The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

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other
ministers, particularly those who lead key departments such as the Ministry
of Defence, the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office (Colonial as it used to be
known), Treasury, Home Office and so forth.

Within the House of Commons the Cabinet conducts a dialogue with the
opposition, which is led by its
own ‘Shadow Cabinet’. The Cabinet controls the
time-table of the House within certain limits laid
down by standing orders, it
initiates most laws and all financial measures and it carries on the
day-to-day
administration. “It must at all time convince its back-benchers, although these
are
likely to be three-quarters convinced already by the exhilaration of being on the
governing side
of the House. On the other hand, it faces the opposition and it is
primarily with this, the minority in
the House, that the dialogue is nowadays
conducted.”6

Each
Cabinet member is individually responsible to the Commons. This is
for the purely departmental aspect of
their duties and also for matters of personal
conduct. “If he commits a personal fault, like Mr.
Profumo in 1963, or if he makes
a hash of departmental management, like Sir Thomas Dugdale in 1954, and
the
House feels he should resign and the Cabinet is unwilling to protect him then a
minister may
have to resign, though the convention is more honoured in the
breach than the observance. For policy,
however, the entire Cabinet assume a
collective responsibility: ‘one out, all out’. A minister
who disagrees with the
policy must either grin and bear it, or resign. The secrecy of Cabinet
proceedings
serves to make this doctrine of collective responsibility practical.”7

The
opposition is a built-in check and balance to the government. “It has
five distinctive
characteristics and five distinctive functions. It is organized;
permanent; representative (of something
like half the nation who look to it to fight
their battles); a participant in selecting issues for
debate; and the alternative to the
group in power.”8 If the
government is no longer capable of holding onto power
and collapses, the opposition will take office.
“This is the logic of the two-party

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