The PM is the leader for the whole of the UK, there is no leader of just England.
England does not have any nukes of its own, and the UK’s nuclear force is based in Scotland.
This thread is timely, as a friend posted a timeline memory just this morning from one year ago, when she was shopping in Waitrose (upmarket supermarket) in Witney (David Cameron’s local constituency), when she turned around and physically bumped into Cameron.
He was wearing shorts, carrying a shopping basket and choosing avocados, for the interested. She didn’t mention any security detail, so they must have at least been keeping a discreet distance.
That wasn’t an avocado.
Since 1997 the UK’s nuclear trigger has been disguised as an avocado. Since then no British PM has ever been more than 20 feet away from an avocado.
Mention of bodyguards in this story: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/jun/11/david-cameron-daughter-behind-pub. Seems pretty low key and, in this instance, somewhat inept.
I actually saw Cameron outside Parliament last week just before PMQs. Just out of a Taxi at St. Stephen’s Entrance and went inside. He had some security-lookalike people with him, about three, and they stayed close. I guess it’s different around Parliament than a shopping centre, even for an ex-PM.
[QUOTE=SanVito]
This thread is timely, as a friend posted a timeline memory just this morning from one year ago, when she was shopping in Waitrose (upmarket supermarket) in Witney (David Cameron’s local constituency), when she turned around and physically bumped into Cameron.
He was wearing shorts, carrying a shopping basket and choosing avocados, for the interested. She didn’t mention any security detail, so they must have at least been keeping a discreet distance.
[/QUOTE]
Pretty sure the PM has many security men following her. The big security detail is designed to intimidate and deter as much as it is to protect. These days I seriously doubt you can get within 100 feet of a world leader without their security people learning everything about you upto and including the name of your teenage crush.
There have been documented cases of world leaders greeting whom they thought were passersby who (unbeknownst to them) were actually members of their security detail.
This story makes the PM’s security seem a bit lax: Police under fire after David Cameron security scare involving jogger | Police | The Guardian .
It was a couple of years ago, so perhaps May’s ‘Imperial Guard’ are somewhat more effective.
It’s a few years since I last had to go through the Downing Street security, so things may since have changed, but it was then comparable to the security you currently have to go through as a non-pass holder to get access to the parts of the Houses of Parliament that are not open to the tourists - you must have an appointment, you need some form of ID and you have to go through a security scanner. For what it’s worth, I recently had to get a one-day security pass for Windsor Castle. That was a bit more complicated, as they clearly ran a background check on me in advance. Downing Street might well now do the same.
When Cameron became PM, there was some talk of him cutting the size of his motorcade to show that he was ‘all in it together’.
However, any comparisons with the US need to recognise that the security for US Presidents is way off the scale by almost everyone else’s standards. No European leader, not even the French President, comes close. In 2003 I happened to be chatting to a fairly senior member of the Royal Household a few days before George Bush stayed at Buckingham Palace. The word was that royal officials viewed what the US Secret Service had been demanding as completely absurd. Much in the way they seem to have viewed some of the demands from the Chinese regarding the more recent visit by President Xi.
The only British nuclear weapons today are carried aboard Royal Navy Trident missile-armed submarines, one of which is at sea at all times. Although the Queen is commander-in-chief of the British military, the Prime Minister holds de facto authority over the weapons, and could order their use: Vanguard-class submarine - Wikipedia
This is an excellent book on British nuclear weapons policy and “thinking the unthinkable” - can’t recommend it highly enough: https://www.amazon.com/Secret-State-Whitehall-Cold-War/dp/0141008350/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1472921908&sr=1-4&keywords=peter+secret+state
This might also be of interest: Letters of last resort - Wikipedia
Here’s Margaret Thatcher’s London townhouse (she was still alive when Google did there last drive by). It is currently on the market, and was modernized by a developer after her death, although I hear that the house still has the bombproof doors that were installed when she moved in.
Mrs May and her husband went, as they usually do, on a walking holiday in Switzerland in August. There were apparently a “security detail” and some admin staff along. She was Home Secretary before (i.e., in charge of counter-terrorism and security policy) so she will have had close security before, but I’d be surprised if there were more than a couple of people actually out on their walks with them.
I remember reading about one of the wartime conferences; I think it was Tehran. The author mentioned the security each leader had with him. Stalin had his detachment of guards. Roosevelt had a group of Secret Service agents and military people. And Churchill had one policeman bodyguard.
That would be Walter Henry Thompson, who rarely left Churchill’s side.