The rise of the prime minister
Every PM since 1945 has left the building at a time not of their own choosing, through election defeat, cabinet revolt or ill-health
signally failed to achieve their mission, like Neville Chamberlain and Theresa May. “Ignoble” failures include Lord Melbourne (who spent far too much time fawning over Queen Victoria, and not enough trying to improve the lot of his fellow countrymen), and Anthony Eden, who shamed himself and the country over Suez in 1956. Finally, there’s a group of 12 who served for a year or less. This group includes some (like Lord Canning, who lasted just 119 days before dying) who could well have become significant prime ministers. So, too, could Spencer Perceval, assassinated after just three years, the only prime minister to suffer that fate. s to why the prime minister took over from the monarch (our fifth question), this was a process that unfolded progressively over the centuries. Their position was immeasurably stronger relative to the monarchy in 1901 when Victoria died than it had been in 1837 when she assumed the throne. The growth of representative democracy was critical to legitimising the prime minister. Yet to dismiss the power and influence of the monarchy today – especially Elizabeth II, the bestknown figure and the most photographed in the world – would be a mistake. The monarch is a much stronger symbol of national unity across the four nations, and throughout the Commonwealth than the political and transitory prime minister – a fact that’s been evidenced on numerous occasions during the Covid-19 crisis. Over the past three centuries, the British Margaret Thatcher – one foreign secretary has gradually lost power to of Anthony Seldon’s the head of government. Technology has made eight “agenda-changing” such a development all but inevitable. By the PMs – on the phone to time of the First World War, the prime minister Indira Gandhi, 1983 could follow in real time and direct operations on the battlefield in a way that Pitt the Younger and Lord Liverpool could never have done 100 years earlier. For decades now, the prime minister has merely
A
32
he prime minister and senior posts in No 10 have been overwhelmingly white, middleclass, male and from the south-east of England. Walpole and Johnson studied in the same classrooms, slept in the same bedrooms, and played in the same fields at Eton. No 10 has been full of cronies, with open selection criteria rejected in favour of mates being brought in looking and sounding like the prime minister. More women, people from BAME backgrounds, and people with regional accents are urgently needed. Prime ministers have – for much of the office’s 300-year history – been vastly overworked, with little time for parliament, visiting the four nations, meeting people, going to the theatre, or even seeing the country at play. We expect so much of them, expectations that they themselves encourage, not least with their hyperbolic statements on the doorstep when they enter the Anthony Seldon’s latest book, The building. Disappointment is in- Impossible Office? The History of the evitable. But change is needed. British Prime Minister, is published The frequently impressive record by CUP in April. His BBC Radio 4 of the German chancellor since series The Prime Minister at 300 is 1945 shows how different it airing now and available could be. via BBC Sounds We need to create the opportunity for the often highly talentMORE FROM US ed figures who rise to the top of Look out for our the British political system to podcast series on Britain’s greatest leave No 10 on their final day, prime ministers at historyextra.com/ not in tears, but with their heads podcast. Also turn to our April issue to held as high as they were on their discover who five historians believe to first entry. be Britain’s greatest prime ministers
T
GETTY IMAGES
Nigel Lawson on budget day, 1984. Since the mid-1980s, successive chancellors have blocked and stymied their neighbour in Number 10
had to pick up the phone to speak to the president of the United States and other key global figures. While the foreign secretary has fallen in power, the chancellor of the Exchequer (our sixth question) has seen his (it always has been a man) power wax. Since the 1980s, when Nigel Lawson was chancellor, they have increasingly challenged, threatened and ignored the prime minister. Tony Blair’s premiership would have been utterly different if he had not been constantly blocked by Gordon Brown as chancellor, as Theresa May’s would have been had it not been for her chancellor, Philip Hammond. Every prime minister since 1945 has left the building at a time not of their own choosing, through election defeat, cabinet revolt or (as was the case with Harold Wilson in 1976) ill-health. None left with their agendas completed. What might then be done to strengthen the office of prime minister, and No 10 (our final question), as we enter the fourth century?
