The British Prime Minister in an Age of Upheaval. Mark Garnett

to pause for reflection. Whatever challenges might come in the future, it is unlikely that the British political system will be capable of meeting them unless the prime ministerial role is reconsidered. H. H Asquith – who was well qualified to pass judgement – famously wrote that ‘The office of the prime minister is what its holder chooses and is able to make of it.’ The main conclusion of this book is that the one thing a contemporary Prime Minister cannot ‘choose’ to do is to make a success of the role, which has become increasingly dysfunctional along with the other institutions of Westminster and Whitehall. The only recourse for Prime Ministers who care for ‘the verdict of history’ is to fall back on a minimalist definition of ‘success’ – that is, in terms of victory in the next election, even if this is owed primarily to weaknesses or divisions among Opposition parties. For a healthy liberal democracy this would hardly suffice as a measurement of ‘success’: in particular, it implies that whenever the national interest conflicts with the electoral needs of the Prime Minister’s political party, the incumbent of No. 10 is now under overwhelming pressure to prefer the latter. The unsettling signs in recent years that British Prime Ministers have learned to accept this as their over-riding ‘performance indicator’ is one of the main motivations for this book about their role.

1 Majority leader

      Parliament – and more specifically the House of Commons – is a convenient place to start an exploration of the Prime Minister’s role. In his great 1867 study of the ‘English’ constitution, Walter Bagehot depicted the Commons as a glorified electoral college: its members chose the Cabinet, which in turn nominated one individual to serve as head of the government (Bagehot, 1963, 150–2). In Bagehot’s day, MPs were relatively free from party discipline, and the requirement that the Prime Minister should be able to muster a majority in the Commons meant that proven parliamentary performers (even if they happened to be members of the House of Lords, in those days before its powers were curtailed) enjoyed a considerable advantage when the ‘electoral college’ made its choice.

      In the past, Prime Ministers tended to be chosen because they commanded the confidence of the Commons. Now, when Prime Ministers command the confidence of the Commons they do so because they are Prime Ministers. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the changing relationship between Prime Ministers and the Commons in recent decades, and the way in which the ‘majority leader’ is selected today.

The Prime Minister in Parliament since 1979

The fact that Prime Ministers are elected to the House of Commons on the same territorial basis as other MPs is never forgotten either by holders of the office or by their constituents. The latter rarely feel that they are inadequately represented, since Prime Ministers always have a well-qualified team to deal with any local or national issues which constituents might raise, and their visits are likely to evoke feelings of pride and gratitude even among residents who voted for one of their opponents. Prime Ministers are usually glad to return the compliments, claiming that the freely expressed views of their constituents help to keep them ‘grounded’ in public opinion more generally. Yet this commendable attempt to feel the public pulse is not necessarily very informative, since the mere fact of being Prime Minister seems to have a distorting effect on the mindset of one’s constituents. Since 1979, in every general election after a Prime Minister has stood down as an MP, the vote for her or his successor as the party’s constituency candidate has declined.

      Not even the most earnest and perceptive Prime Minister will find it any easier to monitor the mood amongst MPs, which is much more volatile and likely to be concealed from those who seek to gather information on the Prime Minister’s behalf. If Prime Ministers conduct their own fact-finding exercises – for example by touring the numerous places of refreshment available to MPs at Westminster – the response is likely to be even less informative. At larger gatherings, like the notorious Conservative 1922 Committee, the banging of desks to greet the Prime Minister could mean almost anything – even, occasionally, sincere support.

In one respect, what Michael Foley called ‘leadership stretch’ has always been inherent in the role of Prime Minister (Foley, 1993, 120–47). There are unmistakable clues in both of the words of the job title. Being a minister of any kind means that one is a decision-maker, however humble. A Cabinet minister is not only a decision-maker, but also someone who attends meetings where other people’s decisions are discussed. People who reach this status are bound to experience a change in perspective which affects their personal relations with backbench MPs. Becoming Prime Minister takes this enforced estrangement to a different level; the people who merely discuss the decisions taken (or proposed) by ministers are far removed from the individual who oversees the whole decision-making process. For politicians who first enter the Commons fired by an ambition to reach the top rung of the ladder, it is natural after they have realized this goal to consign their fellow MPs to three classes: those who would like at some point to succeed them or at least to graduate into the ‘decision-making’ ranks; a number of embittered politicians whose ministerial careers have already ended; and others who genuinely wish for nothing more than to continue as representatives of the people who gave them the right to sit in Parliament. When contemplating all of these groups, Prime Ministers must find it difficult to repress mingled sentiments of pity, contempt and fear. Thanks to the erection of security gates at the end of Downing Street – one of several relevant developments during the Thatcher years, but this time for very good reasons – the barriers to real collegiality are both physical and psychological. As David Cameron lamented in his memoirs, ‘It didn’t matter that I took great pains to be accessible and inclusive. Being behind those black iron gates symbolised (and to a certain extent produced) separateness’ (Cameron, 2019, 237).

      When they answer the first of the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs: see below), Prime Ministers still have to include ‘my duties in this house’ as part of their standard reply to an inquiry about their schedule for the day. This is a cleverly worded formula, since there are no prescribed parliamentary ‘duties’ for any MP, let alone the Prime Minister. If so minded, Prime Ministers can feel that they have discharged their duties merely by turning up for PMQs every week while Parliament is sitting (although when they are unavoidably absent they can supply a deputy). David Cameron might have felt that he ‘took great pains’ to act like a normal MP, but the days of Winston Churchill, who in his final term of office (1951–5) often turned up to listen to debates even when he had no intention of speaking, are long gone.

      Why has this happened? Arguably, a more pertinent question is why an inevitable development was delayed for so long. Until 1979, it might be claimed, the head of government wasted time in the Commons which could always have been used more profitably elsewhere. Even if a particular bill was judged to be very important to the Government’s overall purpose, the presence of the Prime Minister on the front bench during debates – unless there was a serious prospect of defeat – could seem superfluous. Indeed, it might suggest a lack of confidence in the Cabinet minister whose department was directly responsible for the proposed legislation. Far better, then, to use the authority of the office more sparingly, saving it for those occasions when the incumbent was really needed.

As so often, the trendsetter in this respect was Margaret Thatcher. A forensic study of prime ministerial involvement in the House of Commons reports that ‘her speech making and her interventions in debates dwindled away to virtually nothing during her long tenure of office … Many Tory MPs elected after 1987 claimed almost never to have met her’ (Rhodes and Dunleavy, 1993, 288). Thatcher’s semidetachment certainly did not arise from any fears concerning her ability as a Commons performer: her reported concern that she might lose a vote of confidence during the Westland Affair in January 1986 suggests misgivings about the substance of her argument on that occasion, rather than her mode of delivery. Since radio broadcasts of the proceedings of the House began in the year before Thatcher became Prime Minister, voters could hear, as well as read about, her combative debating style. However, until the Falklands War of 1982 her leadership of the Conservative Party was not secure, and many MPs thought that her economic policies were leading the party to electoral disaster. Given the choice, not even the most self-confident individual