James Grant: Britain's Well-Stocked Cabinet
[Grant is a constitutional law scholar at the University of Oxford.]
...Since the early 1980s, Britain's prime ministers moved the political system from its traditional Cabinet format to something more akin to the U.S. presidential system. In this regard, previous Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the just-dethroned Labor Party was perhaps the most controlling. "Gordon wants to interfere in everything," said Geoff Hoon, a Cabinet minister under Brown and his predecessor, Tony Blair.
In Cameron's government, by contrast, everything has to be "coalitionized," said the Cabinet secretary, Gus O'Donnell, or G.O'D., as he's known. G.O'D. was responsible for bringing the parties together in May's negotiations, and now ensures the coalition runs smoothly. The two parties are not obvious bedfellows, but they have formed a solid "brokeback coalition."...
Britain's rare coalition governments are generally associated with times of national crisis. There was a Liberal-Conservative coalition during World War I, under Herbert Asquith and then David Lloyd George. After the war, the Lloyd George coalition continued in office for a further four years until 1922, a period generally considered to have been a disaster. Lloyd George, known at the time as "the man who won the war," ruled as an "elective dictator," contemptuous of Parliament and the Cabinet system. His coalition was brought down primarily by Conservative backbenchers and junior ministers angry at the prime minister's Caesarism.
If there's a lesson here, it's that coalitions cannot work without an effective Cabinet....
Read entire article at LA Times
...Since the early 1980s, Britain's prime ministers moved the political system from its traditional Cabinet format to something more akin to the U.S. presidential system. In this regard, previous Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the just-dethroned Labor Party was perhaps the most controlling. "Gordon wants to interfere in everything," said Geoff Hoon, a Cabinet minister under Brown and his predecessor, Tony Blair.
In Cameron's government, by contrast, everything has to be "coalitionized," said the Cabinet secretary, Gus O'Donnell, or G.O'D., as he's known. G.O'D. was responsible for bringing the parties together in May's negotiations, and now ensures the coalition runs smoothly. The two parties are not obvious bedfellows, but they have formed a solid "brokeback coalition."...
Britain's rare coalition governments are generally associated with times of national crisis. There was a Liberal-Conservative coalition during World War I, under Herbert Asquith and then David Lloyd George. After the war, the Lloyd George coalition continued in office for a further four years until 1922, a period generally considered to have been a disaster. Lloyd George, known at the time as "the man who won the war," ruled as an "elective dictator," contemptuous of Parliament and the Cabinet system. His coalition was brought down primarily by Conservative backbenchers and junior ministers angry at the prime minister's Caesarism.
If there's a lesson here, it's that coalitions cannot work without an effective Cabinet....