More to the point, when you move away from Cabinet govt like New Labour have done, the personality of the leader becomes more and more important.
It’s not a case of “people just don’t get on with Gordon”, it’s that his whole approach to managing his role causes problems… if he flings abusive language (and mobile phones) at his aides when they bring him bad news, they will stop telling him the truth meaning he’s making decisions based on incorrect info. If his civil service staff are in fear of his rages, they will not give their best performance. If he will not listen to challenges from the press and his colleagues in the Labour party, he will not see potential flaws in his plans.
That can have a direct and detrimental effect on the UK, especially as the checks and balances of cabinet government, parliamentary colleagues and civil service advisors are not effective.
Well said, Wallenstein, and I agree. Brown’s had nearly three years at 10 Downing Street and has been far less than a resounding success. If I were Clegg, I probably wouldn’t want to be working closely with him, either. Labour has plenty of other bright, capable people, without Brown’s temper or track record, with whom the Lib Dems could work.
Urgh, late reply, but I recall a short news segment on Labour in NI from a while back. There were a few frustrated people here who wanted Labour to run in NI, but the party’s reply was that they were represented in some way by the SDLP. Supposedly European socialist parties are in league with one another and it would be unseemly for two such parties to go against each other in the polls.
The mainstream English political parties have a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ not to organise in Northern Ireland, and if you manage by some mistake to join one of them with a Northern Ireland address you will get your membership cancelled and your money refunded.
Could you expand on that for the benefit of ignorant Yanks? Over here, the “Cabinet” is simply the secretaries of the departments of the executive branch, and they are appointed by and take orders from the POTUS. I understand it means something different in the UK, but I’m not clear on the details. E.g., does the PM make his own decisions, or do the Cabinet ministers have to vote on policy? And why is there such thing as a “minister without portfolio,” i.e., without any ministry under his direction?
Traditionally, for a long time, each cabinet minister had a lot of control over the running of his or her own department, and the PM was sort of the “first among equals” Blair, and then Brown, were both accused of not doing that; of not consulting with the cabinet very much, of interfering with various departmental operations, and bringing in and relying more and more on “special advisers”, who aren’t accountable and who help politicize the civil service, which is supposed to be neutral. Basically, they were accused of turning the Prime Minister’s Office into a more American style, chief executive position.
The Cabinet is the group of senior ministers who meets with the Prime Minister, ordinarily once or twice a week, to set policy for the Government as a while. It is led, but not dictated to, by the Prime Minister, who is in executive charge but whose policies are shaped by the advice of the Cabinet – or at least should be, according to constitutional custom. Not all ministers are “of Cabinet rank.” There’s a trick to understanding this – while any Government member’s suggestions and views are, in the main, welcome, provided they aren’t obstreperous in nature, the Cabinet-rank ministers are the ones with the right and duty to advocate for and warn against anything the Government does, whether or not their specific province of responsibility. As Churchill put it using black humor during World War II, only the Cabinet have the right to be beheaded at the Tower for high treason if their advice is disastrously wrong for the country.
The Cabinet always includes the Prime Minister, I believe the Foreign Minister also, generally the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and such other ministers as the Prime Minister chooses. Nearly always the Lord Privy Seal is a member, though that is always because of who holds the job and what his duties are rather than going with the title. There’s nearly always one Peer, generally heading a ‘working’ department, and seldom more than one or two, most Cabinet ministers having seats in the Commons.
Most ministers head up a ministry, corresponding more or less to an American Department. But ministries tend to multiply and have narrower focuses. There was during WWII, for example, a Ministry of Aircraft Development, and more recently there was and probably still is a Ministry of Insurance. Most ministries are headed up, as you might expect, by Ministers [of X–], but for reasons both historical and practical that I’m not clear on, some are headed by Secretaries of State [for X—]. And there are a (gradually diminishing) assortment of heads of ministries with other titles, e.g., Attorney General, Lord President of the Council, formerly the President of the Board of Trade and the First Lord of the Admiralty, etc.
Four titles: Lord Privy Seal, Paymaster General, Lord President of the Council, and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, are historical ministries with minimal responsibilities, kept in place so that those who hold those titles are available for specific major short- to mid-term responsibilities that are unlikely to be permanent. For example, conducting a comprehensive study to reduce Britain’s dependence on foreign oil may be deemed important but not something that needs to be perpetuated indefinitely, so an energy expert is named Lord President of the Council to handle the four or five ‘official’ duties of that title and spend most of his time overseeing that comprehensive study. The idea is that those four ministries keep a staff of flexible and insightful dilletantes who can adapt rapidly to working on whatever the Cabinet deems crucial enough to name one of those positions to, saving the time needed to ramp up a ministry with a mandate to study a problem and come up with workable solutions to it from nothing. In a coalition or National (multi-party) Government, by custom the Lord Privy Seal is the job of the head of the supporting party, unless he chooses to take on a ‘working’ ministry which he has an interest and expertise in, as the Liberal leader did with the Ministry of Air during World War II. This sort of “Minister for Special Project A” job is also what a Minister Without Portfolio does.
One can go on at length on the Cabinet concept, but that should cover the min points.
Another example of the next-to-last paragraph: Frederick A. Lindemann, Lord Cherwell, Churchill’s close friend and advisor, was “Paymaster General” during most of World War II, with the official duty of ensuring that the servicemen, civil servants, and other government functionaries got paid properly and promptly. But his major duty was, tongue in cheek but accurately stated, Minister for Understanding and Explaining to the Prime Minister all Cutting Edge Scientific Research and Identifying how the Results can be Adapted to the War Effort. While no one would have put it in quite that way except as the sort of dry humor I just essayed, that describes almost perfectly what Lindemann was supposed to do – and did very well.
With the exception of, I think, just the Attorney General’s office, which is headed by the Attorney General, and the Department of the Treasury, which is headed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, all the ministerial departments (the departments that are headed by politicians rather than people who know what they’re doing) are headed by the Secretary of State for X. Each department has subdepartments under it, each of which is headed by a Minister.
That’s the way things are now. It wasn’t always that way in the past, though, and in the past you had all sorts of Ministers of X running around. Things are mostly standardized now, though.
I’d note too that in an age of “career politicians” cabinet rank is equivalent to promotion to senior management in a corporation. When an individual politician’s mortage and children’s school fees etc are wholly dependent on the additional salary a Minister* receives, he/she will be much less likely to “rock the boat” by challenging the PM, especially as most Ministerial jobs are effectively in the gift of the PM.
In the past when Ministers would be “independently wealthy” they could speak pretty much freely, knowing that the loss of the position wouldn’t impact their financial position too much. But a political class drawn from the middle-classes, and particularly those who have worked their whole lives in politics, the loss of a Ministerial salary (in the dreaded “cabinet reshuffle”) can be a real blow.
The doctrine of collective Cabinet responsibility for decisions means that the whole Cabinet must shoulder the blame for disastrous policy decisions, if they occur. The Cabinet is supposed to discuss the policy options, take a collective vote, and then support the result in public, even if in private individuals think it’s a dreadful choice. If he really can’t support it then a Minister must (should) resign. Thus Churchill was obliged to argue the Government’s case in the debate on the Norway campaign in April 1940, even though he could see that drastic changes at the top would shortly be necessary and he was the only obvious candidate apart from Halifax.
I was hoping they might already be compiled somewhere.