Role of Prime Minister

3 Key excerpts on "Role of Prime Minister"

• 

  eBook - ePub

  Churchill to Major: The British Prime Ministership since 1945

  The British Prime Ministership since 1945

  • R.L. Borthwick, Martin Burch, Philip Giddings(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  7THE PRIME MINISTER AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS J.M. Lee

  The conduct of international affairs since 1945 has had a dramatic impact on the office of prime minister. The increasing influence of international forces on the form and implementation of domestic policies has given the prime minister a wider range of co-ordination problems. Prime ministers are expected to provide the leadership which will find solutions to domestic problems against constant pressures in the management of foreign policy. External forces have both reshaped the roles which prime ministers play and introduced new constraints upon their exercise of power and influence.

  Distinctions between foreign and domestic policy have been blurred, as have the conventions of managing them in fairly separate spheres of action. There is no longer the dividing-line that there once was between ‘home’ and ‘colonial’ or between ‘domestic’ and ‘imperial’. Instead prime ministers are for ever considering the interweaving of domestic and international affairs. Estimates of the allocation of prime ministerial time suggest that all incumbents in the office now spend more than half their working hours on matters arising from external questions. The cabinet secretary thought that James Callaghan spent at least 60 per cent of his time on international affairs; many commentators thought that towards the end of her period in office they were occupying 80 per cent of Margaret Thatcher’s time. The consequences of the intergovernmental conference which drew up the Maastricht treaty in 1992 loomed large on John Major’s daily agenda.

  There are three aspects of the roles of the prime minister which are strongly influenced by events overseas. First for most practical purposes, the prime minister as head of government in a constitutional monarchy is seen to be sharing with the head of state the role of embodying the nation. The phrase ‘relations with the palace’ – that domain of delicate negotiation and convention which determines what the monarch and what the prime minister shall do – has to be understood by foreign governments. Ambassadors are accredited to the Court of St James but the representatives of foreign powers expect to enjoy access to Number 10 Downing Street. If these expectations are modified in any way, there are repercussions upon the practice of negotiations as well as upon diplomacy and protocol. Secondly, as chairman of the cabinet and of its principal committees, the prime minister is responsible for co-ordinating the actions of different government departments whenever a national policy or a national stance is required. Foreign governments need to appreciate how the issues of foreign policy impinge on the relationships between departments and on domestic opinion as a whole. Any shift in a national order of priorities may have an effect upon the relationships between British and foreign governments. Thirdly, the prime minister is the only member of the government who can give a lead in policy and effectively bring together the sources of intelligence about what is happening overseas, and at the same time regulate access to the deductions and diagnoses which are presented. All governments try to intercept and decode the traffic between different parts of other governments, so that they can judge the alternative lines of action which are being considered and prepared. Any change in the conventions determining who ‘needs to know’ the secrets of state can influence what government decides.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Prime Ministers and the Media

  Issues of Power and Control

  • Colin Seymour-Ure(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  The job of the prime minister is defined principally in chapters 4 and 5. The Hidden Wiring is subtitled ‘Unearthing the British Constitution’ and covers much more than the prime minister. 15 Michael Foley, The Rise of the British Presidency , Manchester: Manchester Univer-sity Press, 1993; Richard Rose, The Prime Minister in a Shrinking World , London: Polity, 2001. The Prime Minister’s Job in General What, then, are the prime minister’s tasks and activities? Which ones require public communication, and which may be assisted by it? To explore these questions a number of distinctions can be made. First, the prime minister has three clear and overlapping roles in which to carry out his tasks as a public communicator. Most comprehensively he is a source of news . To project the news he wants, he is next a communications manager . President Eisenhower cheerfully but naively believed in ‘letting the facts speak for themselves’. Perhaps a military hero turned politician could afford to take that view in the 1950s; but fortunately for him, his press secretary, Jim Hagerty, did not. 16 In an era of electronic glut, ‘facts’, more than ever, are manufactured, and they never speak for themselves. Third, the prime minister is a public per-former . The locations are diverse. In the majority he will double as a news source, since the live audience will be supplemented by newspa-per or broadcast audiences. When he takes part in a broadcast inter-view or ‘writes’ a newspaper column (a practice Tony Blair often used, through the medium of assistants), his performance is specific to news media but may be further spread by being discussed also as a source of news. A fourth but rather different communications role is media policy-maker . It is different in that it directly involves substantive policy goals, whereas the other roles are principally means to the achievement of goals, not goals in themselves.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Government and Politics of France

  • Anne Stevens(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  The presi-dent does not account to Parliament for his actions: he cannot be invited to attend debates, he does not speak in them, he cannot be questioned by members of Parliament. The prime minister has a crucial political role, whatever his or her relationship with the presidency, though clearly its balance and intensity alters during periods of cohabitation . The political role of the prime minister has three aspects: in relation to the government, for whose political cohesion he or she is largely responsible; in relation to Parliament, where the government must carry its programme and to some degree account for its actions, and in relation to the party or parties that support the government. In seeking to ensure the political cohesion of the government the prime minister may operate under a number of handicaps: ● He or she may not be solely responsible for the composition and nature of his team. General de Gaulle was in the habit of naming those whom he wished to see in the key posts – defence, foreign affairs, the interior – and ensured the continuation in office from 1959 to the end of his presidency of André Malraux as Minister of Culture. In 2002 it was reported that President Chirac had chosen all the ministers, (although Raffarin specifically asked for Luc Ferry, the philosopher, as minister of education) and they had in some cases already been informed of their appointment by the president some hours before the prime minister officially told them that he was, as the constitution requires, proposing them ( Le Point , 17 May 2002, p. 32, and 24 June 2002, p. 35). Compromises may occur. In the governmental reshuffles of 1990, for example, two ministerial departures (including that of Edith Cresson who was appointed prime minister the following year) were attributed to the wishes of the prime minister, two new appointments to the wishes of the president, and one more was alleged to have served the (different) interests of both.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book