Actualités et faits de société Lecture 6 bis The Executive function: the Prime Minister

Executive function The executive power of the House of Commons lies in the hands of the Government, meaning it is shared between: The Prime Minister The Cabinet All the politicians who run government departments The Civil Service In theory, the monarch (we still speak of Her Majesty’s Government)

Executive function So be careful when you use the term ‘government’: The Cabinet (20 members or so) is composed of the senior members of government (it is the equivalent of our French ‘gouvernement’)

Primus inter pares This Latin phrase is used to refer to the position of the Prime Minister in the government and House of Commons: ‘first among equals’ Even if he/she is expected to lead the Government, he/she is not to be considered as being superior in any way. That’s why the UK is said to have a system of ‘Cabinet government’: all decisions and policies are shared amongst the members of the Cabinet. This is called ‘cabinet or collective responsibility’.

The Prime Minister He/she is not directly elected by the people: he is the leader of the majority party and the Queen formally asks him/her after the results of the General Election to become her Prime Minister. He/she is the head of the Cabinet and chairs Cabinet meetings (weekly or biweekly in Downing Street). He/she lives at 10, Downing Street, in the Whitehall compound of buildings, just across Westminster Palace.

The Cabinet Always between 21 and 24 members They are mainly secretaries of state, that is heads of the various government departments (but they are often referred to as ‘ministers’). The heavyweights: the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary

A Presidentialisation of powers? Ever-growing concentration of powers in the PM’s hands. Not a new phenomenon: a Victorian journalist noted in 1889 that the flexibility of the Cabinet allowed the PM to take upon himself ‘a power not inferior to that of a dictator’. Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair have been accused of assuming an increasingly presidential style of governance, involving the centralisation of decision-making and the personalisation of power.

A Presidentialisation of powers? Political analysts now speak of a de facto ‘British Presidency’ British PM powers = French PM and French President powers This tendency is sometimes seen as a reproduction of an American style of governance.

To sum up, the PM is … The national leader A party leader A Member of Parliament The Head of the Cabinet An international figure

Yet, the powers of the PM are not unlimited… Within Parliament, through the opposision: the threat of a Parliamentary vote of no confidence Within his/her own party: backbench rebellions (Tony Blair and the war in Iraq, Gordon Brown and terrorist suspects’ detention) Within the British society, through the voice of public opinion (Blair and the war in Iraq)