Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The prime minister of the United Kingdom is the country's head of government. In 1902, Arthur Balfour pointed out that the prime minister's name 'occurs in no Acts of Parliament'. The post carried no statutory duties either, and Balfour called the whole arrangement 'a strange paradox'. That paradox raises questions this documentary sets out to answer. How does a job with no founding document come to exist at all? Where does its authority come from, and what keeps that authority in check? And what happens to the people who hold it once their time in office is over?
A parliamentary committee reported in 2014 that 'It is impossible to point to a single point in history when the post was created or even a decision to create it.' The office grew slowly over some three hundred years, shaped by Acts of Parliament, political developments and accidents of history.
The groundwork was laid in the 1600s. Charles I was executed in 1649, ending absolute monarchy after a long fight between Crown and parliaments. Charles II was restored in 1660, but with growing limits on royal rule. In 1688-89 the Glorious Revolution deposed the Catholic James II and installed William III and Mary II as constitutional monarchs. The Bill of Rights of 1689 then set Parliament above the Crown. Two factions dominated Parliament in those years. The Whigs backed parliamentary sovereignty, while the Tories favoured the divine right of kings and the deposed James II. Some have called them 'embryonic political parties'.
The settlement of 1689 also handed Parliament control of the purse. A monarch bound to agreed policy meant Parliament could fund its own aims without fearing that money would be diverted. The Acts of Union in 1707 created the Kingdom of Great Britain. The informal term 'prime minister' was first recorded around the same time.
Queen Anne died in 1714, and Parliament invited George Louis, Prince Elector of Hanover, to take the throne. He was unpopular, partly because he spoke little English and cared little about governing, so he left that work to his ministers. Then came 1720 and the South Sea bubble, a financial crisis driven by speculative investment. It brought economic turmoil and implicated many government officials. Splits among the Whigs brought down the Stanhope-Sunderland ministry. In 1721 Sir Robert Walpole, who was serving as Paymaster of the Forces, became First Lord of the Treasury. He took office on the 3rd of April 1721 and is counted as the first prime minister.
Historians still hesitate over that label. Walpole is called the first de facto prime minister because of his influence over policy and his grip on the business of government. He was not prime minister in the modern sense, since no law recognised the position and the title began as a term of abuse. His predecessors as First Lord of the Treasury had held a similar role.
Walpole stayed until 1742, and historians dubbed the era the 'Robinocracy'. His handling of the South Sea aftermath won him the backing of commercial and landed interests. He kept foreign policy largely peaceful, lowered taxes and reduced the national debt. In the Commons he acted as a 'Screen-Master General', working the levers and currying favour where needed. He passed no major reforms. Yet after a century of turmoil he gave the country stability, and his years moved political power to the Commons and laid foundations for the modern Cabinet. Allegations of bribery and corruption in Parliament dogged him, and after a disastrous war with Spain he resigned in 1742.
Spencer Compton, the Earl of Wilmington, took over but led in name only. Between 1742 and 1760 there were five separate governments, with infighting over Britain's part in the War of the Austrian Succession and over royal interference in policy. When Henry Pelham became prime minister in 1743, he moved to expel ministers who undermined him, above all Lord Carteret.
In 1928 H. H. Asquith, a prime minister himself, set down in his memoirs how Britain is governed. Great documents such as Magna Carta, the Petition of Right and the Bill of Rights sit on the statute book and protect many rights. But he wrote that most constitutional practice rests on 'usage, custom, convention'. Anthony King adds a useful correction. Much of the British constitution is in fact written down. What sets it apart is that it has never been gathered into one codified document.
This explains the odd position of the prime minister. Many of the office's executive and legislative powers are royal prerogatives that still belong formally to the sovereign, who remains head of state. Britain might seem to have two executives. The idea of 'the Crown' resolves the puzzle. The Crown stands for the state's authority to make and execute laws, to tax, and to declare war and make peace. Before 1688 the sovereign alone wielded it. Afterwards Parliament gradually forced monarchs into political neutrality and spread the Crown's powers among ministers answerable to the elected Commons. The monarch kept three constitutional rights in practice: to be kept informed, to advise and to warn.
Formal recognition of the premiership arrived slowly, and the legal fiction survived that the sovereign still governed directly. Hansard, the official record of Parliament, used the title in 1885, the first known official use. The minutes of the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1902 contained the first internal reference. The 1904 Imperial Calendar listed Balfour as 'Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury'. The edition before it had called him only 'First Lord of the Treasury and Lord Privy Seal'. In December 1905 the prime minister was given an official place in the order of precedence.
The First World War pushed the process further. In 1916 David Lloyd George created the Prime Minister's Office, with staff to coordinate government policy, because wartime government demanded a more efficient executive. Peter Hennessy has argued that the arrangement amounts to a Prime Minister's Department in all but name. Then in 1917 the office was mentioned in statute for the first time, in the schedule of the Chequers Estate Act. From November 1968 the prime minister also held the post of Minister for the Civil Service, which gave authority over the civil service. Even so, a Prime Minister's Office appeared in the Civil Service Yearbook only in the 1977 edition.
John Morley described the prime minister as the 'keystone of the Cabinet arch'. The prime minister chairs the Cabinet and chooses its ministers, and may dismiss them. Until 1868 the holder was regarded as first among equals, the Latin phrase being primus inter pares. After that date the description shifted to reflect both the democratic nature of the post and its heightened importance. Rodney Brazier argues that because a prime minister sways policy so strongly, that power must pass through the conclusions and input of Cabinet ministers. Leading the Cabinet also makes the prime minister answerable for the collective conduct of the government.
Walter Bagehot, the nineteenth-century commentator, held that the prime minister's power comes from the ability to command a majority in the House of Commons. Britain has a unity of powers rather than a separation, and the monarch, in Bagehot's account, 'reigns but does not rule'. A prime minister who loses a vote of no confidence is expected to resign or to ask the monarch to dissolve Parliament and call a general election.
In law-making, the prime minister cannot introduce legislation directly. Influence comes instead through control of the Cabinet and leadership of the largest party in the Commons. Vernon Bogdanor says the whips keep MPs loyal and voting with the government. Alexander Horne and Gavin Drewry add that the Leader of the House of Commons lets the prime minister allocate time for government bills ahead of private members' bills. Brazier argues that legislative power grew greatly after the Second World War. Anthony King observed that Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair sometimes bypassed or overruled the Cabinet to push their preferred agendas. Their leadership styles were described as 'presidential'.
Abroad, the weight is considerable. The United Kingdom has the world's fifth largest economy and belongs to NATO, the G7 and the G20. Anthony Seldon calls the prime minister the main representative of the government in the international sphere. The annual G7 Summit is one stage for that role, and Gus O'Donnell notes that overseas visits by prime ministers have increased.
The most contested powers are the prerogative powers. Bogdanor argues that declaring war, negotiating treaties and deploying the armed forces once belonged to the monarch and have slowly become functions of the prime minister. By convention, a prime minister seeks the approval of Parliament before committing the nation to military action. The record is uneven. Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Tony Blair deployed British troops to Saudi Arabia without the immediate consent of Parliament. In 1956 Anthony Eden, during the Suez Crisis, was the only prime minister who sought neither parliamentary nor legal consent for military action.
Mark Elliot and Robert Thomas call prerogative powers a constitutional anomaly in the 21st century, because no statute regulates them and they lack direct democratic legitimacy. Paul Craig and Adam Tomkins add that without a written constitution a prime minister enjoys more leeway, restrained more by political convention than by law. The courts have stepped in. In the cases known as Miller I and Miller II, the Supreme Court examined the government's use of prerogative to prorogue Parliament during the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union.
The last time a monarch dismissed or appointed a prime minister by personal choice was 1834. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, Bogdanor says, monarchs often picked a prime minister they preferred, whatever the level of public support. The modern convention keeps the monarch out of party politics.
Today a leader who wins a general election with an overall majority is invited by the monarch to form a government. The incoming prime minister is driven to Buckingham Palace and bows in a ceremony known as 'kissing hands'. Afterwards the new prime minister announces the appointment with words to the effect of: 'His Majesty the King has asked me to form a government and I have accepted.' By convention the prime minister is an MP and a member of the Privy Council, which brings the style 'The Right Honourable'. Only a privy counsellor can be appointed. Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 was the one natural appointee who was not already a member, and he was sworn in immediately before taking office.
Deputies have varied. The first, unofficial deputy was Clement Attlee in Winston Churchill's wartime ministry, handling administration, domestic affairs and welfare while Churchill focused on military strategy. After the 2010 general election produced a hung parliament, David Cameron and Nick Clegg formed a coalition. Clegg served as deputy prime minister and chaired Cabinet meetings and key committees, which gave the post unusual formality.
Nobody has an automatic right to succeed a prime minister. Rodney Brazier notes that government has no procedures for a sudden death, and the title of acting prime minister does not exist. In 2006 the Cabinet Office explained that the monarch would decide under the royal prerogative who should act as caretaker. A senior member of the government would probably be asked, preferably someone not in contention for the long-term job, acceptable to the Cabinet. The question became real on the 6th of April 2020. Boris Johnson entered the intensive care unit of St Thomas' Hospital with COVID-19 and asked Dominic Raab to deputise for him where necessary.
A prime minister ends a tenure by offering resignation to the monarch. That can follow an election defeat, a political crisis or ill-health. If the party holds a Commons majority, it selects a new leader by its own rules, and the monarch then invites that person to take over. The outgoing prime minister stays an MP and may ask the monarch to grant honours to chosen people, known as the Resignation Honours. No sitting prime minister has ever lost their own seat at a general election. Only one has been assassinated, Spencer Perceval, in 1812.
In all, 58 people have served as prime minister, 55 men and 3 women. The shortest tenure belonged to Liz Truss, who lasted seven weeks. Keir Starmer succeeded Rishi Sunak on the 5th of July 2024, after the 2024 general election.
In 1881 the 72-year-old William Gladstone was given a break. Questions to the prime minister were moved to the end of question time so that he could arrive late. Before the 1880s, oral questions went to cabinet ministers generally, and those addressed to the prime minister were treated no differently.
The procedure kept bending around the person in the job. In 1904 questions to the prime minister were answered only when they reached No 51 on the list, and in 1940 the figure became No 45. In 1953 Winston Churchill was 78, and Prime Minister's Questions was restricted to Tuesdays and Thursdays to help him.
The modern form began as an experiment on the 24th of October 1961. Harold Macmillan answered questions for 15 minutes that afternoon. Broadcasting followed in stages. The first PMQs were broadcast in 1989, and in 1990 they went out live as a step towards transparency and accountability. Since 1997 the session had run on Wednesdays from 3 pm to 3.30 pm.
Today Prime Minister's Questions is a convention held as a single session each Wednesday at noon while the House of Commons sits. The leader of the opposition usually asks six questions, and the leader of the third-largest party can ask two. The prime minister appears on live television and radio. Beyond the Commons chamber, the prime minister also answers questions on public policy before the Liaison Committee.
Since 1732-10 Downing Street in London has been the official residence of the prime minister. It began as a personal gift from King George I to Robert Walpole. Walpole insisted on accepting it as First Lord of the Treasury and asked that his successors be entitled to use it as they wished. The flats at No. 11 and No. 12 have been rebuilt to connect with No. 10, and the three buildings contain over 100 rooms.
Chequers, a country house in Buckinghamshire, serves as a retreat. Sir Arthur Lee, a Conservative minister and First Lord of the Admiralty, owned it before donating it to the government. The gift was meant to let the prime minister 'spend two days a week in the high and pure air of the Chiltern hills and woods'. Its condition was that the incumbent own no residential country estate of their own. Many 18th and 19th century prime ministers sat in the House of Lords and held large inherited estates. Until the mid-20th century, parliamentary sessions ended in August and did not resume until the New Year, which left long stretches of respite.
Security at Downing Street grew out of fears of IRA bomb attacks during the Troubles. The result was airport-style checkpoints, large metal gates, street patrols and heavy vetting of staff and visitors. Armed police units constantly surround the prime minister there. Protection Command of the Metropolitan Police Service guards both the prime minister and former prime ministers. On the road, outriders on motorbikes clear a path so that the prime minister is not a sitting target. The cars are driven by officers from the same unit. They are custom made, always built in Britain, and fitted with gun ports, an independent oxygen supply and the ability to release tear gas to subdue crowds. Air travel is provided by a mix of military and civilian operators.
Pay has its own history. In 2010 the prime minister received £14,500 on top of a £65,737 salary as an MP. Until 2006 the lord chancellor was the highest-paid member of the government, reflecting a place at the head of the judicial pay scale. The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 stripped the lord chancellor of judicial functions and cut that salary below the prime minister's. The salary stood at £193,885 on the 1st of April 2009 and at £166,786 as of 2024. Gordon Brown took voluntary pay cuts before the May 2010 election, and David Cameron extended cuts of 5% after taking office. Later prime ministers have kept that restraint.
Journalist Simon Kelner argues that the salary must rise. He also says the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act 1883, which criminalised only voter bribery, is an inadequate way to hold a prime minister to account. His comments came after the 2024 Labour Party freebies controversy, in which Keir Starmer reportedly failed to disclose the full amount of gifts received by himself, his family and his cabinet.
Retirement honours follow a pattern. Since the mid-nineteenth century it has been fairly common to make a retiring prime minister a Knight Companion of the Garter, the country's most senior order of chivalry. A Scottish prime minister is likely to receive the Knight of the Thistle instead, since the Garter is generally regarded as English. Edward Heath was made a Knight Companion of the Garter in 1992, John Major in 2005 and Tony Blair in 2022. Major (in 1998) and Gordon Brown (in 2024) became Companions of Honour, although Blair had said he did not want honours for himself or for future prime ministers.
Peerages once went almost automatically to retiring prime ministers, and the peerage was usually an earldom. Harold Macmillan, who resigned in 1963, received the last such creation. He became Earl of Stockton only in 1984, over twenty years after leaving office. Alec Douglas-Home, Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May accepted life peerages. Douglas-Home had earlier disclaimed his hereditary title as Earl of Home, and Edward Heath accepted no peerage at all.
Margaret Thatcher, who served from 1979 to 1990, died on the 8th of April 2013. Her death left the House of Lords with no former prime minister for the first time since 1955. That remained true until David Cameron joined the Lords in November 2023.
Wealth has varied wildly. Walpole built great personal wealth while in office and from investments made in the 1710s. Lord Bute and Lord Rosebery are often named among the richest men to hold the post. William Pitt the Elder and his son William Pitt the Younger ran up large public debts, which Parliament later paid off. In 1937 an official pension for former prime ministers was set at £2000 per year.
Most former prime ministers wrote memoirs, and some turned to other subjects. Winston Churchill wrote histories of the Second World War and of the English language. Edward Heath wrote about sailing, music and travel, and Major wrote a history of cricket. Arthur Balfour produced philosophical writings, and William Gladstone mostly wrote on theology and religion. Benjamin Disraeli wrote many best-selling novels alongside his memoirs and history.
In the 21st century, foundations became a favoured platform. In 1991 Margaret Thatcher became the first prime minister to set up her own, to secure her legacy and spread Thatcherism, and it closed in 2005. Tony Blair created a sports foundation, an inter-faith foundation and, in 2016, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. He also became the first former prime minister to take a major international role, as official envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East. Gordon Brown stayed politically active, campaigning for the no vote in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.
Some former prime ministers return to government. The Duke of Wellington, after two brief terms in office, served in two governments under his successor Sir Robert Peel, as Foreign Secretary and as Minister without portfolio. From 1842 until his death in 1852 he was Commander-in-Chief of the Army. Arthur Balfour, defeated at the 1906 general election, went on to serve eleven years as Foreign Secretary during and after the First World War, under three prime ministers. Neville Chamberlain resigned in May 1940 and then served in Churchill's war cabinet. Alec Douglas-Home lost the 1964 general election and joined Edward Heath's cabinet in 1970. David Cameron returned seven years after resigning, as Foreign Secretary under Rishi Sunak.
All former prime ministers may claim a Public Duty Costs Allowance for salary and office expenses incurred in fulfilling public duties in that role. It cannot pay for private or parliamentary duties, and the Cabinet Office Finance Team administers it. The yearly maximum is £115,000, plus 10% towards staff pension costs, reviewed each year and at the start of each Parliament. Downing Street confirmed in November 2023 that David Cameron would not claim from it while he served as Foreign Secretary.
Updated
Common questions
Who was the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?
Sir Robert Walpole is counted as the first prime minister. He took office as First Lord of the Treasury on the 3rd of April 1721 and served until 1742. Historians call him the first de facto prime minister because no law recognised the position.
How is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom appointed?
The monarch appoints the person most likely to command the confidence of the House of Commons, normally the leader of the largest party. The new prime minister travels to Buckingham Palace and bows in a ceremony known as kissing hands.
Is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom mentioned in law?
The office rests mainly on constitutional convention rather than statute. The position was first mentioned in statute in 1917, in the schedule of the Chequers Estate Act.
Where does the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom live?
The official residence is 10 Downing Street in London, used by prime ministers since 1732. Chequers, a country house in Buckinghamshire, serves as a country retreat.
When is Prime Minister's Questions held for the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?
The session is held every Wednesday at noon while the House of Commons sits. The modern form began as an experiment on the 24th of October 1961, when Harold Macmillan answered questions for 15 minutes.
How many people have served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?
58 people have served, 55 men and 3 women. The shortest tenure was Liz Truss at seven weeks, and Keir Starmer succeeded Rishi Sunak on the 5th of July 2024.
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