Prime Minister of the United Kingdom - RationalWiki
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
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The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is the Head of Government of the United Kingdom . By an unwritten rule, the Prime Minister must be a Member of the House of Commons (the lower house of Parliament). The last Prime Minister from outside the Commons, Lord Salisbury, left the office in 1902. [1]
Spencer Perceval remains the only Prime Minister to ever be assassinated, after an angry rich man from Liverpool lost the plot.
Contents
[ edit ] Appointment
The Prime Minister is not directly elected. Instead, the public vote for a single Member of Parliament, a representative from their constituency. There are 650 MPs in total. If one political party has a majority in the Commons, then the leader of that party will be appointed Prime Minister. Otherwise, party leaders will attempt to form a coalition or lead a minority government. Whoever has the support of the most Members of Parliament will generally be the Prime Minister. Note that the monarch's role is purely constitutional , they cannot simply pick their favourite.
[ edit ] Evolution of the role
The position was not yet created, but historians accept Robert Walpole as the first Prime Minister, as he held the role of First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer
and Leader of the House of Commons. He spent over twenty years in this role, although was not a Prime Minister in the modern sense, as he was chosen by the monarch, not Parliament. The existence of the role was denied by many, and only received official acknowledgement in 1905, as a member of the order of precedence, making Henry Campbell-Bannerman the first "official" PM. Legal recognition was only given by the Ministers of the Crown Act 1937, before then the "Prime Minister" was simply the most powerful member of the Cabinet, generally the Party Leader of the party with the most seats.
[ edit ] Early Prime Ministers
Early UK politics was one huge episode of Blackadder.
After the mighty Robert Walpole set things going with a twenty-year stint up to 1742, there followed a succession of lords this and dukes of that. Only a few stand out from the pack:
Lord North was PM from 1770 to 1782. He presided over the American Revolution, a slow-burning resentment which he stoked to roaring flames with his punitive taxes and laws. After defeat at Yorktown (and struggling to control a week-long series of religious riots in London), he became the first PM to lose a parliamentary motion of no confidence. But he managed to keep the Falkland Islands British. Yay.
William Pitt the younger took the job aged 24, fought off Napoleon and brought Ireland into political union with Britain, creating the United Kingdom .
The Duke of Wellington, spent his 22 months as Prime Minister getting the first major electoral reform and Catholic emancipation laws through Parliament, despite blaming anything that went wrong in the country on liberals.
Robert Peel introduced Income tax and an early industrial safety law, and restricted female and child labour in factories. All rather surprising for a conservative - his batting for that side included creating the country's first police force and making the aristocratic, land-owning Tory party into the modern, business-friendly Conservative Party we all know
and love
.
Benjamin Disraeli (Conservative) and W.E. Gladstone (Liberal) alternated Prime Ministerial duties from 1868 to 1885, and presided over a series of progressive laws that greatly improved life for most people in the UK; a majority of men became eligible to vote, women could own property, and trade unions were legalised. They are also the only nineteenth-century politicians that most twenty-first century people can name, if you don't count royals.
[ edit ] Prime Ministers 1900 to 1945
[ edit ] Robert Gascoyne-Cecil (1885-1886, 1886-1892, 1895 - 1902)
Gascoyne-Cecil ( Conservative ), later 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, presided over the installation of Workmen's Compensation; the world's shortest war - the Anglo-Zanzibar War; and the Second South African War.
Of interest to the Portuguese , this is the guy who kicked the the world's oldest military alliance
in the 'nads, almost destroying it, with that infamous (for the Portuguese) 1890 ultimatum
.
[ edit ] Arthur Balfour (1902 - 1905)
Another ( Conservative ). His cabinet was split over free trade . He was an advocate of eugenics . [2]
[ edit ] Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1905 - 1908)
With the status of 'Prime Minister' being debated and controversial for centuries, Campbell-Bannerman was the first Prime Minister acknowledged in official publications.
[ edit ] Herbert Henry Asquith (1908 - 1916)
Asquith ( Liberal ) endured a turbulent time, with the rise of the Suffragettes , Home Rule, the outbreak of WW1 and the Easter Rising. Asquith had a huge role in the development of the House of Commons and 10 Downing Street as the major powers of Parliament with the passage of the Parliament Act 1911.
[ edit ] David Lloyd George (1916 - 1922)
To date the only Welsh Prime Minister, as well as being the only Prime Minister whose mother tongue was not English . Led Britain throughout the latter half of World War One by means of a Liberal-led coalition government and continued for four years afterwards. Was the last Liberal Prime Minister.
[ edit ] Andrew Bonar Law (1922-1923)
Tory politician Bonar Law was the shortest serving Prime Minister of last century, serving only seven months in office, as well as being the only Prime Minister born outside of the British Isles in New Brunswick - today part of Canada , but at the time of Bonar Law's birth, a British colony. His brief and underwhelming tenure led to his being nicknamed "the unknown Prime Minister." He was also accused of treason while Leader of the Opposition, after declaring the Conservative Party's unconditional support for Ulster unionist militias at a time it was believed they were planning to rebel against the government.
[ edit ] Stanley Baldwin (1923-4, 1924-9, 1935-7)
Taking over the reins from Bonar Law, Baldwin become one of the most important figures of inter-war Britain, leading the tories for fourteen years, including crushing the 1926 General Strike . His creation of a nationalised Electricy Board let to a quadrupling of electricity use in the country, along with lower costs, but his championing of disarmament (naively believing Hitler to be a reasonable man) led to the UK being insufficiently prepared for the war that everyone knew would come. The end came with the abdication crisis
, which he was unable and unwilling to resolve.
[ edit ] Ramsay McDonald (1924, 1929-35)
The first Labour PM remains a divisive figure on the left, but his failures were not mainly his fault. A few months in 1924 were sufficient to prove that a socialist government would not embroil the country in bloody revolution, and his nationalisation of the BBC brought about the rise of the one of the most widely respected broadcasting organisations in the world. However, he was later overshadowed by Baldwin over the Depression, and the party split over his joining forces with the conservatives.
(heavy sigh) Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
[ edit ] Post World War Two Prime Ministers
[ edit ] Winston Churchill (1940-45)
A cigar-chomping, top hat-wearing millionaire toff who was rubbish as Chancellor, and whose idea to invade Turkey was one of WWI's biggest blunders, Winston Churchill was an unlikely hero. However, his popular touch and ability to think outside the box were always assets, and thus he was launched, into the hot seat to manage the UK's gravest ever crisis , a job he mostly did well at (Italy's failure to collapse instantly being a major fly in the ointment). However, once peace came, he was as surprised as everyone else to find himself unceremoniously removed from power by an electorate underwhelmed by the prospect of Tory "business as usual." Voters always vote for the future.
[ edit ] Clement Attlee (1945 - 1951)
Clement Attlee ( Labour ) was an agnostic , and a man who nationalised the utilities and oversaw the creation of the British National Health Service by Health Minister Nye Bevan. As the first Labour Party Prime Minister with enough of a majority to do anything radical, he was a hero of socialists and consistently ranks highly in rankings of Prime Ministers. Was hugely influential in Indian Independence and developing Britain's own nuclear deterrent .
[ edit ] Winston Churchill again (1951 - 1955)
Churchill was returned to the office of Prime Minister in '51, but didn't make a great peace time leader. Most of this second term was spent dealing with foreign affairs, one of which led to the joint UK-US coup of Mossadegh in Iran in the early 1950s. He also broke the BBC's monopoly on television by launching ITV, paid for by advertising.
[ edit ] Anthony Eden (1955 - 1957)
Eden (Conservative) built an early reputation as a politician by opposing appeasement in the 1930s and as Foreign Secretary during World War Two, but pretty much nothing of note happened under him except the Suez Crisis
, which led to his resignation (although he was also seriously ill). [3]
[ edit ] Harold Macmillan (1957 - 1963)
Under the half-American Macmillan (Conservative) the UK tried to join the European Community, splitting the Conservative Party, but was vetoed by France . Famous for the first campaign soundbite anyone can remember - "You've never had it so good." An advocate of decolonization, he told South Africa to take note that "The wind of change is blowing through this continent."
[ edit ] Alec Douglas-Home (1963 - 1964)
After Macmillan resigned over health problems, there was some trouble over who would succeed him. It became clear that the Earl of Home was the only one who could command the support of the whole Conservative party, and so was appointed Prime Minister, despite being a member of the House of Lords . He disavowed his peerage, becoming Sir Alec Douglas-Home. A by-election was coming up, and he stood for the Conservatives. He was a Prime Minister, though not in either house of Parliament for 2 weeks, quite exceptional for the 20th century. Though not much happened while he was in office, he was notable as the only Prime Minister to sit two would-be kidnappers down, give them a beer , and talk them out of it. Ballsy. [4]
[ edit ] Edward Heath (1970 - 1974)
Under Heath (Conservative), Britain joined the European Community , violence in Northern Ireland got pretty bad, and the economy went a bit rotten, allegedly due to the Trade Unions . When he lost leadership of the Conservative party, he publicly sulked and whined about "that woman" and how everything she did was wrong.
[ edit ] Harold Wilson (1974 - 1976)
During his second time in office, Wilson gave sweeping Health and Safety rights to workers and  managed to stop some of the Trade Union troubles by inviting their leaders for beer and sandwiches at Number 10.
[ edit ] James Callaghan (1976 - 1979)
Oh god, an atheist ! Economy was getting messy as Callaghan (Labour) entered the office, since trade unions were demanding massive pay rises. When they weren't getting them, they were bringing the country to a halt, and the rises were given. Economy couldn't handle it. Nice man, but didn't have the
balls
[ edit ] Margaret Thatcher (1979 - 1990)
Mrs. Thatcher (Conservative) was elected on a manifesto of bringing the Trade Unions under control (after they ended up spending most of the 1970s on strike and causing countless problems), but then the witch went power-crazy. She sold everything the government owned , crushed the rights of Trade Unionists, led the nation to glorious victory over the Argentinian junta in the Falklands War, hated British involvement in the European Community but signed the Single European Act anyway, and then went crazy and introduced the Poll Tax despite even her closest aides' warnings. The aides turned out to be right, and she finally had to leave the office after 11 years.
[ edit ] John Major (1990 - 1997)
After Thatcher, all the Government owned was the railways, so Major (Conservative) sold them too. He also set up a hotline about traffic cones. In 1995 he resigned and challenged himself for the party leadership; unbelievably he won. [5] Two years later, he put the same question to the nation, and wasn't so lucky. He was famous for his greyness, though his parents were circus folk and his half-brother Terry Major-Ball was a genial minor celebrity and author.
[ edit ] Tony Blair (1997 - 2007)
Blair ( New Labour ) brought about peace in Northern Ireland, introduced a national minimum wage, gave independence to the Bank of England (much like the US Federal Reserve ), made gay rights in the UK happen (including civil partnerships), devolved power to Scotland and Wales - then ruined it all by going to war in Iraq , and going on a crazy authoritarian spree of giving powers to the executive and trying to make us all carry identity cards. He also basically sold peerages.
[ edit ] Gordon Brown (2007 - 2010)
As Gordon Brown (Labour) entered office, the civil service made a series of major errors and the financial crisis began. For a terrible television performer, this seemed fatal. Then he made some flip-flops over the 10p tax rate, and the Expenses Scandal occurred. He absolutely had to go, in the eyes of the public. Perhaps he would've been a beloved Prime Minister if things out of his control hadn't happened so badly. On the other hand, he had been in charge of the economy for the previous ten years.
[ edit ] David Cameron (2010 - 2016)
David Cameron (Conservative) came from nowhere in 2005 and ran on a platform of absolutely no policies other than ending Inheritance tax and saying, "Hey, I'm not Tony Blair." Being a much better media performer than Gordon Brown, especially in the first year the UK had televised debates made a big difference. Aligning himself with massively cutting government spending and hating the jobless, he won the most seats, but didn't receive a majority and had to accept a coalition with the Liberal Democrats . While his cuts do seem to be targeted on solving the deficit crisis, many feel his cuts are ideological in nature and will leave Britain as a much smaller-government nation. His government has refused to single out spending on science and research to be protected from cuts. [6]
As of 2015, the Tories won a majority government, allowing Cameron to push for an even more radically anti-working class agenda. [7] His campaign promise was to host a referendum on whether or not the UK will stay or leave the EU, which he scheduled for a vote on June 2016. He preferred remain, but allowed members of his party to campaign for Brexit alongside Nigel Farage .
Brexit won, forcing Cameron to resign in disgrace, forever remembered as the bloke who may have broken the union. Though, to be fair it's probably better than being remembered as "that PM that fucked a pig".
[ edit ] Theresa May (2016 - ongoing)
Theresa May (Conservative), the former Home Secretary, took control of the party after Cameron made the ill-advised vote on Brexit. While she supported Remain, she insisted that Brexit was final, and that the UK would leave the EU in accordance to what the people voted. Many are wondering if May will be the last Prime Minister because of the post-Brexit fallout with Scotland and Northern Ireland .