
David Cameron (2010-2016) He faces a new problem: how to dominate the political system in coalition. Clearly this
presents a range of new challenges. Cameron shows every inclination to dominate his
party, but understands that he must also share power with his Liberal Democrat
colleagues. Indeed it has been said that he is operating a quad government, where 4
senior coalition ministers are at the centre of policy making. He 4 compromise Cameron
himself, George Osborne, Deputy PM Nick Clegg and Treasury Secretary Danny
Alexander. Yet, unless he can command a solid HoC majority in the future, David
Cameron will remain a limited PM.
Marginalisation of the cabinet
During the 1960s, 1970s and the 1980s, cabinet government appeared to operate in the traditional
way. However, behind the scenes, important rivals to cabinet power were emerging. Some of these
were as follows:
As we have seen above, the personal authority and power of the PM alone have grown in contrast to the collective
power of cabinet.
There is a growing tendency for the great departments of state- The Treasury, Home Office, Foreign Office,
Department for constitutional affairs, Department of Education and Skills etc.- to see themselves as separate ‘kingdom’ or
‘baronies’, as they have sometimes been described. At their head, ministers jealously guard their own empire and resent
any attempt at interference by the cabinet. Of course, they must retain allegiance to the PM and he may influence what
they do, but there is less and less inclination to bring matters of importance to full cabinet.
As we have seen above, a great deal of policy making not takes place within the cabinet committees. It is, therefore,
perhaps best to think of cabinet as a ‘system’ or ‘network’ rather than as a single body. In other words, meetings of the full
cabinet are almost ceremonial. The real work goes on elsewhere.
Not only have cabinet functions moved to the PM, to departmental ministers and the committees, there has also been
a shift in policy-making functions to 10 Downing Street itself. Again since the 1960s, but particularly under Tony Blair, there
has been a growing army of private political advisers, ‘think tanks’ and policy units doing the work previously undertaken by
the cabinet and its committees. This has both extended and to reduce cabinet importance.
Finally, we should remember that the PM still conducts much government business on a ‘bilateral’ basis, that is, by
discussing policy with an individual minister, reaching agreement with that minister, and then presenting the decision as a
fait accompli to the rest of the cabinet.
The cabinet of today
We can now see that the nature of the British cabinet is much changed since the 1960s. So we need to ask, what
functions does it perform today? The short answer to say ‘far fewer than 50 years ago’, but this does not explain its position
in the executive branch of government today. It still meets normally every week and it is still a requirement for the PM and
his colleagues to attend unless they have pressing, unavoidable business elsewhere. But the meetings now tend to be
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