Prime Ministerial Government

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“The UK now has a system of Prime Ministerial Government.” Discuss the validity of this statement

Many political commentators accept that the power of the Prime Minister has increased in recent years leading to the development of a Prime Ministerial Government. This argument states that the Prime Ministerial system dominates the Governemtn, leaving the collective Cabinet government to erode away in the UK. The power of the Prime Minister has undoubtly grown through the decades and now is at the stage where they flex their authority and controls the government. The Prime Minister’s powers and offices’ emphasise their importance and demonstrates that they are more “primus” than “primus inter pares” compared to the Cabinet. Opponents insist that personality and consequences dictate which system is more powerful and dispute the idea that Cabinet government is dead. They recognise that the Prime Minister may lead the government but still believe that the British Executive is a collective one.

Prime Ministerial government suggests that the power of the PM is such that they now dominate the government. This can be seen today in the UK government, with recently Blair and Brown being true examples of leading this system. There are many factors to support this argument.

The PM has individual powers that they can exert on everybody else and makes him the key figure in the Country, above any one else! The power of Patronage is seen as a very important one and emphasises how Cabinet government is weak. They have posts throughout the political and administrative executive branch, as well as various appointing powers in the Church. The PM has the authority to appoint, re-shuffle, or dismiss ministers in their Cabinet, showing how the PM ‘rules’ his ministers. Throughout Blair’s duration he had the power to sack Frank Dobson, Michael Meacher and Glenda Jackson. At the later part of last year, Brown exerted his power of patronage by having a re-shuffle in his Cabinet due to the slumping poll rating of Labour. The controversial issue of bringing Peter Mandelson back into the Cabinet received a lot of media attention, but illustrated that Prime Ministerial government is in operation!

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The PM is also Head of Government Policy. The PM is overall in control of government policy and chooses which policies they wish to highlight, playdown, or not say at all in the Cabinet meetings. This shows that Cabinet merely discusses the PM’s agenda. They are traditionally influenced on economic and foreign policy decisions. Last year, and this year has seen one of the biggest economic crisis’ in the world for years. Many banks in the UK and US have gone bust and late last year an Icelandic Bank crashed which had millions of UK government money in it. Gordon ...

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