LITMIR.BIZ

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MPs (including Opposition members), Blair began his remarks by honouring three service personnel who had died serving their country, more than four years after his fateful decision to commit British troops to Iraq.

      Far from easing into the role of respected elder statespeople, Blair and Thatcher continued to be very divisive figures in retirement. While this is perhaps understandable in those specific cases, far less controversial personalities like John Major and David Cameron are still reviled in some quarters. It would be an exaggeration to say that ex-premiers are without honour in their own country, but since the death of Baroness Thatcher in 2013 there have been no representatives of that exclusive club in the House of Lords, compared to four (Home, Wilson, Callaghan and Thatcher) after the 1992 general election.

Whatever the incumbents might say in public – and however difficult it is to quantify such things – there are good reasons for supposing that the job of British Prime Minister has become more demanding since 1979. For most people, the daily routine of a head of government (or, in presidential systems, heads of state) in any liberal democracy would be distinctly unappealing. When, in 2013, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, publicly confirmed that if an unexpected vacancy arose he would rather like to be Prime Minister, he conceded the possibility that it might be ‘a very tough job’ (Cockerell, 2013). Johnson’s career since the 2019 general election serves as salutary testimony to the wisdom of the old adage, ‘Be careful what you plot for’ (see Conclusion). Leaving aside their extensive formal duties, Prime Ministers are subjected to twenty-four-hour scrutiny from the media; they are like emergency fire-fighters who are expected to rush to the scene of any significant blaze, douse the flames themselves and then give a press conference on the subject. Often they will be dealing with one incident when they are alerted to another. Apart from the unexpected ‘events’ which Harold Macmillan famously feared, routine matters can suddenly give rise to serious accusations aimed at the Prime Minister in person. As Steve Richards remarks, being leader of a political party in itself brings ‘titanic demands’ (Richards, 2019, 14). In political systems like Britain’s, where electoral politics is conducted on shoestring budgets, the Prime Minister is an obvious fund-raising asset who can never be free from the fear of incipient scandal. Tony Blair’s tenure was bookended by the Ecclestone affair (November 1997), which took away much of his initial lustre, and the ‘cash for honours’ revelations in the months before his enforced departure in 2007, resulting in him giving an exclusive interview to the police. Prime Ministers can expect limited personal privacy even after they have left office, requiring round-the-clock protection. Hounded on their holidays, they are often criticized for taking the temporary breaks which people in stress-free jobs regard as essential. Having a young (and in some recent cases, growing) family might make a Prime Minister look more like a ‘normal’ human being, but away from the cameras it will tend to have the opposite effect.

Why, then, do so many politicians continue to hanker after the role of Prime Minister? There has certainly been no shortage of aspirants in recent years. After David Cameron’s resignation as party leader and Prime Minister in 2016, five Conservatives vied for the vacant positions. Three years later, when Theresa May finally brought an end to her inglorious innings, ten of her parliamentary colleagues volunteered to take her place. If the party had stuck by the rules in place in 1989–90, when Thatcher was challenged first by Sir Anthony Meyer and then by Michael Heseltine, it seems the ballot paper would have been even longer since candidates then required only a proposer and a seconder. However, it would be unwise to take this evidence at face value; more likely, the unusual circumstances of 2019 encouraged people who would normally have hesitated before throwing their hats into the ring to imagine that they might defy the odds (see chapter 2). Despite everything, finding an MP who would refuse to serve as Prime Minister is like looking for a 10-year-old who would turn down the chance to represent their country in a World Cup final.

The excessive personalization of British media commentary too easily gives rise to the notion that recent Prime Ministers have failed because they simply were not equipped for the job. There is no attempt in this book to deny that particular Prime Ministers have made maladroit decisions. However, the main purpose is to explore the possibility that the holders of the office would not have succeeded even if they had been of the very highest calibre. If the position of the Prime Minister has become dysfunctional – or, as New Labour apparatchiks liked to say, ‘unfit for purpose’ – the implications for British democracy would be profound. Even Prime Ministers who are reputed to be weak are expected to take responsibility for developments and decisions which, for ill or good, affect the present circumstances and future prospects of everyone living in Britain. In addition, whenever questions arise concerning the practices of other institutions, the Prime Minister is usually called upon to take a leading role in reforms. If the office of Prime Minister itself requires radical reform, this would help to explain why recent incumbents have made such a hash of opportunities to improve Britain’s system of governance and political culture (e.g. John Major’s attempt to clean up Parliament in the wake of ‘cash for questions’, and David Cameron’s selective endorsement of proposals arising from the Leveson Inquiry into the conduct of the press: see chapter 4). From this perspective one can readily understand why Tony Blair blocked attempts to make the House of Lords more accountable, and why David Cameron (again) used his position to prevent even a preliminary step towards a more defensible voting system in the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum. Finally, if it really has become impossible to carry out this job in full conformity with the informal rules and conventions which have prevented the British system of government from becoming an ‘elective dictatorship’, it would enable us to understand why recent Prime Ministers have tended to act as if these restraints apply to other political actors but not themselves, and why governments now find it necessary to employ so many ‘spin doctors’ to justify their actions and create the appearance of success, often in blatant defiance of practical evidence.

      Without anticipating the detail of the argument presented in this book, it is worth noting that while all liberal democracies have been affected by ‘spin’ in recent decades, arguably Britain is uniquely vulnerable to the contagion. This is because all Prime Ministers since 1945 – with the partial exception of Edward Heath – have felt it necessary to act as ‘spin doctors’ on behalf of their country, delivering speeches that present Britain as a major power which could (under appropriate leadership) prove even more influential on the global stage than in the days when its empire spanned more than a quarter of the inhabitable world (see chapter 5). It is possible that Margaret Thatcher really accepted this delusional view, although it would be more charitable to suppose that she thought British politicians had exaggerated the extent of the country’s relative decline and that it was time for its leaders to err on the opposite side. It is, though, unlikely that any of Thatcher’s successors have suffered from serious private illusions about Britain’s relative position. Nevertheless, they have all participated, with apparent enthusiasm, in the self-defeating ‘spin’ operation, declaring that they are ‘batting for Britain’ (in dealings with the European Union (EU)) and boasting that the country ‘punches above its weight’ in matters relating to the non-European world. In this respect, at least, Thatcher and her successors have brought an unsustainable tension into their own working lives, forcing them somehow to live up to unrealistic expectations and leading (among other things) to the humiliating departures from office of David Cameron and Theresa May.

The Prime Minister in history and theory

Since its inception (generally associated with the prolonged political dominance of Sir Robert Walpole (1721–42)), the role of British Prime Minister has attracted considerable and understandable attention from a variety of perspectives. The interest has increased in the years since 1979, thanks chiefly to the arrival in office of the most noteworthy individual to hold the office since Churchill was finally chiselled out of Downing Street in 1955. Although the primary subject-matter is the same, and their approaches sometimes overlap, the authors of important studies of the role can be consigned to five camps.

      (1) Contemporary historians:

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