Who Governs Britain? by Anthony King

Author:Anthony King
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141980669
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 2015-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

Ministers decide. That continues to be the bedrock doctrine underlying the whole of Britain’s governing arrangements. Other institutions, people and forces may influence and constrain what ministers of the crown can do, but otherwise ministers are free, within the law, to do pretty much whatever they like – and, if they dislike the law enough, they can usually change that, too. In the British system, the executive branch of government is by a wide margin the dominant branch. As we shall see in later chapters, parliament and the judiciary certainly count for something – but less than ministers do. It is the ministerial ladder, above all others, that ambitious British politicians seek to climb.

However, although the British system still remains a power-hoarding system, as it was during the classic era described in Chapter 1, it is a considerably less centralized system now than it was then. To be sure, the central government in Whitehall exercises far greater control over English local government than it used to; but, against that, there now exist in Scotland and Wales, as well as in Northern Ireland, real governments with substantial legislative and executive powers – powers that are all but certain to be increased rather than diminished as time goes on. To an extent largely unrecognized among the benighted English, the writ of many UK government ministers and ministries no longer extends throughout the UK. The Whitehall-based ministers responsible for agriculture and fisheries, the arts, education, health, housing, law and order, local government, personal social services and transport are all, in effect, England-only ministers, a fact of which they themselves are well aware, even if many (most?) of the English are not.

Still, England accounts for nearly 85 per cent of the UK’s population, and the government of the UK still has many UK-wide responsibilities, so it is worth knowing something about these ministers, especially in view of the dominant role – because of power-hoarding – that they still play in the English and UK-wide political systems.

One oddity about the holders of UK ministerial office is the minute size and the strange composition of the ‘gene pool’ from which the great majority of them are drawn.1 Since at least the middle of the eighteenth century, it has been custom and practice in this country for ministers of the crown to be drawn from – or, if not drawn from, then quickly made members of – either the House of Commons or the House of Lords. That is, all ministers have been expected to be parliamentarians. Both the custom and the practice are reinforced by the fact that British ministers are expected to be able to give an account of themselves and to answer questions in parliament, and for the time being only parliamentarians are allowed to do that. The Ministerial and Other Salaries Act 1975 simply assumes, without saying so explicitly, that ministers will be members of one or other of the two houses. Custom and practice in Britain also assume that the great majority

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