Isn’t it a fascinating time to be watching British politics with the Prime Minister saying that he’s going to go on and on giving clear statements yet cabinet collective responsibility seeming to be not quite broken down, but rather forced?
Let’s see what Keir Starmer had to say today.
Sir Keir said: “I will never walk away from the mandate I was given to change this country. I will never walk away from the people that I am charged with fighting for, and I will never walk away from the country that I love.”
Well, doesn’t that just remind you of dear old Theresa May, who loved her country too? She said it, however, I think just as she left office.
On the steps of Downing Street, Baroness May said: “With enormous and enduring gratitude, to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love.”
The country that they all love. It’s beginning to sound a bit like Edward VIII, but we may come to him later.
A key thing is collective responsibility. Our system of Government doesn’t work unless the Cabinet is united.
And this was formulated by Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, who, at the end of a Cabinet meeting when he hadn’t been paying proper attention – and before they took proper minutes – as he was leaving, he said “now is it to lower the price of corn or isn’t it? It’s not much matter what we say, but mind, we must all say the same.”
The GB News host gave his verdict on the turmoil engulfing the Labour Party
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GB NEWS
And this has been a constitutional principle since then. Our Government depends upon it that the Cabinet must be united so that it collectively can be held accountable to Parliament.
But is Wes Streeting really abiding by collective responsibility?
“Let’s try and get it right first time” which of course implies that they’re not getting it right first time and that there is a problem.
And we get lots of rumours about people within the Cabinet organising their leadership campaign, having conversations in quiet corners, beginning to plot.
Suddenly out of the blue, a website was set up purportedly to support the leadership campaign of Angela Rayner.
Wes Streeting is believed to be eyeing up a leadership bid
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PA
This doesn’t work that if you are a Prime Minister, you have the power to hire and to fire, and we see lots of people being fired, we see the Chief of Staff going, we see the Press Secretary going, we see rumours about the Cabinet Secretary going, but nobody from the Cabinet is being removed from office.
They’re all staying there, even though they are quietly, not so quietly, leaking and plotting against the Prime Minister.
And why does this matter? Why should we care? Well, if the Government isn’t united, nothing gets done.
Cabinet collective responsibility is the power base of our system.
What is done, what is put before Parliament, the agreements that they make become our laws, become the way in which the country is governed.
And if they’re sniping against each other, we are not governed.
They have a majority of 180 in Parliament to back the Prime Minister and his Cabinet and any member of the Cabinet who is not willing to support that ought to go or ought to be fired by the Prime Minister.
But the Prime Minister doesn’t have the political strength, any remaining political capital, to get rid of those who are conspiring against him.
So they pretend in public that they’re united, whilst in private they are arguing against each other. And it has to be said Wes Streeting is pushing collective responsibility to its absolute limits, putting out publicly text messages that show that he was questioning the whole basis on which the Government was operating, whether there was any growth strategy.
And we had the quote about whether things were being done right the first time.
This undermines the ability of the Government to govern, and the Prime Minister is too weak to do anything about it.
Now, I know many of you are probably greater watchers of Harry Potter than I am, but there’s a great quotation that we can use in this context.
“The one with the power to vanquish the dark Lord approaches, and the dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the dark Lord knows not, and either must die at the hand of the other, but neither can live while the other survives.”
That is the reality of Cabinet Government. One of them, either Keir Starmer or Wes Streeting, has to go. Our system depends upon it. It’s what collective responsibility means.