During Margaret Thatcher's years as Prime Minister, there were three Chancellors of the Exchequer. Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson were two, but who was the other one?
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Margaret Thatcher Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Geoffrey Howe Nigel Lawson
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher,  ( Roberts; 13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013) was a British stateswoman and politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and the Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century and the first woman to have held the office. A Soviet journalist dubbed her the "Iron Lady", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. As Prime Minister, she implemented policies that have come to be known as Thatcherism.

Originally a research chemist before becoming a barrister, Thatcher was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his 1970 government. In 1975, Thatcher defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election to become Leader of the Opposition and became the first woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom. She became Prime Minister after winning the 1979 general election.

On moving into , Thatcher introduced a series of political and economic initiatives intended to reverse high unemployment and Britain's struggles in the wake of the Winter of Discontent and an ongoing recession. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), flexible labour markets, the privatisation of state-owned companies, and reducing the power and influence of trade unions. Thatcher's popularity during her first years in office waned amid recession and high unemployment, until victory in the 1982 Falklands War and the recovering economy brought a resurgence of support, resulting in her re-election in 1983.

Thatcher was re-elected for a third term in 1987. During this period her support for a Community Charge (referred to as the "poll tax") was widely unpopular, and her views on the European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet. She resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990, after Michael Heseltine launched a challenge to her leadership. After retiring from the Commons in 1992, she was given a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the county of Lincolnshire, which entitled her to sit in the House of Lords. After a series of small strokes in 2002, she was advised to withdraw from public speaking. Despite this, she managed to prerecord a eulogy to Ronald Reagan prior to his death, which was broadcast at his funeral in 2004.  In 2013, she died of another stroke in London at the age of 87.

Early life and education

Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts on 13 October 1925, in Grantham, Lincolnshire. Her father was Alfred Roberts, originally from Northamptonshire, and her mother was Beatrice Ethel (née Stephenson) from Lincolnshire. She spent her childhood in Grantham, where her father owned two grocery shops. She and her older sister Muriel (1921–2004) were raised in the flat above the larger of the two, on North Parade. Her father was active in local politics and the Methodist church, serving as an alderman and a local preacher, and brought up his daughter as a strict Wesleyan Methodist  attending the Finkin Street Methodist Church. He came from a Liberal family but stood – as was then customary in local government – as an Independent. He was Mayor of Grantham in 1945–46 and lost his position as alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950.

Margaret Roberts attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School. Her school reports showed hard work and continual improvement; her extracurricular activities included the piano, field hockey, poetry recitals, swimming and walking. She was head girl in 1942–43.  In her upper sixth year she applied for a scholarship to study chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, but she was initially rejected and was offered a place only after another candidate withdrew. Roberts arrived at Oxford in 1943 and graduated in 1947 with Second-Class Honours in the four-year Chemistry Bachelor of Science degree, specialising in X-ray crystallography under the supervision of Dorothy Hodgkin. Her dissertation was on the structure of the antibiotic gramicidin.  Even while working on chemistry, she was already thinking towards law and politics. She was reportedly more proud of becoming the first Prime Minister with a science degree than the first female Prime Minister. 

Roberts became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946. She was influenced at university by political works such as Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944), which condemned economic intervention by government as a precursor to an authoritarian state. After graduating, Roberts moved to Colchester in Essex to work as a research chemist for BX Plastics. In 1948 she applied for a job at ICI, but was rejected after the personnel department assessed her as "headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated".  Roberts joined the local Conservative Association and attended the party conference at Llandudno in 1948, as a representative of the University Graduate Conservative Association. One of her Oxford friends was also a friend of the Chair of the Dartford Conservative Association in Kent, who were looking for candidates. Officials of the association were so impressed by her that they asked her to apply, even though she was not on the Conservative Party's approved list: she was selected in January 1951, aged 25, and added to the approved list post ante. At a dinner following her formal adoption as Conservative candidate for Dartford in February 1951 she met Denis Thatcher, a successful and wealthy divorced businessman, who drove her to her Essex train. In preparation for the election Roberts moved to Dartford, where she supported herself by working as a research chemist for J. Lyons and Co. in Hammersmith, part of a team developing emulsifiers for ice cream. 

Early political career

In the 1950 and 1951 general elections, Roberts was the Conservative candidate for the safe Labour seat of Dartford. The local party selected her as its candidate because, though not a dynamic public speaker, Roberts was well-prepared and fearless in her answers; another prospective candidate recalled that "Once she opened her mouth, the rest of us began to look rather second-rate". She attracted media attention as the youngest and the only female candidate. She lost on both occasions to Norman Dodds, but reduced the Labour majority by 6,000, and then a further 1,000. During the campaigns, she was supported by her parents and by Denis Thatcher, whom she married in December 1951.  Denis funded his wife's studies for the bar; she qualified as a barrister in 1953 and specialised in taxation. Later that same year their twins Carol and Mark were born, delivered by Caesarean section.

The marriage led to her being referred to as "Mrs Denis Thatcher" – now considered dated  – by such official sources as selection minutes,  travel itineraries,  and society publications such as Queen, even after her election as a Member of Parliament, after which she preferred "Mrs Margaret Thatcher". 

Member of Parliament: 1959–70

In 1954, Thatcher was defeated when she sought selection to be the Conservative party candidate for the Orpington by-election of January 1955. She chose not to stand as a candidate in the 1955 general election, in later years stating "I really just felt the twins were ... only two, I really felt that it was too soon.  I couldn't do that." Afterwards, Thatcher began looking for a Conservative safe seat and was selected as the candidate for Finchley in April 1958 (narrowly beating Ian Montagu Fraser). She was elected as MP for the seat after a hard campaign in the 1959 election.  Benefiting from her fortunate result in a lottery for backbenchers to propose new legislation, Thatcher's maiden speech was in support of her private member's bill (Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960), requiring local authorities to hold their council meetings in public.  In 1961 she went against the Conservative Party's official position by voting for the restoration of birching as a judicial corporal punishment.

Thatcher's talent and drive caused her to be mentioned as a future Prime Minister in her early 20s although she herself was more pessimistic, stating as late as 1970 that "There will not be a woman prime minister in my lifetime—the male population is too prejudiced."  In October 1961 she was promoted to the front bench as Parliamentary Undersecretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance in Harold Macmillan's administration. Thatcher was the youngest woman in history to receive such a post, and among the first MPs elected in 1959 to be promoted. After the Conservatives lost the 1964 election she became spokeswoman on Housing and Land, in which position she advocated her party's policy of allowing tenants to buy their council houses. She moved to the Shadow Treasury team in 1966 and, as Treasury spokeswoman, opposed Labour's mandatory price and income controls, arguing that they would produce effects contrary to those intended and distort the economy.

By 1966, party leaders viewed Thatcher as a potential Shadow Cabinet member. James Prior proposed her as a member after the Conservatives' 1966 defeat, but party leader Edward Heath and Chief Whip Willie Whitelaw chose Mervyn Pike as the shadow cabinet's sole woman member.

At the Conservative Party Conference of 1966 she criticised the high-tax policies of the Labour Government as being steps "not only towards Socialism, but towards Communism", arguing that lower taxes served as an incentive to hard work. Thatcher was one of the few Conservative MPs to support Leo Abse's Bill to decriminalise male homosexuality.  She voted in favour of David Steel's bill to legalise abortion,  as well as a ban on hare coursing.  She supported the retention of capital punishment  and voted against the relaxation of divorce laws. 

In 1967, the United States Embassy in London chose Thatcher to take part in the International Visitor Leadership Program (then called the Foreign Leader Program), a professional exchange programme that gave her the opportunity to spend about six weeks visiting various US cities and political figures as well as institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. Although she was not yet a cabinet or shadow cabinet member, the embassy reportedly described her to the State Department as a possible future prime minister. The description helped Thatcher meet with many prominent people during a busy itinerary focused on economic issues, including Paul Samuelson, Walt Rostow, Pierre-Paul Schweitzer, and Nelson Rockefeller. After Pike's retirement, Heath appointed Thatcher later that year to the Shadow Cabinet as Fuel and Power spokesman.  Shortly before the 1970 general election, she was promoted to Shadow Transport spokesman and later to Education.

Education Secretary: 1970–74

The Conservative Party under Edward Heath won the 1970 general election, and Thatcher was subsequently appointed to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Education and Science. During her first months in office she attracted public attention as a result of the administration's attempts to cut spending. She gave priority to academic needs in schools. She imposed public expenditure cuts on the state education system, resulting in the abolition of free milk for schoolchildren aged seven to eleven. She held that few children would suffer if schools were charged for milk, but agreed to provide younger children with a third of a pint daily, for nutritional purposes. Cabinet papers later revealed that she opposed the policy but had been forced into it by the Treasury.  Her decision provoked a storm of protest from Labour and the press, leading to the moniker "Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher".  She reportedly considered leaving politics in the aftermath and later wrote in her autobiography: "I learned a valuable lesson [from the experience]. I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit."

Thatcher's term of office was marked by proposals for more local education authorities to close grammar schools and to adopt comprehensive secondary education. Although she was committed to a tiered secondary modern-grammar school system of education and was determined to preserve grammar schools, during her tenure as Education Secretary she turned down only 326 of 3,612 proposals for schools to become comprehensives; the proportion of pupils attending comprehensive schools consequently rose from 32 per cent to 62 per cent.

Leader of the Opposition: 1975–79

The Heath government continued to experience difficulties with oil embargoes and union demands for wage increases in 1973 and lost the February 1974 general election. Labour formed a minority government and went on to win a narrow majority in the October 1974 general election. Heath's leadership of the Conservative Party looked increasingly in doubt. Thatcher was not initially the obvious replacement, but she eventually became the main challenger, promising a fresh start. Her main support came from the Conservative 1922 Committee, but Thatcher's time in office gave her the reputation of a pragmatist instead of an ideologue. She defeated Heath on the first ballot and he resigned the leadership.  In the second ballot she defeated Whitelaw, Heath's preferred successor. The vote polarised along right-left lines, with the region, experience and education of the MP also having their effects. Thatcher's support was stronger among MPs on the right, those from southern England, and those who had not attended public schools or Oxbridge. 

Thatcher became party leader and Leader of the Opposition on 11 February 1975;  she appointed Whitelaw as her deputy. Heath was never reconciled to Thatcher's leadership. 

Thatcher began to attend lunches regularly at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank founded by the poultry magnate Antony Fisher, a disciple of Friedrich Hayek; she had been visiting the IEA and reading its publications since the early 1960s. There she was influenced by the ideas of Ralph Harris and Arthur Seldon, and she became the face of the ideological movement opposing the welfare state. Keynesian economics, they believed, was weakening Britain. The institute's pamphlets proposed less government, lower taxes, and more freedom for business and consumers.

Television critic Clive James, writing in The Observer during the voting for the leadership, compared her voice of 1973 to a cat sliding down a blackboard. Thatcher had already begun to work on her presentation on the advice of Gordon Reece, a former television producer. By chance Reece met the actor Laurence Olivier, who arranged lessons with the National Theatre's voice coach.  Thatcher succeeded in completely suppressing her Lincolnshire dialect except when under stress, notably after provocation from Denis Healey in the House of Commons in April 1983, when she accused the Labour front bench of being frit.  

On 19 January 1976 Thatcher made a speech in Kensington Town Hall in which she made a scathing attack on the Soviet Union: 

In response, the Soviet Defence Ministry newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) called her the "Iron Lady," a sobriquet she gladly adopted.

Margaret Thatcher wanted to prevent the creation of a Scottish assembly. She told Conservative MPs to vote against the Scotland and Wales Bill in December 1976, which was defeated, and then when new Bills were proposed she supported amending the legislation to allow the English to vote in the 1979 referendum on devolution. 

Britain's economy during the 1970s was so weak that Foreign Minister James Callaghan warned his fellow Labour Cabinet members in 1974 of the possibility of "a breakdown of democracy", telling them that "If I were a young man, I would emigrate." In mid-1978, the economy began to improve and opinion polls showed Labour in the lead, with a general election being expected later that year and a Labour win a serious possibility. Now Prime Minister, Callaghan surprised many by announcing on 7 September that there would be no general election that year and he would wait until 1979 before going to the polls. Thatcher reacted to this by branding the Labour government "chickens", and Liberal Party leader David Steel joined in, criticising Labour for "running scared". 

The Labour government then faced fresh public unease about the direction of the country and a damaging series of strikes during the winter of 1978–79, dubbed the "Winter of Discontent". The Conservatives attacked the Labour government's unemployment record, using advertising with the slogan "Labour Isn't Working". A general election was called after Callaghan's government lost a motion of no confidence in early 1979. The Conservatives won a 44-seat majority in the House of Commons, and took charge. 

Premiership of the United Kingdom: 1979–90

Thatcher became Prime Minister on 4 May 1979. Arriving at 10 Downing Street, she said, in a paraphrase of St. Francis of Assisi's prayer Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace:

Relations with the Queen

As Prime Minister, Thatcher met weekly with Queen Elizabeth II to discuss government business, and their relationship came under close scrutiny.

In July 1986, The Sunday Times reported claims attributed to the Queen's advisers of a "rift" between Buckingham Palace and Downing Street "over a wide range of domestic and international issues".

The Palace issued an official denial, heading off speculation about a possible constitutional crisis. After Thatcher's retirement a senior Palace source again dismissed as "nonsense" the "stereotyped idea" that she had not got along with the Queen, or that they had fallen out over Thatcherite policies.  Thatcher later wrote: "I always found the Queen's attitude towards the work of the Government absolutely correct ... stories of clashes between 'two powerful women' were just too good not to make up."

Economy and taxation

Thatcher's economic policy was influenced by monetarist thinking and economists such as Milton Friedman and Alan Walters. Together with Chancellor of the Exchequer Geoffrey Howe, she lowered direct taxes on income and increased indirect taxes. She increased interest rates to slow the growth of the money supply and thereby lower inflation, introduced cash limits on public spending, and reduced expenditure on social services such as education and housing. Her cuts in higher education spending resulted in her being the first Oxford-educated post-war Prime Minister not to be awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Oxford, after a 738 to 319 vote of the governing assembly and a student petition.  Her new centrally funded City Technology Colleges did not enjoy much success, and the Funding Agency for Schools was set up to control expenditure by opening and closing schools; the Social Market Foundation, a centre-left think tank, described it as having "an extraordinary range of dictatorial powers".

Some Heathite Conservatives in the Cabinet, the so-called "wets", expressed doubt over Thatcher's policies. The 1981 England riots resulted in the British media discussing the need for a policy U-turn. At the 1980 Conservative Party conference, Thatcher addressed the issue directly, with a speech written by the playwright Ronald Millar that included the lines: "You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning!" 

Thatcher's job approval rating fell to 23% by December 1980, lower than recorded for any previous Prime Minister. As the recession of the early 1980s deepened she increased taxes, despite concerns expressed in a statement signed by 364 leading economists issued towards the end of March 1981. 

By 1982, the UK began to experience signs of economic recovery; inflation was down to 8.6% from a high of 18%, but unemployment was over 3 million for the first time since the 1930s.  By 1983 overall economic growth was stronger and inflation and mortgage rates were at their lowest levels since 1970, although manufacturing output had dropped by 30% since 1978  and unemployment remained high, peaking at 3.3 million in 1984. 

By 1987, unemployment was falling, the economy was stable and strong, and inflation was low. Opinion polls showed a comfortable Conservative lead, and local council election results had also been successful, prompting Thatcher to call a general election for 11 June that year, despite the deadline for an election still being 12 months away. The election saw Thatcher re-elected for a third successive term.  Throughout the 1980s revenue from the 90% tax on North Sea oil extraction was used as a short-term funding source to balance the economy and pay the costs of reform.

Thatcher reformed local government taxes by replacing domestic rates – a tax based on the nominal rental value of a home – with the Community Charge (or poll tax) in which the same amount was charged to each adult resident.  The new tax was introduced in Scotland in 1989 and in England and Wales the following year, and proved to be among the most unpopular policies of her premiership. Public disquiet culminated in a 70,000 to 200,000-strong  demonstration in London on 31 March 1990; the demonstration around Trafalgar Square deteriorated into the Poll Tax Riots, leaving 113 people injured and 340 under arrest.  The Community Charge was abolished by her successor, John Major.

Industrial relations

Thatcher was committed to reducing the power of the trade unions, whose leadership she accused of undermining parliamentary democracy and economic performance through strike action. Several unions launched strikes in response to legislation introduced to curb their power, but resistance eventually collapsed.  Only 39% of union members voted for Labour in the 1983 general election.  According to the BBC, Thatcher "managed to destroy the power of the trade unions for almost a generation". 

The miners' strike was the biggest confrontation between the unions and the Thatcher government. In March 1984 the National Coal Board (NCB) proposed to close 20 of the 174 state-owned mines and cut 20,000 jobs out of 187,000.

Two-thirds of the country's miners, led by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) under Arthur Scargill, downed tools in protest.  Scargill had refused to hold a ballot on the strike,  having previously lost three ballots on a national strike (January 1982, October 1982, and March 1983).  This led to the strike being declared illegal.  

Thatcher refused to meet the union's demands and compared the miners' dispute to the Falklands conflict two years earlier, declaring in a speech in 1984: "We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty." After a year out on strike, in March 1985, the NUM leadership conceded without a deal. The cost to the economy was estimated to be at least £1.5 billion, and the strike was blamed for much of the pound's fall against the US dollar. The government closed 25 unprofitable coal mines in 1985, and by 1992 a total of 97 had been closed; those that remained were privatised in 1994.  The eventual closure of 150 coal mines, not all of which were losing money, resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and devastated entire communities.  Miners had helped bring down the Heath government, and Thatcher was determined to succeed where he had failed. Her strategy of preparing fuel stocks, appointing a union-busting NCB leader in Ian MacGregor, and ensuring police were adequately trained and equipped with riot gear, contributed to her victory.

The number of stoppages across the UK peaked at 4,583 in 1979, when more than 29 million working days were lost. In 1984, the year of the miners' strike, there were 1,221, resulting in the loss of more than 27 million working days. Stoppages then fell steadily throughout the rest of Thatcher's premiership; in 1990 there were 630 and fewer than 2 million working days lost, and they continued to fall thereafter. Thatcher's time in office witnessed a sharp decline in trade union density, with the percentage of workers belonging to a trade union falling from 57.3% in 1979 to 49.5% in 1985.  In 1979 up until Thatcher's last year in office, trade union membership also fell, from 13.5 million in 1979 to fewer than 10 million.

Privatisation

The policy of privatisation has been called "a crucial ingredient of Thatcherism". After the 1983 election the sale of state utilities accelerated; more than £29 billion was raised from the sale of nationalised industries, and another £18 billion from the sale of council houses.

The process of privatisation, especially the preparation of nationalised industries for privatisation, was associated with marked improvements in performance, particularly in terms of labour productivity.

Some of the privatised industries, including gas, water, and electricity, were natural monopolies for which privatisation involved little increase in competition. The privatised industries that demonstrated improvement sometimes did so while still under state ownership. British Steel Corporation, for instance, made great gains in profitability while still a nationalised industry under the government-appointed chairmanship of Ian MacGregor, who faced down trade-union opposition to close plants and reduce the workforce by half.  Regulation was also significantly expanded to compensate for the loss of direct government control, with the foundation of regulatory bodies such as Ofgas, Oftel and the National Rivers Authority. There was no clear pattern to the degree of competition, regulation, and performance among the privatised industries; in most cases privatisation benefited consumers in terms of lower prices and improved efficiency, but the results overall were "mixed".

Thatcher always resisted rail privatisation and was said to have told Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley "Railway privatisation will be the Waterloo of this government. Please never mention the railways to me again." Shortly before her resignation, she accepted the arguments for privatising British Rail, which her successor John Major implemented in 1994. The effect of privatising the railway is disputed, with large growth in passenger numbers and increasing efficiency matched by large public subsidy and concern about foreign companies running British railways.

The privatisation of public assets was combined with financial deregulation in an attempt to fuel economic growth. Geoffrey Howe abolished Britain's exchange controls in 1979, allowing more capital to be invested in foreign markets, and the Big Bang of 1986 removed many restrictions on the London Stock Exchange. The Thatcher government encouraged growth in the finance and service sectors to compensate for Britain's ailing manufacturing industry.

Northern Ireland

In 1980 and 1981, Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) prisoners in Northern Ireland's Maze Prison carried out hunger strikes in an effort to regain the status of political prisoners that had been removed in 1976 by the preceding Labour government.

Bobby Sands began the 1981 strike, saying that he would fast until death unless prison inmates won concessions over their living conditions.  Thatcher refused to countenance a return to political status for the prisoners, declaring "Crime is crime is crime; it is not political", but nevertheless the UK government privately contacted republican leaders in a bid to bring the hunger strikes to an end.  After the deaths of Sands and nine others, the strike ended. Some rights were restored to paramilitary prisoners, but not official recognition of political status. Violence in Northern Ireland escalated significantly during the hunger strikes; in 1982 Sinn Féin politician Danny Morrison described Thatcher as "the biggest bastard we have ever known".

Thatcher narrowly escaped injury in an IRA assassination attempt at a Brighton hotel early in the morning on 12 October 1984.  Five people were killed, including the wife of Cabinet Minister John Wakeham. Thatcher was staying at the hotel to attend the Conservative Party Conference, which she insisted should open as scheduled the following day. She delivered her speech as planned, a move that was widely supported across the political spectrum and enhanced her popularity with the public. 

On 6 November 1981, Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald had established the Anglo-Irish Inter-Governmental Council, a forum for meetings between the two governments.  On 15 November 1985, Thatcher and FitzGerald signed the Hillsborough Anglo-Irish Agreement, the first time a British government had given the Republic of Ireland an advisory role in the governance of Northern Ireland. In protest the Ulster Says No movement attracted 100,000 to a rally in Belfast,  Ian Gow resigned as Minister of State in the HM Treasury,  and all fifteen Unionist MPs resigned their parliamentary seats; only one was not returned in the subsequent by-elections on 23 January 1986.

Environment

Thatcher supported an active climate protection policy and was instrumental in the creation of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and in founding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the British Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Exeter.Alice Bell, [http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/apr/09/margaret-thatcher-green-hero "Greenwashing Thatcher's history does an injustice both to her and to science and technology policy"], TheGuardian.com, 9 April 2013. Thatcher helped to put climate change, acid rain and general pollution in the British mainstream in the early 1980s. Her speeches included one to Royal Society on 27 September 1988  and to the UN general assembly in November 1989. She did not visit the Earth Summit 1992 and later became sceptical about climate change policy.

Foreign affairs

Thatcher's first foreign policy crisis came with the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. She condemned the invasion, said it showed the bankruptcy of a détente policy, and helped convince some British athletes to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics. She gave weak support to American President Jimmy Carter who tried to punish the USSR with economic sanctions. Britain's economic situation was precarious, and most of NATO was reluctant to cut trade ties.  It was reported that her government secretly supplied Saddam Hussein with military equipment as early as 1981. 

Thatcher became closely aligned with the Cold War policies of United States President Ronald Reagan, based on their shared distrust of Communism, although she strongly opposed Reagan's October 1983 invasion of Grenada. Reagan had assured Thatcher that an invasion was not contemplated, and thereafter Thatcher felt she could never fully trust Reagan again.  During her first year as Prime Minister she supported NATO's decision to deploy US nuclear cruise and Pershing II missiles in Western Europe and permitted the US to station more than 160 cruise missiles at RAF Greenham Common, starting on 14 November 1983 and triggering mass protests by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She bought the Trident nuclear missile submarine system from the US to replace Polaris, tripling the UK's nuclear forces  at an eventual cost of more than £12 billion (at 1996–97 prices).  Thatcher's preference for defence ties with the US was demonstrated in the Westland affair of January 1986, when she acted with colleagues to allow the struggling helicopter manufacturer Westland to refuse a takeover offer from the Italian firm Agusta in favour of the management's preferred option, a link with Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation. The UK Defence Secretary, Michael Heseltine, who had supported the Agusta deal, resigned in protest.

On 2 April 1982 the ruling military junta in Argentina ordered the invasion of the British-controlled Falkland Islands and South Georgia, triggering the Falklands War. The subsequent crisis was "a defining moment of her [Thatcher's] premiership". At the suggestion of Harold Macmillan and Robert Armstrong, she set up and chaired a small War Cabinet (formally called ODSA, Overseas and Defence committee, South Atlantic) to take charge of the conduct of the war,  which by 5–6 April had authorised and dispatched a naval task force to retake the islands. Argentina surrendered on 14 June and the operation was hailed a success, notwithstanding the deaths of 255 British servicemen and 3 Falkland Islanders. Argentinian deaths totalled 649, half of them after the nuclear-powered submarine  torpedoed and sank the cruiser ARA General Belgrano on 2 May. Thatcher was criticised for the neglect of the Falklands' defence that led to the war, and especially by Tam Dalyell in parliament for the decision to sink the General Belgrano, but overall she was considered a highly capable and committed war leader. The "Falklands factor", an economic recovery beginning early in 1982, and a bitterly divided opposition all contributed to Thatcher's second election victory in 1983.  Thatcher often referred after the war to the "Falklands Spirit"; Hastings and Jenkins (1983) suggested that this reflected her preference for the streamlined decision-making of her War Cabinet over the painstaking deal-making of peace-time cabinet government.

In September 1982 she visited China to discuss with Deng Xiaoping the sovereignty of Hong Kong after 1997. China was the first communist state Thatcher had visited and she was the first British prime minister to visit China. Throughout their meeting, she sought the PRC's agreement to a continued British presence in the territory. Deng stated that the PRC's sovereignty on Hong Kong was non-negotiable, but he was willing to settle the sovereignty issue with Britain through formal negotiations, and both governments promised to maintain Hong Kong's stability and prosperity.  After the two-year negotiations, Thatcher conceded to the PRC government and signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration in Beijing in 1984, agreeing to hand over Hong Kong's sovereignty in 1997.

Although saying that she was in favour of "peaceful negotiations" to end apartheid,  Thatcher stood against the sanctions imposed on South Africa by the Commonwealth and the EC. She attempted to preserve trade with South Africa while persuading the government there to abandon apartheid. This included "[c]asting herself as President Botha's candid friend", and inviting him to visit the UK in June 1984, in spite of the "inevitable demonstrations" against his government. Thatcher dismissed the African National Congress (ANC) in October 1987 as "a typical terrorist organisation". 

The Thatcher government supported the Khmer Rouge keeping their seat in the UN after they were ousted from power in Cambodia by the Cambodian–Vietnamese War. Although denying it at the time they also sent the SAS to train the non-Communist members of the CGDK to fight against the Vietnamese-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea government.  

Thatcher's antipathy towards European integration became more pronounced during her premiership, particularly after her third election victory in 1987. During a 1988 speech in Bruges she outlined her opposition to proposals from the European Community (EC), forerunner of the European Union, for a federal structure and increased centralisation of decision making.  Thatcher and her party had supported British membership of the EC in the 1975 national referendum,  but she believed that the role of the organisation should be limited to ensuring free trade and effective competition, and feared that the EC's approach was at odds with her views on smaller government and deregulation; in 1988, she remarked, "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels".

Thatcher was firmly opposed to the UK's membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a precursor to European monetary union, believing that it would constrain the British economy,  despite the urging of her Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson and Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe, but she was persuaded by John Major to join in October 1990, at what proved to be too high a rate.

In April 1986, Thatcher permitted US F-111s to use Royal Air Force bases for the bombing of Libya in retaliation for the alleged Libyan bombing of a Berlin discothèque, citing the right of self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter.  Polls suggested that fewer than one in three British citizens approved of Thatcher's decision.  She was in the US on a state visit when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded neighbouring Kuwait in August 1990.  During her talks with President George H. W. Bush, who had succeeded Reagan in 1989, she recommended intervention, and put pressure on Bush to deploy troops in the Middle East to drive the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait.  Bush was apprehensive about the plan, prompting Thatcher to remark to him during a telephone conversation that "This was no time to go wobbly!"  Thatcher's government provided military forces to the international coalition in the build-up to the Gulf War, but she had resigned by the time hostilities began on 17 January 1991.

Thatcher was one of the first Western leaders to respond warmly to reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Following Reagan–Gorbachev summit meetings and reforms enacted by Gorbachev in the USSR, she declared in November 1988 that "We're not in a Cold War now", but rather in a "new relationship much wider than the Cold War ever was".  She went on a state visit to the Soviet Union in 1984 and met with Gorbachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers.  Thatcher was initially opposed to German reunification, telling Gorbachev that it "would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security". She expressed concern that a united Germany would align itself more closely with the Soviet Union and move away from NATO.

Challenges to leadership and resignation

Thatcher was challenged for the leadership of the Conservative Party by the little-known backbench MP Sir Anthony Meyer in the 1989 leadership election.  Of the 374 Conservative MPs eligible to vote, 314 voted for Thatcher and 33 for Meyer. Her supporters in the party viewed the result as a success, and rejected suggestions that there was discontent within the party.

During her premiership Thatcher had the second-lowest average approval rating, at 40%, of any post-war Prime Minister. Polls consistently showed that she was less popular than her party.  A self-described conviction politician, Thatcher always insisted that she did not care about her poll ratings, pointing instead to her unbeaten election record. 

Opinion polls in September 1990 reported that Labour had established a 14% lead over the Conservatives, and by November the Conservatives had been trailing Labour for 18 months. These ratings, together with Thatcher's combative personality and willingness to override colleagues' opinions, contributed to discontent within the Conservative Party.

On 1 November 1990, Geoffrey Howe the last remaining member of Thatcher's original 1979 cabinet, resigned from his position as Deputy Prime Minister over her refusal to agree to a timetable for Britain to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.   In his resignation speech on 13 November, Howe commented on Thatcher's European stance: "It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find the moment that the first balls are bowled that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain."  His resignation was fatal to Thatcher's premiership. 

The next day, Michael Heseltine mounted a challenge for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Opinion polls had indicated that he would give the Conservatives a national lead over Labour.  Although Thatcher won the first ballot with 204:152 votes and 16 abstentions, Heseltine had attracted sufficient support to force a second ballot. Under party rules, Thatcher not only needed to win a majority, but her margin over Heseltine had to be equivalent to 15% of the 372 Conservative MPs in order to win the leadership election outright; with 54.8% against 40.9% for Heseltine, she came up four votes short.  Thatcher initially stated that she intended to "fight on and fight to win" the second ballot, but consultation with her Cabinet persuaded her to withdraw.   After visiting the Queen, calling other world leaders, and making one final Commons speech,  she left Downing Street in tears. She reportedly regarded her ousting as a betrayal.

Thatcher was replaced as Prime Minister and party leader by her Chancellor John Major, who prevailed over Heseltine in the subsequent ballots. Major oversaw an upturn in Conservative support in the 17 months leading up to the 1992 general election and led the Conservatives to their fourth successive victory on 9 April 1992.  Thatcher had favoured Major over Heseltine in the leadership contest, but her support for him weakened in later years. 

Later life

Thatcher returned to the backbenches as MP for Finchley for two years after leaving the premiership. She retired from the House at the 1992 election, aged 66, saying that leaving the Commons would allow her more freedom to speak her mind. 

Post-Commons: 1992–2003

After leaving the House of Commons, Thatcher became the first former Prime Minister to set up a foundation;  the British wing of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation was dissolved in 2005 because of financial difficulties.  She wrote two volumes of memoirs, The Downing Street Years (1993) and The Path to Power (1995). In 1991, she and her husband Denis moved to a house in Chester Square, a residential garden square in central London's Belgravia district. 

In 1992, Thatcher was hired by the tobacco company Philip Morris as a "geopolitical consultant" for $250,000 per year and an annual contribution of $250,000 to her foundation. She also earned $50,000 for each speech she delivered. 

In August 1992, Thatcher called for NATO to stop the Serbian assault on Goražde and Sarajevo to end ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian War. She compared the situation in Bosnia to "the worst excesses of the Nazis", and warned that there could be a "holocaust".  She had been an advocate of Croatian and Slovenian independence. 

In a 1991 interview for Croatian Radiotelevision, Thatcher had commented on the Yugoslav Wars; she was critical of Western governments for not recognising the breakaway republics of Croatia and Slovenia as independent states and for not supplying them with arms after the Serbian-led Yugoslav Army attacked. 

She made a series of speeches in the Lords criticising the Maastricht Treaty, describing it as "a treaty too far" and stated "I could never have signed this treaty".  She cited A. V. Dicey when stating that as all three main parties were in favour of the treaty, the people should have their say in a referendum. 

Thatcher was honorary Chancellor of the College of William & Mary in Virginia (1993–2000)  and also of the University of Buckingham (1992–99), the UK's first private university, which she had opened in 1975. 

After Tony Blair's election as Labour Party leader in 1994, Thatcher praised Blair in an interview as "probably the most formidable Labour leader since Hugh Gaitskell. I see a lot of socialism behind their front bench, but not in Mr Blair. I think he genuinely has moved". 

In 1998, Thatcher called for the release of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet when Spain had him arrested and sought to try him for human rights violations. She cited the help he gave Britain during the Falklands War.  In 1999, she visited him while he was under house arrest near London.  Pinochet was released in March 2000 on medical grounds by the Home Secretary Jack Straw, without facing trial. 

In the 2001 general election, Thatcher supported the Conservative general election campaign, as she had done in 1992 and 1997, and in the Conservative leadership election shortly after, she supported Iain Duncan Smith over Kenneth Clarke. 

In 2002, Thatcher encouraged President George W. Bush to aggressively tackle the "unfinished business" of Saddam Hussein's Iraq,  and praised Tony Blair for his "strong, bold leadership" in standing with Bush in the Iraq War. 

She broached the same subject in her Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, which was published that year and dedicated to Ronald Reagan, writing that there would be no peace in the Middle East until Saddam Hussein was toppled. Her book also said that Israel must trade land for peace, and that the European Union (EU) was "fundamentally unreformable", "a classic utopian project, a monument to the vanity of intellectuals, a programme whose inevitable destiny is failure".  She argued that Britain should renegotiate its terms of membership or else leave the EU and join the North American Free Trade Area. 

That same year, she suffered several small strokes and was advised by her doctors not to engage in further public speaking.  On 23 March, she announced that on the advice of her doctors she would cancel all planned speaking engagements and accept no more.

Husband's death: 2003

Sir Denis Thatcher died of pancreatic cancer on 26 June 2003 and was cremated on 3 July.  She had paid tribute to him in The Downing Street Years, writing "Being Prime Minister is a lonely job. In a sense, it ought to be: you cannot lead from the crowd. But with Denis there I was never alone. What a man. What a husband. What a friend."

Final years: 2003–13

On 11 June 2004, Thatcher, against doctor's orders, attended the state funeral service for Ronald Reagan.  She delivered her eulogy via videotape; in view of her health, the message had been pre-recorded several months earlier.  Thatcher flew to California with the Reagan entourage, and attended the memorial service and interment ceremony for the president at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. 

Thatcher celebrated her 80th birthday at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hyde Park, London, on 13 October 2005; guests included the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Alexandra and Tony Blair.  Geoffrey Howe, by then Lord Howe of Aberavon, was also present, and said of his former leader: "Her real triumph was to have transformed not just one party but two, so that when Labour did eventually return, the great bulk of Thatcherism was accepted as irreversible." 

According to a later article in The Daily Telegraph, Thatcher's daughter Carol first revealed that her mother had dementia in 2005, saying that "Mum doesn't read much any more because of her memory loss ... It's pointless. She can't remember the beginning of a sentence by the time she reaches the end." She later recounted how she was first struck by her mother's dementia when in conversation Thatcher confused the Falklands and Yugoslav conflicts; she recalled the pain of needing to tell her mother repeatedly that Denis Thatcher was dead. 

In 2006, Thatcher attended the official Washington, D.C. memorial service to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States. She was a guest of Vice President Dick Cheney, and met Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit. 

In February 2007, Thatcher became the first living British Prime Minister to be honoured with a statue in the Houses of Parliament. The bronze statue stands opposite that of her political hero, Sir Winston Churchill, and was unveiled on 21 February 2007 with Thatcher in attendance; she made a brief speech in the members' lobby of the House of Commons, responding: "I might have preferred iron—but bronze will do ... It won't rust." 

She was a public supporter of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism and the resulting Prague Process, and sent a public letter of support to its preceding conference. 

After collapsing at a House of Lords dinner, Thatcher was admitted to St Thomas' Hospital in central London on 7 March 2008 for tests. In 2009 she was hospitalised again when she fell and broke her arm. 

Thatcher returned to 10 Downing Street in late November 2009 for the unveiling of an official portrait by artist Richard Stone, an unusual honour for a living ex-Prime Minister. Stone had previously painted portraits of the Queen and the Queen Mother.

On 4 July 2011, Thatcher was to attend a ceremony for the unveiling of a 10-foot statue to former American President Ronald Reagan, outside the American Embassy in London, but was unable to attend due to her frail health.  On 31 July 2011, it was announced that her office in the House of Lords had been closed.  Earlier that month, Thatcher had been named the most competent British Prime Minister of the past 30 years in an Ipsos MORI poll. 

Death and funeral: 2013

Lady Thatcher died on 8 April 2013 at the age of 87 after suffering a stroke. She had been staying at a suite in the Ritz Hotel in London since December 2012 after having difficulty with stairs at her Chester Square home in Belgravia. 

Reactions to the news of Thatcher's death were mixed in the UK, ranging from tributes lauding her as Britain's greatest-ever peacetime Prime Minister to public celebrations of her death and expressions of personalised vitriol. 

Details of Thatcher's funeral had been agreed with her in advance.  She received a ceremonial funeral, including full military honours, with a church service at St Paul's Cathedral on 17 April.  

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, attended the funeral,  the second time in the Queen's reign that she had attended the funeral of a former prime minister (the first being that of Winston Churchill in 1965). 

After the service at St Paul's Cathedral, Thatcher's body was cremated at Mortlake Crematorium, where her husband had been cremated. On 28 September a service for Thatcher was held in the All Saints Chapel of the Royal Hospital Chelsea's Margaret Thatcher Infirmary. In a private ceremony Thatcher's ashes were interred in the grounds of the hospital, next to those of her husband.

Legacy

Political legacy

Thatcherism represented a systematic, decisive rejection and reversal of the post-war consensus, whereby the major political parties largely agreed on the central themes of Keynesianism, the welfare state, nationalised industry, and close regulation of the economy. There was one major exception: the National Health Service, which was widely popular. She promised Britons in 1982, the NHS is "safe in our hands." 

Thatcher defined her own political philosophy in a major and controversial break with One Nation Conservatives like her predecessor Edward Heath,  in her statement to Douglas Keay, published in Woman's Own magazine in September 1987:

The number of adults owning shares rose from 7 per cent to 25 per cent during her tenure, and more than a million families bought their council houses, giving an increase from 55 per cent to 67 per cent in owner-occupiers from 1979 to 1990. The houses were sold at a discount of 33–55 per cent, leading to large profits for some new owners. Personal wealth rose by 80 per cent in real terms during the 1980s, mainly due to rising house prices and increased earnings. Shares in the privatised utilities were sold below their market value to ensure quick and wide sales, rather than maximise national income.

Thatcher's premiership was also marked by periods of high unemployment and social unrest, and many critics on the left of the political spectrum fault her economic policies for the unemployment level; many of the areas affected by high unemployment as well as her monetarist economic policies remain blighted by social problems such as drug abuse and family breakdown.

Speaking in Scotland in April 2009, before the 30th anniversary of her election as Prime Minister, Thatcher insisted she had no regrets and was right to introduce the poll tax, and to withdraw subsidies from "outdated industries, whose markets were in terminal decline", subsidies that created "the culture of dependency, which had done such damage to Britain".  Political economist Susan Strange called the new financial growth model "casino capitalism", reflecting her view that speculation and financial trading were becoming more important to the economy than industry.

Critics on the left describe her as "divisive"  and claim she promoted greed and selfishness. Michael White, writing in the New Statesman in February 2009, challenged the view that her reforms had brought a net benefit.  Some critics contend that, despite being Britain's first woman Prime Minister, Thatcher did "little to advance the political cause of women", either within her party or the government, and some British feminists  regarded her as "an enemy". Her stance on immigration was perceived by some as part of a rising racist public discourse, which Professor Martin Barker  called "new racism".

Influenced at the outset by Keith Joseph, the term "Thatcherism" came to refer to her policies as well as aspects of her ethical outlook and personal style, including moral absolutism, nationalism, interest in the individual, and an uncompromising approach to achieving political goals.  The nickname "Iron Lady", originally given to her by the Soviets, became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style.  

Thatcher's tenure of 11 years and 209 days as Prime Minister was the longest since Lord Salisbury (13 years and 252 days in three spells starting in 1885), and the longest continuous period in office since Lord Liverpool (14 years and 305 days starting in 1812). 

She was voted the fourth-greatest British Prime Minister of the 20th century in a poll of 139 academics organised by MORI,  and in 2002 was ranked number 16 in the BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.  In 1999, Time magazine named Thatcher one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century. 

Thatcher's death prompted mixed reactions, including reflections of criticism as well as praise.    Groups celebrated her death in Brixton, Leeds, Bristol and Glasgow,    and a crowd of 3,000 gathered in Trafalgar Square to celebrate her demise and protest against her legacy. 

Shortly after Thatcher's death, Scotland's First Minister, Alex Salmond, argued that her policies had the "unintended consequence" of encouraging Scottish devolution.  Lord Foulkes agreed on Scotland Tonight that she had provided "the impetus" for devolution. 

Cultural depictions

One of the earliest satires of Thatcher as Prime Minister involved Wells (as writer/performer), Janet Brown (voicing Thatcher) and future Spitting Image producer John Lloyd, who in 1979 were teamed up by producer Martin Lewis for the satirical audio album The Iron Lady consisting of skits and songs satirising Thatcher's rise to power. The album was released in September 1979, four months after Thatcher became Premier.  

Thatcher was the subject or the inspiration for 1980s protest songs. Billy Bragg and Paul Weller helped to form the Red Wedge collective to support Labour in opposition to Thatcher.

Thatcher was lampooned by satirist John Wells in several media. Wells collaborated with Richard Ingrams on the spoof "Dear Bill" letters which ran as a column in Private Eye magazine, were published in book form, and later became a West End stage revue named Anyone for Denis?, with Wells in the role of Denis Thatcher. The revue was followed by a 1982 TV special, directed by Dick Clement, in which Thatcher was portrayed by Angela Thorne.  Spitting Image, a British TV show, satirised Thatcher as a bully who ridiculed her own ministers. She was voiced by Steve Nallon. 

Margaret Thatcher has been depicted in many television programmes, documentaries, films and plays. She was played by Patricia Hodge in Ian Curteis's long unproduced The Falklands Play (2002), and by Andrea Riseborough in the TV film The Long Walk to Finchley (2008). She is the title character in two films, portrayed by Lindsay Duncan in Margaret (2009) and by Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady (2011),  in which she is depicted as suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's disease. 

Titles, awards and honours

Thatcher became a Privy Councillor (PC) upon becoming Secretary of State for Education and Science in 1970. 

She was the first woman entitled to full membership rights as an honorary member of the Carlton Club on becoming leader of the Conservative Party in 1975.  Thatcher became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chemistry (FRIC) in 1979. 

Thatcher was bestowed with the Grand Cross of the Order of Good Hope, which was, at that time, the highest existing South African award, in 1991, by President F. W. de Klerk. 

Thatcher was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1983, which caused controversy among some of the then-existing Fellows.

Within two weeks of leaving office in 1990, Thatcher was appointed a Member of the Order of Merit (OM) (an order within the personal gift of the Queen). Her husband, Denis Thatcher, was made a Baronet at the same time. 

In the Falklands, Margaret Thatcher Day has been marked every 10 January since 1992,  commemorating her visit in 1983. Thatcher Drive in Stanley is named for her, as is Thatcher Peninsula in South Georgia, where the task force troops first set foot on the Falklands.

She became member of the House of Lords in 1992 with a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire.  She was appointed a Lady Companion of the Order of the Garter (LG), the UK's highest order of chivalry, in 1995. 

She was a patron of The Heritage Foundation,  which established the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom in 2005. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland  is the head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The prime minister (informal abbreviation: PM) and Cabinet (consisting of all the most senior ministers, most of whom are government department heads) are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Monarch, to Parliament, to their political party and ultimately to the electorate. The , Theresa May, leader of the Conservative Party, was appointed by the Queen on 13 July 2016.

The office is not established by any constitution or law but exists only by long-established convention, which stipulates that the monarch must appoint as prime minister the person most likely to command the confidence of the House of Commons; this individual is typically the leader of the political party or coalition of parties that holds the largest number of seats in that chamber. The position of Prime Minister was not created; it evolved slowly and erratically over three hundred years due to numerous acts of Parliament, political developments, and accidents of history. The office is therefore best understood from a historical perspective. The origins of the position are found in constitutional changes that occurred during the Revolutionary Settlement (1688–1720) and the resulting shift of political power from the Sovereign to Parliament.  Although the Sovereign was not stripped of the ancient prerogative powers and legally remained the head of government, politically it gradually became necessary for him or her to govern through a Prime Minister who could command a majority in Parliament.

By the 1830s the Westminster system of government (or cabinet government) had emerged; the Prime Minister had become primus inter pares or the first among equals in the Cabinet and the head of government in the United Kingdom. The political position of Prime Minister was enhanced by the development of modern political parties, the introduction of mass communication (inexpensive newspapers, radio, television and the internet), and photography. By the start of the 20th century the modern premiership had emerged; the office had become the pre-eminent position in the constitutional hierarchy vis-à-vis the Sovereign, Parliament and Cabinet.

Prior to 1902, the prime minister sometimes came from the House of Lords, provided that his government could form a majority in the Commons. However as the power of the aristocracy waned during the 19th century the convention developed that the Prime Minister should always sit in the lower house. As leader of the House of Commons, the Prime Minister's authority was further enhanced by the Parliament Act of 1911 which marginalised the influence of the House of Lords in the law-making process.

The Prime Minister is ex officio also First Lord of the Treasury and Minister for the Civil Service. Certain privileges, such as residency of 10 Downing Street, are accorded to Prime Ministers by virtue of their position as First Lord of the Treasury.

Authority

As the "Head of Her Majesty's Government" the modern Prime Minister leads the Cabinet (the Executive). In addition the Prime Minister leads a major political party and generally commands a majority in the House of Commons (the lower house of the legislature). As such the incumbent wields both legislative and executive powers. Under the British system there is a unity of powers rather than separation.  In the House of Commons, the Prime Minister guides the law-making process with the goal of enacting the legislative agenda of their political party. In an executive capacity the Prime Minister appoints (and may dismiss) all other cabinet members and ministers, and co-ordinates the policies and activities of all government departments, and the staff of the Civil Service. The Prime Minister also acts as the public "face" and "voice" of Her Majesty's Government, both at home and abroad. Solely upon the advice of the Prime Minister, the Sovereign exercises many statutory and prerogative powers, including high judicial, political, official and Church of England ecclesiastical appointments; the conferral of peerages, knighthoods, decorations and other honours.  Although they may sometimes appear to be heavily under the influence of their aides, in reality the Prime Minister is in control. 

Constitutional background

The British system of government is based on an uncodified constitution, meaning that it is not set out in any single document.  The British constitution consists of many documents and, most importantly for the evolution of the office of Prime Minister, it is based on customs known as constitutional conventions that became accepted practice. In 1928, Prime Minister H. H. Asquith described this characteristic of the British constitution in his memoirs:

In this country we live ... under an unwritten Constitution. It is true that we have on the Statute-book great instruments like Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, and the Bill of Rights which define and secure many of our rights and privileges; but the great bulk of our constitutional liberties and ... our constitutional practices do not derive their validity and sanction from any Bill which has received the formal assent of the King, Lords and Commons. They rest on usage, custom, convention, often of slow growth in their early stages, not always uniform, but which in the course of time received universal observance and respect. 

The relationships between the Prime Minister and the Sovereign, Parliament and Cabinet are defined largely by these unwritten conventions of the constitution. Many of the Prime Minister's executive and legislative powers are actually royal prerogatives which are still formally vested in the Sovereign, who remains the head of state.  Despite its growing dominance in the constitutional hierarchy, the Premiership was given little formal recognition until the 20th century; the legal fiction was maintained that the Sovereign still governed directly. The position was first mentioned in statute only in 1917, in the schedule of the Chequers Estate Act. Increasingly during the 20th century, the office and role of Prime Minister featured in statute law and official documents; however, the Prime Minister's powers and relationships with other institutions still largely continue to derive from ancient royal prerogatives and historic and modern constitutional conventions. Prime Ministers continue to hold the position of First Lord of the Treasury and, since November 1968, that of Minister for the Civil Service, the latter giving them authority over the civil service.

Under this arrangement, Britain might appear to have two executives: the Prime Minister and the Sovereign. The concept of "the Crown" resolves this paradox.  The Crown symbolises the state's authority to govern: to make laws and execute them, impose taxes and collect them, declare war and make peace. Before the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, the Sovereign exclusively wielded the powers of the Crown; afterwards, Parliament gradually forced monarchs to assume a neutral political position. Parliament has effectively dispersed the powers of the Crown, entrusting its authority to responsible ministers (the Prime Minister and Cabinet), accountable for their policies and actions to Parliament, in particular the elected House of Commons.

Although many of the Sovereign's prerogative powers are still legally intact,The Sovereign's prerogative powers are sometimes called reserve powers. They include the sole authority to dismiss a Prime Minister and government of the day in extremely rare and exceptional circumstances, and other essential powers (such as withholding Royal Assent, and summoning and proroguing Parliament) to preserve the stability of the nation. These reserve powers can be exercised without the consent of Parliament. Reserve powers, in practice, are the court of absolute last resort in resolving situations that fundamentally threaten the security and stability of the nation as a whole and are almost never used. constitutional conventions have removed the monarch from day-to-day governance, with ministers exercising the royal prerogatives, leaving the monarch in practice with three constitutional rights: to be kept informed, to advise, and to warn.  

Foundations of the office of Prime Minister

Revolutionary settlement

Because the Premiership was not intentionally created, there is no exact date when its evolution began. A meaningful starting point, however, is 1688–9 when James II fled England and the Parliament of England confirmed William and Mary as joint constitutional monarchs, enacting legislation that limited their authority and that of their successors: the Bill of Rights (1689), the Mutiny Bill (1689), the Triennial Bill (1694), the Treason Act (1696) and the Act of Settlement (1701).  Known collectively as the Revolutionary Settlement, these acts transformed the constitution, shifting the balance of power from the Sovereign to Parliament. They also provided the basis for the evolution of the office of Prime Minister, which did not exist at that time.

Treasury Bench

The Revolutionary Settlement gave the Commons control over finances and legislation and changed the relationship between the Executive and the Legislature. For want of money, Sovereigns had to summon Parliament annually and could no longer dissolve or prorogue it without its advice and consent. Parliament became a permanent feature of political life.  The veto fell into disuse because Sovereigns feared that if they denied legislation Parliament would deny them money. No Sovereign has denied royal assent since Queen Anne vetoed the Scottish Militia Bill in 1708. 

Treasury officials and other department heads were drawn into Parliament serving as liaisons between it and the Sovereign. Ministers had to present the government's policies, and negotiate with Members to gain the support of the majority; they had to explain the government's financial needs, suggest ways of meeting them and give an account of how money had been spent. The Sovereign's representatives attended Commons sessions so regularly that they were given reserved seats at the front, known as the Treasury Bench. This is the beginning of "unity of powers": the Sovereign's Ministers (the Executive) became leading members of Parliament (the Legislature). Today the Prime Minister (First Lord of the Treasury), the Chancellor of the Exchequer (responsible for The Budget) and other senior members of the Cabinet sit on the Treasury bench and present policies in much the same way Ministers did late in the 17th century.

Standing Order 66

After the Revolution, there was a constant threat that non-government members of Parliament would ruin the country's finances by proposing ill-considered money bills. Vying for control to avoid chaos, the Crown's Ministers gained an advantage in 1706, when the Commons informally declared, "That this House will receive no petition for any sum of money relating to public Service, but what is recommended from the Crown." On 11 June 1713, this non-binding rule became Standing Order 66: that "the Commons would not vote money for any purpose, except on a motion of a Minister of the Crown." Standing Order 66 remains in effect today (though renumbered as no. 48),  essentially unchanged for three hundred years. 

Empowering Ministers with sole financial initiative had an immediate and lasting impact. Apart from achieving its intended purpose – to stabilise the budgetary process – it gave the Crown a leadership role in the Commons; and, the Lord Treasurer assumed a leading position among Ministers.

The power of financial initiative was not, however, absolute. Only Ministers might initiate money bills, but Parliament now reviewed and consented to them. Standing Order 66 therefore represents the beginnings of Ministerial responsibility and accountability. 

The term "Prime Minister" appears at this time as an unofficial title for the leader of the government, usually the head of the Treasury.  Jonathan Swift, for example, wrote in 1713 about "those who are now commonly called Prime Minister among us", referring to Sidney Godolphin, 1st Earl of Godolphin and Robert Harley, Queen Anne's Lord Treasurers and chief ministers.  Since 1721, every head of the Sovereign's government – with one exception in the 18th century (William Pitt the Elder) and one in the 19th (Lord Salisbury) – has been First Lord of the Treasury.

Beginnings of the Prime Minister's party leadership

Political parties first appeared during the Exclusion Crisis of 1678–1681. The Whigs, who believed in limited monarchy, wanted to exclude James Stuart from succeeding to the throne because he was a Catholic. The Tories, who believed in the "Divine Right of Kings", defended James' hereditary claim. These parties dominated British politics for over 150 years, with the Whigs evolving into the Liberal Party and the Tories into the Conservative. Even today, Conservatives are often called "Tories".

Political parties were not well organised or disciplined in the 17th century. They were more like factions with "members" drifting in and out, collaborating temporarily on issues when it was to their advantage, then disbanding when it was not. A major deterrent to the development of opposing parties was the idea that there could only be one "King's Party" and to oppose it would be disloyal or even treasonous. This idea lingered throughout the 18th century. Nevertheless it became possible at the end of the 17th century to identify Parliaments and Ministries as being either "Whig" or "Tory" in composition.

Cabinet

The modern Prime Minister is also the leader of the Cabinet. A convention of the constitution, the modern Cabinet is a group of ministers who formulate policies. As the political heads of government departments Cabinet Ministers ensure that policies are carried out by permanent civil servants. Although the modern Prime Minister selects Ministers, appointment still rests with the Sovereign.  With the Prime Minister as its leader, the Cabinet forms the executive branch of government.

The term "Cabinet" first appears after the Revolutionary Settlement to describe those ministers who conferred privately with the Sovereign. The growth of the Cabinet met with widespread complaint and opposition because its meetings were often held in secret and it excluded the ancient Privy Council (of which the Cabinet is formally a committee) from the Sovereign's circle of advisers, reducing it to an honorary body.  The early Cabinet, like that of today, included the Treasurer and other department heads who sat on the Treasury bench. However, it might also include individuals who were not members of Parliament such as household officers (e.g. the Master of the Horse) and members of the royal family. The exclusion of non-members of Parliament from the Cabinet was essential to the development of ministerial accountability and responsibility.

Both William and Anne appointed and dismissed Cabinet members, attended meetings, made decisions, and followed up on actions. Relieving the Sovereign of these responsibilities and gaining control over the Cabinet's composition was an essential part of evolution of the Premiership. This process began after the Hanoverian Succession. Although George I (1714–1727) attended Cabinet meetings at first, after 1717 he withdrew because he did not speak fluent English and was bored with the discussions. George II (1727–1760) occasionally presided at Cabinet meetings but his grandson, George III (1760–1820), is known to have attended only two during his 60-year reign. Thus, the convention that Sovereigns do not attend Cabinet meetings was established primarily through royal indifference to the everyday tasks of governance. The Prime Minister became responsible for calling meetings, presiding, taking notes, and reporting to the Sovereign. These simple executive tasks naturally gave the Prime Minister ascendancy over his Cabinet colleagues. 

Although the first three Hanoverians rarely attended Cabinet meetings they insisted on their prerogatives to appoint and dismiss ministers and to direct policy even if from outside the Cabinet. It was not until late in the 18th century that Prime Ministers gained control over Cabinet composition (see section Emergence of Cabinet Government below).

"One Party Government"

British governments (or Ministries) are generally formed by one party. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are usually all members of the same political party, almost always the one that has a majority of seats in the House of Commons. Coalition governments (a ministry that consists of representatives from two or more parties) and minority governments (a one-party ministry formed by a party that does not command a majority in the Commons) are relatively rare. "One party government", as this system is sometimes called, has been the general rule for almost three hundred years.

Early in his reign, William III (1689–1702) preferred "Mixed Ministries" (or coalitions) consisting of both Tories and Whigs. William thought this composition would dilute the power of any one party and also give him the benefit of differing points of view. However, this approach did not work well because the members could not agree on a leader or on policies, and often worked at odds with each other.

In 1697, William formed a homogeneous Whig ministry. Known as the Junto, this government is often cited as the first true Cabinet because its members were all Whigs, reflecting the majority composition of the Commons. 

Anne (1702–1714) followed this pattern but preferred Tory Cabinets. This approach worked well as long as Parliament was also predominantly Tory. However, in 1708, when the Whigs obtained a majority, Anne did not call on them to form a government, refusing to accept the idea that politicians could force themselves on her merely because their party had a majority.  She never parted with an entire Ministry or accepted an entirely new one regardless of the results of an election. Anne preferred to retain a minority government rather than be dictated to by Parliament. Consequently, her chief ministers Sidney Godolphin, 1st Earl of Godolphin and Robert Harley, who were called "Prime Minister" by some, had difficulty executing policy in the face of a hostile Parliament. 

William's and Anne's experiments with the political composition of the Cabinet illustrated the strengths of one party government and the weaknesses of coalition and minority governments. Nevertheless, it was not until the 1830s that the constitutional convention was established that the Sovereign must select the Prime Minister (and Cabinet) from the party whose views reflect those of the majority in Parliament. Since then, most ministries have reflected this one party rule.

Despite the "one party" convention, Prime Ministers may still be called upon to lead either minority or coalition governments. A minority government may be formed as a result of a "hung parliament" in which no single party commands a majority in the House of Commons after a general election or the death, resignation or defection of existing members. By convention the serving Prime Minister is given the first opportunity to reach agreements that will allow them to survive a vote of confidence in the House and continue to govern. The last minority government was led by Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson for eight months after the February 1974 general election produced a hung parliament. In the October 1974 general election, the Labour Party gained 18 seats, giving Wilson a majority of three.

A hung parliament may also lead to the formation of a coalition government in which two or more parties negotiate a joint programme to command a majority in the Commons. Coalitions have also been formed during times of national crisis such as war. Under such circumstances, the parties agree to temporarily set aside their political differences and to unite to face the national crisis. Coalitions are rare: since 1721, there have been fewer than a dozen.

When the general election of 2010 produced a hung parliament, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties agreed to form the first Cameron ministry, the first coalition in seventy years. The previous coalition in the UK before 2010 was led by Conservative Prime Minister Winston Churchill during most of the Second World War, from May 1940 to May 1945. Clement Attlee, the leader of the Labour Party, served as deputy prime minister.  After the general election of 2015, the nation returned to one party government after the Tories won an outright majority.

Treasury Commission

The Premiership is still largely a convention of the constitution; its legal authority is derived primarily from the fact that the Prime Minister is also First Lord of the Treasury. The connection of these two offices – one a convention, the other a legal office – began with the Hanoverian Succession in 1714.

When George I succeeded to the British throne in 1714, his German ministers advised him to leave the office of Lord High Treasurer vacant because those who had held it in recent years had grown overly powerful, in effect, replacing the Sovereign as head of the government. They also feared that a Lord High Treasurer would undermine their own influence with the new King. They therefore suggested that he place the office in "commission", meaning that a committee of five ministers would perform its functions together. Theoretically, this dilution of authority would prevent any one of them from presuming to be the head of the government. The King agreed and created the Treasury Commission consisting of the First Lord of the Treasury, the Second Lord, and three Junior Lords.

No one has been appointed Lord High Treasurer since 1714; it has remained in commission for three hundred years. The Treasury Commission ceased to meet late in the 18th century but has survived, albeit with very different functions: the First Lord of the Treasury is now the Prime Minister, the Second Lord is the Chancellor of the Exchequer (and actually in charge of the Treasury), and the Junior Lords are government Whips maintaining party discipline in the House of Commons; they no longer have any duties related to the Treasury, though when subordinate legislation requires the consent of the Treasury it is still two of the Junior Lords who sign on its behalf.See e.g. the various orders prescribing fees to be taken in public offices 

Early prime ministers

"First" Prime Minister

Since the office evolved rather than being instantly created, it may not be totally clear-cut who was the first Prime Minister. However, this appellation is traditionally given to Sir Robert Walpole who became First Lord of the Treasury in 1721.

In 1720, the South Sea Company, created to trade in cotton, agricultural goods and slaves, collapsed, causing the financial ruin of thousands of investors and heavy losses for many others, including members of the royal family. King George I called on Robert Walpole, well known for his political and financial acumen, to handle the emergency. With considerable skill and some luck, Walpole acted quickly to restore public credit and confidence, and led the country out of the crisis. A year later, the King appointed him First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Leader of the House of Commons – making him the most powerful minister in the government. Ruthless, crude, and hard-working, he had a "sagacious business sense" and was a superb manager of men.  At the head of affairs for the next two decades, Walpole stabilised the nation's finances, kept it at peace, made it prosperous, and secured the Hanoverian Succession.  

Walpole demonstrated for the first time how a chief minister – a Prime Minister – could be the actual Head of the Government under the new constitutional framework. First, recognising that the Sovereign could no longer govern directly but was still the nominal head of the government, he insisted that he was nothing more than the "King's Servant".  Second, recognising that power had shifted to the Commons, he conducted the nation's business there and made it dominant over the Lords in all matters. Third, recognising that the Cabinet had become the executive and must be united, he dominated the other members and demanded their complete support for his policies. Fourth, recognising that political parties were the source of ministerial strength, he led the Whig party and maintained discipline. In the Commons, he insisted on the support of all Whig members, especially those who held office. Finally, he set an example for future Prime Ministers by resigning his offices in 1742 after a vote of confidence, which he won by just 3 votes. The slimness of this majority undermined his power, even though he still retained the confidence of the Sovereign.  

Ambivalence and denial

For all his contributions, Walpole was not a Prime Minister in the modern sense. The King – not Parliament – chose him; and the King – not Walpole – chose the Cabinet. Walpole set an example, not a precedent, and few followed his example. For over 40 years after Walpole's fall in 1742, there was widespread ambivalence about the position. In some cases, the Prime Minister was a figurehead with power being wielded by other individuals; in others there was a reversion to the "chief minister" model of earlier times in which the Sovereign actually governed.  At other times, there appeared to be two prime ministers. During Britain's participation in the Seven Years' War, for example, the powers of government were divided equally between the Duke of Newcastle and William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, leading to them both alternatively being described as Prime Minister. Furthermore, many thought that the title "Prime Minister" usurped the Sovereign's constitutional position as "head of the government" and that it was an affront to other ministers because they were all appointed by and equally responsible to the Sovereign.

For these reasons there was a reluctance to use the title. Although Walpole is now called the "first" Prime Minister, the title was not commonly used during his tenure. Walpole himself denied it. In 1741, during the attack that led to Walpole's downfall, Samuel Sandys declared that "According to our Constitution we can have no sole and prime minister." In his defence, Walpole said "I unequivocally deny that I am sole or Prime Minister and that to my influence and direction all the affairs of government must be attributed."  George Grenville, Prime Minister in the 1760s, said it was "an odious title" and never used it.  Lord North, the reluctant head of the King's Government during the American War of Independence, "would never suffer himself to be called Prime Minister, because it was an office unknown to the Constitution." The 18th-century ambivalence causes problems for researchers trying to identify who was a Prime Minister and who was not. Every list of Prime Ministers may omit certain politicians. For instance, unsuccessful attempts to form ministries – such as the two-day government formed by the Earl of Bath in 1746, often dismissed as the "Silly Little Ministry" – may be included in a list or omitted, depending on the criteria selected.

Denials of the Premiership's legal existence continued throughout the 19th century. In 1806, for example, one member of the Commons said, "the Constitution abhors the idea of a prime minister". In 1829, Lord Lansdowne said, "nothing could be more mischievous or unconstitutional than to recognise by act of parliament the existence of such an office." 

By the turn of the 20th century the Premiership had become, by convention, the most important position in the constitutional hierarchy. Yet there were no legal documents describing its powers or acknowledging its existence. The first official recognition given to the office had only been in the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, when Disraeli signed as "First Lord of the Treasury and Prime Minister of her Britannic Majesty".   Incumbents had no statutory authority in their own right. As late as 1904, Arthur Balfour explained the status of his office in a speech at Haddington: "The Prime Minister has no salary as Prime Minister. He has no statutory duties as Prime Minister, his name occurs in no Acts of Parliament, and though holding the most important place in the constitutional hierarchy, he has no place which is recognised by the laws of his country. This is a strange paradox." 

In 1905 the position was given some official recognition when the "Prime Minister" was named in the order of precedence, outranked, among non-royals, only by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and the Lord Chancellor. 

The first Act of Parliament to mention the Premiership – albeit in a schedule – was the Chequers Estate Act on 20 December 1917.  This law conferred the Chequers Estate owned by Sir Arthur and Lady Lee, as a gift to the Crown for use as a country home for future Prime Ministers.

Unequivocal legal recognition was given in the Ministers of the Crown Act 1937, which made provision for payment of a salary to the person who is both "the First Lord of the Treasury and Prime Minister". Explicitly recognising two hundred years' of ambivalence, the Act states that it intended "To give statutory recognition to the existence of the position of Prime Minister, and to the historic link between the Premiership and the office of First Lord of the Treasury, by providing in respect to that position and office a salary of ..." The Act made a distinction between the "position" (Prime Minister) and the "office" (First Lord of the Treasury), emphasising the unique political character of the former. Nevertheless, the brass plate on the door of the Prime Minister's home, 10 Downing Street, still bears the title of "First Lord of the Treasury", as it has since the 18th century.

"First among equals"

Emergence of Cabinet government
 

Despite the reluctance to legally recognise the Premiership, ambivalence toward it waned in the 1780s. During the first 20 years of his reign, George III (1760–1820) tried to be his own "prime minister" by controlling policy from outside the Cabinet, appointing and dismissing ministers, meeting privately with individual ministers, and giving them instructions. These practices caused confusion and dissension in Cabinet meetings; King George's experiment in personal rule was generally a failure. After the failure of Lord North's ministry (1770–1782) in March 1782 due to Britain's defeat in the American Revolutionary War and the ensuing vote of no confidence by Parliament, the Marquess of Rockingham reasserted the Prime Minister's control over the Cabinet. Rockingham assumed the Premiership "on the distinct understanding that measures were to be changed as well as men; and that the measures for which the new ministry required the royal consent were the measures which they, while in opposition, had advocated." He and his Cabinet were united in their policies and would stand or fall together; they also refused to accept anyone in the Cabinet who did not agree.This event also marks the beginnings of collective Cabinet responsibility. This principle states that the decisions made by any one Cabinet member become the responsibility of the entire Cabinet. King George threatened to abdicate but in the end reluctantly agreed out of necessity: he had to have a government.

From this time, there was a growing acceptance of the position of Prime Minister and the title was more commonly used, if only unofficially.   Associated initially with the Whigs, the Tories started to accept it. Lord North, for example, who had said the office was "unknown to the constitution", reversed himself in 1783 when he said, "In this country some one man or some body of men like a Cabinet should govern the whole and direct every measure."   In 1803, William Pitt the Younger, also a Tory, suggested to a friend that "this person generally called the first minister" was an absolute necessity for a government to function, and expressed his belief that this person should be the minister in charge of the finances.

The Tories' wholesale conversion started when Pitt was confirmed as Prime Minister in the election of 1784. For the next 17 years until 1801 (and again from 1804 to 1806), Pitt, the Tory, was Prime Minister in the same sense that Walpole, the Whig, had been earlier.

Their conversion was reinforced after 1810. In that year, George III, who had suffered periodically from mental instability (due to a blood disorder now known as porphyria), became permanently insane and spent the remaining 10 years of his life unable to discharge his duties. The Prince Regent was prevented from using the full powers of Kingship. The Regent became George IV in 1820, but during his 10-year reign was indolent and frivolous. Consequently, for 20 years the throne was virtually vacant and Tory Cabinets led by Tory Prime Ministers filled the void, governing virtually on their own.

The Tories were in power for almost 50 years, except for a Whig ministry from 1806 to 1807. Lord Liverpool was Prime Minister for 15 years; he and Pitt held the position for 34 years. Under their long, consistent leadership, Cabinet government became a convention of the constitution. Although subtle issues remained to be settled, the Cabinet system of government is essentially the same today as it was in 1830.

Under this form of government, called the Westminster system, the Sovereign is head of state and titular head of Her Majesty's Government. She selects as her Prime Minister the person who is able to command a working majority in the House of Commons, and invites him or her to form a government. As the actual Head of Government, the Prime Minister selects his Cabinet, choosing its members from among those in Parliament who agree or generally agree with his intended policies. He then recommends them to the Sovereign who confirms his selections by formally appointing them to their offices. Led by the Prime Minister, the Cabinet is collectively responsible for whatever the government does. The Sovereign does not confer with members privately about policy, nor attend Cabinet meetings. With respect to actual governance, the monarch has only three constitutional rights: to be kept informed, to advise, and to warn.  In practice this means that the Sovereign reviews state papers and meets regularly with the Prime Minister, usually weekly, when she may advise and warn him or her regarding the proposed decisions and actions of Her Government. 

Loyal Opposition

The modern British system includes not only a government formed by the majority party (or coalition of parties) in the House of Commons but also an organised and open opposition formed by those who are not members of the governing party. Called Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition, they occupy the benches to the Speaker's left. Seated in the front, directly across from the ministers on the Treasury Bench, the leaders of the opposition form a "Shadow Government", complete with a salaried "Shadow Prime Minister", the Leader of the Opposition, ready to assume office if the government falls or loses the next election.

Opposing the King's government was considered disloyal, even treasonous, at the end of the 17th century. During the 18th century this idea waned and finally disappeared as the two party system developed. The expression "His Majesty's Opposition" was coined by John Hobhouse, 1st Baron Broughton. In 1826, Broughton, a Whig, announced in the Commons that he opposed the report of a Bill. As a joke, he said, "It was said to be very hard on His Majesty's ministers to raise objections to this proposition. For my part, I think it is much more hard on His Majesty's Opposition to compel them to take this course."  The phrase caught on and has been used ever since. Sometimes rendered as the "Loyal Opposition", it acknowledges the legitimate existence of the two party system, and describes an important constitutional concept: opposing the government is not treason; reasonable men can honestly oppose its policies and still be loyal to the Sovereign and the nation.

Informally recognized for over a century as a convention of the constitution, the position of Leader of the Opposition was given statutory recognition in 1937 by the Ministers of the Crown Act.

Great Reform Act and the Premiership

British Prime Ministers have never been elected directly by the public. A Prime Minister need not be a party leader; David Lloyd George was not a party leader during his service as prime minister during World War I, and neither was Ramsay MacDonald from 1931 to 1935.  Prime Ministers have taken office because they were members of either the Commons or Lords, and either inherited a majority in the Commons or won more seats than the opposition in a general election.

Since 1722, most Prime Ministers have been members of the Commons; since 1902, all have had a seat there.Except Lord Home, who resigned his peerage to stand in a by-election soon after becoming Prime Minister Like other members, they are elected initially to represent only a constituency. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair, for example, represented Sedgefield in County Durham from 1983 to 2007. He became Prime Minister because in 1994 he was elected Labour Party leader and then led the party to victory in the 1997 general election, winning 418 seats compared to 165 for the Conservatives and gaining a majority in the House of Commons.

Neither the Sovereign nor the House of Lords had any meaningful influence over who was elected to the Commons in 1997 or in deciding whether or not Blair would become Prime Minister. Their detachment from the electoral process and the selection of the Prime Minister has been a convention of the constitution for almost 200 years.

Prior to the 19th century, however, they had significant influence, using to their advantage the fact that most citizens were disenfranchised and seats in the Commons were allocated disproportionately. Through patronage, corruption and bribery, the Crown and Lords "owned" about 30% of the seats (called "pocket" or "rotten boroughs") giving them a significant influence in the Commons and in the selection of the Prime Minister.  

In 1830, Charles Grey, the 2nd Earl Grey and a life-long Whig, became Prime Minister and was determined to reform the electoral system. For two years, he and his Cabinet fought to pass what has come to be known as the Great Reform Bill of 1832.   The greatness of the Great Reform Bill lay less in substance than in symbolism. As John Bright, a liberal statesman of the next generation, said, "It was not a good Bill, but it was a great Bill when it passed."  Substantively, it increased the franchise by 65% to 717,000; with the middle class receiving most of the new votes. The representation of 56 rotten boroughs was eliminated completely, together with half the representation of 30 others; the freed up seats were distributed to boroughs created for previously disenfranchised areas. However, many rotten boroughs remained and it still excluded millions of working class men and all women.  

Symbolically, however, the Reform Act exceeded expectations. It is now ranked with Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights as one of the most important documents of the British constitutional tradition.

First, the Act removed the Sovereign from the election process and the choice of Prime Minister. Slowly evolving for 100 years, this convention was confirmed two years after the passage of the Act. In 1834, King William IV dismissed Melbourne as Premier, but was forced to recall him when Robert Peel, the King's choice, could not form a working majority. Since then, no Sovereign has tried to impose a Prime Minister on Parliament.

Second, the Bill reduced the Lords' power by eliminating many of their pocket boroughs and creating new boroughs in which they had no influence. Weakened, they were unable to prevent the passage of more comprehensive electoral reforms in 1867, 1884, 1918 and 1928 when universal equal suffrage was established. 

Ultimately, this erosion of power led to the Parliament Act of 1911, which marginalised the Lords' role in the legislative process and gave further weight to the convention that had developed over the previous centuryAs early as 1839, the former Prime Minister Duke of Wellington had argued in the House of Lords that "I have long entertained the view that the Prime Minister of this country, under existing circumstances, ought to have a seat in the other House of Parliament, and that he would have great advantage in carrying on the business of the Sovereign by being there." Quoted in Barnett, p. 246 that a Prime Minister cannot sit in the House of Lords. The last to do so was Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, from 1895 to 1902.The last Prime Minister to be a member of the Lords during any part of his tenure was Alec Douglas-Home, 14th Earl of Home in 1963. Lord Home was the last Prime Minister who was a hereditary peer, but, within days of attaining office, he disclaimed his peerage, abiding by the convention that the Prime Minister should sit in the House of Commons. A junior member of his Conservative Party who had already been selected as candidate in a by-election in a staunch Conservative seat stood aside, allowing Home to contest and win the by-election, and thus procure a seat in the lower House. Throughout the 19th century, governments led from the Lords had often suffered difficulties governing alongside ministers who sat in the Commons. 

Grey set an example and a precedent for his successors. He was primus inter pares (first among equals), as Bagehot said in 1867 of the Prime Minister's status. Using his Whig victory as a mandate for reform, Grey was unrelenting in the pursuit of this goal, using every Parliamentary device to achieve it. Although respectful toward the King, he made it clear that his constitutional duty was to acquiesce to the will of the people and Parliament.

The Loyal Opposition acquiesced too. Some disgruntled Tories claimed they would repeal the Bill once they regained a majority. But in 1834, Robert Peel, the new Conservative leader, put an end to this threat when he stated in his Tamworth Manifesto that the Bill was "a final and irrevocable settlement of a great constitutional question which no friend to the peace and welfare of this country would attempt to disturb". 

Populist prime ministers

The Premiership was a reclusive office prior to 1832. The incumbent worked with his Cabinet and other government officials; he occasionally met with the Sovereign, and attended Parliament when it was in session during the spring and summer. He never went out on the stump to campaign, even during elections; he rarely spoke directly to ordinary voters about policies and issues.

After the passage of the Great Reform Bill, the nature of the position changed: Prime Ministers had to go out among the people. The Bill increased the electorate to 717,000. Subsequent legislation (and population growth) raised it to 2 million in 1867, 5.5 million in 1884 and 21.4 million in 1918. As the franchise increased, power shifted to the people and Prime Ministers assumed more responsibilities with respect to party leadership. It naturally fell on them to motivate and organise their followers, explain party policies, and deliver its "message". Successful leaders had to have a new set of skills: to give a good speech, present a favourable image, and interact with a crowd. They became the "voice", the "face" and the "image" of the party and ministry.

Robert Peel, often called the "model Prime Minister",  was the first to recognise this new role. After the successful Conservative campaign of 1841, J. W. Croker said in a letter to Peel, "The elections are wonderful, and the curiosity is that all turns on the name of Sir Robert Peel. It's the first time that I remember in our history that the people have chosen the first Minister for the Sovereign. Mr. Pitt's case in '84 is the nearest analogy; but then the people only confirmed the Sovereign's choice; here every Conservative candidate professed himself in plain words to be Sir Robert Peel's man, and on that ground was elected." 

Benjamin Disraeli and William Ewart Gladstone developed this new role further by projecting "images" of themselves to the public. Known by their nicknames "Dizzy" and the "Grand Old Man", their colourful, sometimes bitter, personal and political rivalry over the issues of their time – Imperialism vs. Anti-Imperialism, expansion of the franchise, labour reform, and Irish Home Rule – spanned almost twenty years until Disraeli's death in 1881.Even after death their rivalry continued. When Disraeli died in 1881, Gladstone proposed a state funeral, but Disraeli's will specified that he have a private funeral and be buried next to his wife. Gladstone replied, "As [Disraeli] lived, so he died—all display, without reality or genuineness." Disraeli, for his part, once said that GOM (the acronym for "Grand Old Man") really stood for "God's Only Mistake". Documented by the penny press, photographs and political cartoons, their rivalry linked specific personalities with the Premiership in the public mind and further enhanced its status.

Each created a different public image of himself and his party. Disraeli, who expanded the Empire to protect British interests abroad, cultivated the image of himself (and the Conservative Party) as "Imperialist", making grand gestures such as conferring the title "Empress of India" on Queen Victoria in 1876. Gladstone, who saw little value in the Empire, proposed an anti-Imperialist policy (later called "Little England"), and cultivated the image of himself (and the Liberal Party) as "man of the people" by circulating pictures of himself cutting down great oak trees with an axe as a hobby.

Gladstone went beyond image by appealing directly to the people. In his Midlothian campaign – so called because he stood as a candidate for that county – Gladstone spoke in fields, halls and railway stations to hundreds, sometimes thousands, of students, farmers, labourers and middle class workers. Although not the first leader to speak directly to voters – both he and Disraeli had spoken directly to party loyalists before on special occasions – he was the first to canvass an entire constituency, delivering his message to anyone who would listen, encouraging his supporters and trying to convert his opponents. Publicised nationwide, Gladstone's message became that of the party. Noting its significance, Lord Shaftesbury said, "It is a new thing and a very serious thing to see the Prime Minister on the stump." 

Campaigning directly to the people became commonplace. Several 20th century Prime Ministers, such as David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, were famous for their oratorical skills. After the introduction of radio, motion pictures, television, and the internet, many used these technologies to project their public image and address the nation. Stanley Baldwin, a master of the radio broadcast in the 1920s and 1930s, reached a national audience in his talks filled with homely advice and simple expressions of national pride.  Churchill also used the radio to great effect, inspiring, reassuring and informing the people with his speeches during the Second World War. Two recent Prime Ministers, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair (who both spent a decade or more as prime minister), achieved celebrity status like rock stars, but have been criticised for their more 'presidential' style of leadership. According to Anthony King, "The props in Blair's theatre of celebrity included ... his guitar, his casual clothes ... footballs bounced skilfully off the top of his head ... carefully choreographed speeches and performances at Labour Party conferences." 

Modern Premiership

Parliament Act and the Premiership

In addition to being the leader of a great political party and the head of Her Majesty's Government, the modern Prime Minister directs the law-making process, enacting into law his or her party's programme. For example, Tony Blair, whose Labour party was elected in 1997 partly on a promise to enact a British Bill of Rights and to create devolved governments for Scotland and Wales, subsequently stewarded through Parliament the Human Rights Act (1998), the Scotland Act (1998) and the Government of Wales Act (1998).

From its appearance in the 14th century Parliament has been a bicameral legislature consisting of the Commons and the Lords. Members of the Commons are elected; those in the Lords are not. Most Lords are called "Temporal" with titles such as Duke, Marquess, Earl and Viscount. The balance are Lords Spiritual (prelates of the Anglican Church).

For most of the history of the Upper House, Lords Temporal were landowners who held their estates, titles and seats as an hereditary right passed down from one generation to the next – in some cases for centuries. In 1910, for example, there were nineteen whose title was created before 1500. Following a series of reforms in the 20th century the Lords now consists almost entirely of appointed members who hold their title only for their own lifetime. As of 11 June 2012 the Lords had 763 members (excluding 49 who were on leave of absence or otherwise disqualified from sitting), compared to 646 in the Commons.  

Until 1911, Prime Ministers had to guide legislation through the Commons and the Lords and obtain majority approval in both houses for it to become law. This was not always easy, because political differences often separated the chambers. Representing the landed aristocracy, Lords Temporal were generally Tory (later Conservative) who wanted to maintain the status quo and resisted progressive measures such as extending the franchise. The party affiliation of members of the Commons was less predictable. During the 18th century its makeup varied because the Lords had considerable control over elections: sometimes Whigs dominated it, sometimes Tories. After the passage of the Great Reform Bill in 1832, the Commons gradually became more progressive, a tendency that increased with the passage of each subsequent expansion of the franchise.

In 1906, the Liberal party, led by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, won an overwhelming victory on a platform that promised social reforms for the working class. With 379 seats compared to the Conservatives' 132, the Liberals could confidently expect to pass their legislative programme through the Commons.   At the same time, however, the Conservative Party had a huge majority in the Lords; it could easily veto any legislation passed by the Commons that was against their interests. 

For five years, the Commons and the Lords fought over one bill after another. The Liberals pushed through parts of their programme, but the Conservatives vetoed or modified others. When the Lords vetoed the "People's Budget" in 1909, the controversy moved almost inevitably toward a constitutional crisis. 

In 1910, Prime Minister H. H. AsquithCampbell-Bannerman retired and died in 1908 introduced a bill "for regulating the relations between the Houses of Parliament" which would eliminate the Lords' veto power over legislation. Passed by the Commons, the Lords rejected it. In a general election fought on this issue, the Liberals were weakened but still had a comfortable majority. At Asquith's request, King George V then threatened to create a sufficient number of new Liberal Peers to ensure the bill's passage. Rather than accept a permanent Liberal majority, the Conservative Lords yielded, and the bill became law. 

The Parliament Act 1911 established the supremacy of the Commons. It provided that the Lords could not delay for more than one month any bill certified by the Speaker of the Commons as a money bill. Furthermore, the Act provided that any bill rejected by the Lords would nevertheless become law if passed by the Commons in three successive sessions provided that two years had elapsed since its original passage. The Lords could still delay or suspend the enactment of legislation but could no longer veto it.   Subsequently the Lords "suspending" power was reduced to one year by the Parliament Act 1949.

Indirectly, the Act enhanced the already dominant position of Prime Minister in the constitutional hierarchy. Although the Lords are still involved in the legislative process and the Prime Minister must still guide legislation through both Houses, the Lords no longer have the power to veto or even delay enactment of legislation passed by the Commons. Provided that he controls the Cabinet, maintains party discipline, and commands a majority in the Commons, the Prime Minister is assured of putting through his legislative agenda.

"Presidential" Premiership

The role and power of the Prime Minister have been subject to much change in the last fifty years. There has gradually been a change from Cabinet decision-making and deliberation to the dominance of the Prime Minister. As early as 1965, in a new introduction to Walter Bagehot's classic work The English Constitution, Richard Crossman identified a new era of "Prime Ministerial" government. Some commentators, such as the political scientist Michael Foley, have argued there is a de facto "British Presidency". In Tony Blair's government, many sources such as former ministers have suggested that decision-making was controlled by him and Gordon Brown, and the Cabinet was no longer used for decision-making.  Former ministers such as Clare Short and Chris Smith have criticised the lack of decision-making power in Cabinet. When she resigned, Short denounced "the centralisation of power into the hands of the Prime Minister and an increasingly small number of advisers".  The Butler Review of 2004 condemned Blair's style of "sofa government".

Prime Ministers may dominate the Cabinet so much that they become "Semi-Presidents". Examples are William Ewart Gladstone, David Lloyd George, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, and Tony Blair. The powers of some Prime Ministers waxed or waned, depending upon their own level of energy, political skills or outside events: Ramsay MacDonald, for example, was dominant in his Labour governments, but during his National Government his powers diminished so that he was merely the figurehead of the government. In modern times, Prime Ministers have never been merely titular; dominant or somewhat dominant personalities are the norm.

Generally, however, the Prime Minister is held responsible by the nation for the consequences of legislation or of general government policy. Margaret Thatcher's party forced her from power after the introduction of the poll tax; Sir Anthony Eden fell from power following the Suez Crisis; and Neville Chamberlain resigned in 1940 after the Allies were forced to retreat from Norway, as he believed a government supported by all parties was essential, and the Labour and Liberal parties would not join a government headed by him.

The Prime Minister's powers are also limited by the House of Commons, whose support the Government is obliged to maintain. The Commons checks the powers of the Prime Minister through committee hearings and through Prime Minister's Questions, a weekly occurrence in which the Prime Minister is obliged to respond to the questions of the Leader of the Opposition and other members of the House. In practice, however, a Government with a strong majority need rarely fear "backbench rebellions".

Powers and constraints

When commissioned by the Sovereign, a potential Prime Minister's first requisite is to "form a Government" – to create a cabinet of ministers that has the support of the House of Commons, of which they are expected to be a member. The Prime Minister then formally kisses the hands of the Sovereign, whose royal prerogative powers are thereafter exercised solely on the advice of the Prime Minister and Her Majesty's Government ("HMG"). The Prime Minister has weekly audiences with the Sovereign, whose rights are constitutionally limited: "to warn, to encourage, and to be consulted";  the extent of the Sovereign's ability to influence the nature of the Prime Ministerial advice is unknown, but presumably varies depending upon the personal relationship between the Sovereign and the Prime Minister of the day.

The Prime Minister will appoint all other cabinet members (who then become active Privy Counsellors) and ministers, although consulting senior ministers on their junior ministers, without any Parliamentary or other control or process over these powers. At any time, the PM may obtain the appointment, dismissal or nominal resignation of any other minister; the PM may resign, either purely personally or with the whole government. The Prime Minister generally co-ordinates the policies and activities of the Cabinet and Government departments, acting as the main public "face" of Her Majesty's Government.

Although the Commander-in-Chief of the British Armed Forces is legally the Sovereign, under constitutional practice the Prime Minister can declare war, and through the Secretary of State for Defence (whom the PM may appoint and dismiss, or even appoint himself or herself to the position) as chair of the Defence Council the power over the deployment and disposition of British forces. The Prime Minister can authorise, but not directly order, the use of Britain's nuclear weapons and the Prime Minister is hence a Commander-in-Chief in all but name.

The Prime Minister makes all the most senior Crown appointments, and most others are made by Ministers over whom the PM has the power of appointment and dismissal. Privy Counsellors, Ambassadors and High Commissioners, senior civil servants, senior military officers, members of important committees and commissions, and other officials are selected, and in most cases may be removed, by the Prime Minister. The PM also formally advises the Sovereign on the appointment of Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of England,Barnett, p. 249 but the PM's discretion is limited by the existence of the Crown Nominations Commission. The appointment of senior judges, while constitutionally still on the advice of the Prime Minister, is now made on the basis of recommendations from independent bodies.

Peerages, knighthoods, and most other honours are bestowed by the Sovereign only on the advice of the Prime Minister. The only important British honours over which the Prime Minister does not have control are the Order of the Garter, the Order of the Thistle, the Order of Merit, the Royal Victorian Order, and the Venerable Order of Saint John, which are all within the "personal gift" of the Sovereign.

The Prime Minister appoints officials known as the "Government Whips", who negotiate for the support of MPs and to discipline dissenters. Party discipline is strong since electors generally vote for individuals on the basis of their party affiliation. Members of Parliament may be expelled from their party for failing to support the Government on important issues, and although this will not mean they must resign as MPs, it will usually make re-election difficult. Members of Parliament who hold ministerial office or political privileges can expect removal for failing to support the Prime Minister. Restraints imposed by the Commons grow weaker when the Government's party enjoys a large majority in that House, or among the electorate. In most circumstances, however, the Prime Minister can secure the Commons' support for almost any bill by internal party negotiations, with little regard to Opposition MPs.

However, even a government with a healthy majority can on occasion find itself unable to pass legislation. For example, on 9 November 2005, Tony Blair's Government was defeated over plans which would have allowed police to detain terror suspects for up to 90 days without charge, and on 31 January 2006, was defeated over certain aspects of proposals to outlaw religious hatred. On other occasions, the Government alters its proposals to avoid defeat in the Commons, as Tony Blair's Government did in February 2006 over education reforms. 

Formerly, a Prime Minister whose government lost a Commons vote would be regarded as fatally weakened, and the whole government would resign, usually precipitating a general election. In modern practice, when the Government party has an absolute majority in the House, only loss of supply and the express vote "that this House has no confidence in Her Majesty's Government" are treated as having this effect; dissenters on a minor issue within the majority party are unlikely to force an election with the probable loss of their seats and salaries.

Likewise, a Prime Minister is no longer just "first amongst equals" in HM Government; although theoretically the Cabinet might still outvote the PM, in practice the PM progressively entrenches his or her position by retaining only personal supporters in the Cabinet. In occasional reshuffles, the Prime Minister can sideline and simply drop from Cabinet the Members who have fallen out of favour: they remain Privy Counsellors, but the Prime Minister decides which of them are summoned to meetings. The Prime Minister is responsible for producing and enforcing the Ministerial Code.

Precedence, privileges, and form of address

By tradition, before a new Prime Minister can occupy 10 Downing Street, they are required to announce to the country and the world that they have "kissed hands" with the reigning monarch, and have thus become Prime Minister. This is usually done by saying words to the effect of:

Her Majesty the Queen [His Majesty the King] has asked me to form a government and I have accepted.    

Throughout the United Kingdom, the Prime Minister outranks all other dignitaries except members of the Royal Family, the Lord Chancellor, and senior ecclesiastical figures.These include: in England and Wales, the Anglican Archbishops of Canterbury and York; in Scotland, the Lord High Commissioner and the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland; in Northern Ireland, the Anglican and Roman Catholic Archbishops of Armagh and Dublin and the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church.

In 2010 the Prime Minister received £142,500 including a salary of £65,737 as a member of parliament.  Until 2006, the Lord Chancellor was the highest paid member of the government, ahead of the Prime Minister. This reflected the Lord Chancellor's position at the head of the judicial pay scale. The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 eliminated the Lord Chancellor's judicial functions and also reduced the office's salary to below that of the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister is customarily a member of the Privy Council and thus entitled to the appellation "The Right Honourable". Membership of the Council is retained for life. It is a constitutional convention that only a Privy Counsellor can be appointed Prime Minister. Most potential candidates have already attained this status. The only case when a non-Privy Counsellor was the natural appointment was Ramsay MacDonald in 1924. The issue was resolved by appointing him to the Council immediately prior to his appointment as Prime Minister.

According to the now defunct Department for Constitutional Affairs, the Prime Minister is made a Privy Counsellor as a result of taking office and should be addressed by the official title prefixed by "The Right Honourable" and not by a personal name. Although this form of address is employed on formal occasions, it is rarely used by the media. As "Prime Minister" is a position, not a title, the incumbent should be referred to as "the Prime Minister". The title "Prime Minister" (e.g. "Prime Minister John Smith") is technically incorrect but is sometimes used erroneously outside the United Kingdom, and has more recently become acceptable within it.  Within the UK, the expression "Prime Minister Smith" is never used, although it, too, is sometimes used by foreign dignitaries and news sources.

10 Downing Street, in London, has been the official place of residence of the Prime Minister since 1732; they are entitled to use its staff and facilities, including extensive offices. Chequers, a country house in Buckinghamshire, gifted to the government in 1917, may be used as a country retreat for the Prime Minister.

Upon retirement, it is customary for the Sovereign to grant a Prime Minister some honour or dignity. The honour bestowed is commonly, but not invariably, membership of the United Kingdom's most senior order of chivalry, the Order of the Garter. The practice of creating a retired Prime Minister a Knight (or, in the case of Margaret Thatcher, a Lady) of the Garter (KG and LG respectively) has been fairly prevalent since the mid-19th century. On the retirement of a Prime Minister who is Scottish, it is likely that the primarily Scottish honour of Knight of the Thistle (KT) will be used instead of the Order of the Garter, which is generally regarded as an English honour.This circumstance is somewhat confused, however, as since the Great Reform Act 1832, only seven Scots have served as Prime Minister. Of these, two – Bonar Law and Ramsay MacDonald – died while still sitting in the Commons, not yet having retired; another, the Earl of Aberdeen, was appointed to both the Order of the Garter and the Order of the Thistle; yet another, Arthur Balfour, was appointed to the Order of the Garter, but represented an English constituency and may not have considered himself entirely Scottish; and of the remaining three, the Earl of Rosebery became a KG, Alec Douglas-Home became a KT, and Gordon Brown remained in the Commons as a backbencher until 2015.

It has also been common for Prime Ministers to be granted a peerage upon retirement from the Commons, which elevates the individual to the House of Lords. Formerly, the peerage bestowed was usually an earldom (which was always hereditary), with Churchill offered a dukedom.  However, since the 1960s, hereditary peerages have generally been eschewed, and life peerages have been preferred, although in 1984 Harold Macmillan was created Earl of Stockton. Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Harold Wilson, James Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher accepted life peerages, although Douglas-Home had previously disclaimed his hereditary title as Earl of Home. Edward Heath, John Major and Tony Blair did not accept peerages of any kind, although Heath and Major were later appointed as Knights of the Garter. Gordon Brown remained a member of parliament until the 2015 general election, and has not, to date, accepted a peerage.

Living former Prime Ministers

As of , there are four living former Prime Ministers, as seen below.

File:JMajor.JPG|Sir John Majorserved 1990–97born 1943 (age )
File:WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM ANNUAL MEETING 2009 - Tony Blair.jpg|Tony Blairserved 1997–2007born 1953 (age )
File:Accelerating Infrastructure Development Gordon Brown (8412051140).jpg|Gordon Brownserved 2007–10born 1951 (age )
File:Prime Minister David Cameron (5570842655).jpg|David Cameron MPserved 2010–16born 1966 (age ) Richard Edward Geoffrey Howe, Baron Howe of Aberavon,  (20 December 1926 – 9 October 2015), known from 1970 to 1992 as Sir Geoffrey Howe, was a British Conservative politician.

Howe was Margaret Thatcher's longest-serving Cabinet minister, successively holding the posts of Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary, and finally Leader of the House of Commons, Deputy Prime Minister and Lord President of the Council. His resignation on 1 November 1990 is widely considered by the British press to have precipitated Thatcher's own resignation three weeks later.

Early life

Geoffrey Howe was born in 1926 at Port Talbot, Wales, to Benjamin Edward Howe, a solicitor and coroner, and Eliza Florence (née Thomson) Howe. He was to describe himself as a quarter Scottish, a quarter Cornish and half Welsh. 

He was educated at three independent schools: at Bridgend Preparatory School in Bryntirion, followed by Abberley Hall School in Worcestershire and by winning an exhibition to Winchester College in Hampshire.   Howe was not sporty, joining instead the debating society.  It was during wartime, so he ran the Home Guard at the school, and set a National Savings group.  He was also a keen photographer, and film buff.  A gifted classicist, Howe was offered an exhibition to Trinity Hall in 1945, but first decided to join the army.  He did a six months course in maths and physics.  Then he did National Service as a lieutenant with the Royal Corps of Signals in East Africa, by his own account giving political lectures in Swahili about how Africans should avoid communism and remain loyal to "Bwana Kingy George"; and also climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. 

Having declined an offer to remain in the Army as a captain, he enrolled at Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1948, where he read Law and was chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association, and on the committee of the Cambridge Union Society. 

He was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple in 1952 and practised in Wales.  In August 1953 Geoffrey Howe married Elspeth, daughter of P. Morton Shand.  They had a son and two daughters.  At first the valleys practise struggled to pay, surviving thanks to £1,200 gift from his father and a judicious marriage.   He served on the Council of the Bar from 1957 to 1962, and was a council member of the pressure group JUSTICE.  A high-earning barrister, he was made a QC in 1965. 

Choosing instead a career in politics, Howe stood as the Conservative Party candidate in Aberavon at the 1955 and 1959 general elections, losing in a very safe Labour Party seat.

He became chairman of the Bow Group, an internal Conservative think tank of "young modernisers" in the 1960s, and edited its magazine Crossbow from 1960 to 1962. In 1958, he co-authored the report A Giant's Strength published by the Inns of Court Conservative Association. The report argued that the unions had become too powerful and that their legal privileges ought to be curtailed.  Ian Macleod discouraged the authors from publicising the report.  Harold Macmillan believed that trade union votes had contributed towards the 1951 and 1955 election victories and thought that it "would be inexpedient to adopt any policy involving legislation which would alienate this support". 

Early political career

Backbencher

Howe represented Bebington in the House of Commons from 1964 to 1966 with a much reduced majority. He became a Chairman of the backbench committee on social services, being quickly recognised for promotion to the front bench, as HM Opposition spokesman on welfare and labour policy. He was defeated in 1966 general election.

Howe returned to the bar. He sat as deputy Chairman of Glamorgan Quarter Sessions.  More politically significant was work on the Latey Committee tasked with recommending a reduction in the voting age. In 1969 he investigated Ely Mental Hospital, Cardiff for alleged abuse. But of more legislative importance were the Street Committee on racial discrimination, and Cripps Committee on discrimination against women, the reports of which helped the Labour government to change the law.

He returned to parliament as MP for Reigate from 1970 to 1974, and East Surrey from 1974 to 1992. In 1970 he was knighted  and appointed Solicitor General in Edward Heath's government.  He was responsible for the Industrial Relations Act that caused immediate retaliatory union strikes. He was promoted in 1972 to Minister of State at the Department of Trade and Industry, with a seat in the Cabinet and Privy Council membership, a post he held until Labour took power in March 1974.

Shadow Cabinet

In 1974 the Reigate boundary changes redrew the seat as East Surrey, and Heath appointed him as spokesman for social services.  Howe contested the second ballot of the 1975 Conservative leadership election, in which Margaret Thatcher was elected.  She saw him as a like-minded right-winger and he was appointed Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.  He masterminded the development of new economic policies embodied in an Opposition mini-manifesto The Right Approach to the Economy through dogged patience and quiet determination.  At the same time Labour Chancellor Denis Healey "went cap in hand to the IMF" to ask for a loan as Britain was bankrupt.  In 1978 Healey said that an attack from Howe was "like being savaged by a dead sheep".  Nevertheless, when Healey was featured on This Is Your Life in 1989, Howe appeared and paid warm tribute to an old protagonist.  The two men were friends for many years, and died six days apart. 

Thatcher government

Chancellor of the Exchequer

With Conservative victory in the 1979 general election, Howe became Chancellor of the Exchequer. His tenure was characterised by ambitious radical policies to correct the public finances, reduce inflation and liberalise the economy. The shift from direct to indirect taxation, the development of a medium-term financial strategy, the abolition of exchange controls and the creation of tax-free enterprise zones were among the most important decisions of his Chancellorship. The first of five budgets in 1979, promised to honour Professor Hugh Clegg's report that recommended a return to pre-1975 pay levels in real terms, conceding Howe's point about "concerted action".   Rampant inflation had however eroded competitiveness, devalued pensions, investments, and wages. Thatcher reminded him, "On your own head be it, Geoffrey, if anything goes wrong," commencing an often tense and querulous working relationship.   The financial policy tightened money supply, restricted public sector pay, with the ultimate effect of driving up inflation, at least in the short-term, and unemployment in the medium-term.

Fundamentally we do believe in German principles of economic management and should be able to get ourselves alongside them...pronounce in favour of...providing greater stability as encouraging convergence on economic policies. 

During Thatcher's first term the government's poll ratings plummeted, until the 'Falklands Factor'. Thatcher's point being that the vast increase (increase) in taxation and government spending (public sector pay and so on) in 1979 would lead to terrible consequences - which it did, unemployment doubled.

Howe's famous 1981 Budget defied conventional economic wisdom at the time by disinflating the economy at a time of recession.  At the time, his decision was fiercely criticised by 364 academic economists in a letter to The Times, who contended that there was no place for de-stimulatory policies in the economic climate of the time, remarking the Budget had "no basis in economic theory or supporting evidence".  Many signatories were prominent members of the academic sphere, including Mervyn King who later became the Governor of the Bank of England. 

The logic in his proposals was that by reducing the deficit which at the time was £9.3 billion (3.6% GDP), and controlling inflation, long-term interest rates would be able to decline, thus re-stimulating the economy.  The budget did reduce inflation from 11.9% in early 1981 to 3.8% in February 1983. Long-term interest rates also declined from 14% in 1981 to 10% in 1983.  The economy slowly climbed out of recession.  However, unemployment, already extremely high, was pushed to a 50-year high of 12% by 1984, narrowly avoiding the figure reached during the Great Depression of 13.5%.  Some have argued that the budget, although ultimately successful, was nevertheless over the top.  Specialist opinions on the question, expressed with 25 years' hindsight, are collected in an Institute of Economic Affairs report. 

Unlike Reaganomics, his macro-economic policy emphasised the need to narrow the budget deficit rather than engage in unilateral tax cuts; despite these measures the budget deficit remained on average 3% of GDP during Howe's tenure.  His macro-economic policy was designed to liberalise the economy and promote supply-side reform. This combination of policies became one of the defining features of Thatcherism in power.   However, by the time of his last budget shortly before a general election there early signs of a recovery, and Howe was able to cut taxes.

Documents released under the British government's 30-year rule in 2011 revealed that in the wake of the Toxteth riots in Liverpool in 1981 Howe had warned Thatcher "not to overcommit scarce resources to Liverpool", writing that "It would be even more regrettable if some of the brighter ideas for renewing economic activity were to be sown only on relatively stony ground on the banks of the Mersey. I cannot help feeling that the option of managed decline is one which we should not forget altogether. We must not expend all our limited resources in trying to make water flow uphill".  Howe later stated that he had not advocated the "managed decline" policy and that he had merely been warning of the danger of concentrating excessive resources on one area of need.

Foreign Secretary

After the 1983 general election Thatcher reluctantly appointed Howe Foreign Secretary, a post he held for six years, the longest tenure since Sir Edward Grey in 1918.   With "the quiet determination" applied in the Treasury he set off on a tour of Warsaw Pact countries, interviewing communist leaders and sounding out opponents.  The trip opened the way to further discussions with Mikhail Gorbachev, with whom he believed Thatcher shared "extraordinary chemistry."  He later looked back on this period (1983-5) as his happiest, and most fruitful and productive, engaging with world leaders across the summit table, sharing decisions with Thatcher, including a notable encounter with Caspar Weinberger on 6 September 1982.  Success with the Americans proved decisive in bringing about the end of Communism in Europe. 

Howe was closely involved in the negotiations leading up to the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration on the future of Hong Kong, and developed a good working relationship with the U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, mirroring the close connection between Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan.  However Howe's tenure was made difficult by growing behind-the-scenes tensions with the Prime Minister on a number of issues, first on South Africa, next on Britain's relations with the European Community, and then in 1985 the Anglo-Irish Agreement.  For his staff, Howe was a respected boss; mild-mannered, polite and courteous, he was assiduous in his attention to detail.  However the human rights questions over South African sanctions and trade embargo coupled to his deep concern over Thatcher's strident style in Europe, increasingly drove a stressful wedge between Nos 10 and 11.  On policy objectives they began to drift apart with fatal consequences for the Prime Minister's ambitions. Thatcher's dominant style contrasted with his emollience, patience and capacity for negotiation.  Their differences were dated to the Westland Affair in 1986, when senior ministers almost forced her to resign, instead of Michael Heseltine, according to Douglas Hurd's memoirs.

In June 1989, Howe and his successor as Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, both secretly threatened to resign over Thatcher's opposition to British proposed membership of the exchange rate mechanism of the European Monetary System. She turned increasingly for advice to her No.10 private secretary Charles Powell, a career diplomat who contrasted to Howe's mandarin-style.  Howe remarked, "She was often exasperated by my tenaciously quiet brand of advocacy."   His friends often wondered why he put up with her style for so long; but many considered him to be her successor. One historian has suggested that the government would have survived even the ructions over Europe had Howe remained her ally. 

Deputy Prime Minister

In the following month of July 1989, the then little-known John Major was unexpectedly appointed to replace Howe as Foreign Secretary, and the latter became Leader of the House of Commons, Lord President of the Council and Deputy Prime Minister. In the reshuffle, Howe was also offered, but turned down, the post of Home Secretary.  Although attempts were made to belittle this aspect, Howe's move back to domestic politics was generally seen as a demotion, especially after Thatcher's press secretary Bernard Ingham belittled the significance of the Deputy Prime Minister appointment, saying that the title had no constitutional significance, at his lobby briefing the following morning. 

Howe then had to give up the Foreign Secretary's country residence Chevening. The sceptical attitude towards Howe in Number 10 weakened him politically – even if it might have been driven to some degree by fear of him as a possible successor, a problem compounded by the resignation from the Treasury of his principal ally Nigel Lawson later in the same year.  During his time as Deputy Prime Minister, Howe made a series of coded calls on Thatcher to realign her administration, which was suffering rising unpopularity following its introduction of the poll tax, as a 'listening government'.

Relationship with Thatcher

Tensions began to emerge in 1982 during the Falklands War when Thatcher refused to appoint him to the war cabinet. During his first budget, Thatcher wrote Sir Adam Ridley "The trouble with people like Geoffrey - lawyers - they are too timid".  On the occasion of the general election victory of 1983 there were heated exchange of views in No.10 on her decision to move him to the Foreign Office. Howe was one of those who persuaded Michael Heseltine that on balance it was probably better that he resigned rather than her  during the Westland Affair in 1986. At the Scottish Party Conference in Perth in 1987, Howe spelled out his position on the European single market and the proposed Delors Plan (Thatcher having accepted the Single European Act in 1986 ). In the following year, Thatcher made her speech at Bruges declining the offer to deepen the bureaucratic state towards a "Federalist Superstate".

At the Madrid inter-governmental conference the tensions were ratcheted higher as Thatcher emphatically renounced any advance in British policy over the European agenda for "ever closer union" of political and economic forces. Howe forced her to give conditions for entering the proposal for entry to the ERM in June 1989. Howe and Nigel Lawson threatened to resign; but she called his bluff by appointing John Major over his head. Howe resented having to give up the state residence of Chevening, in Kent on being effectively demoted to Lord President of the Council. He deeply resented leaving the Foreign and Commonwealth Office which was a job he had always coveted. When Lawson resigned it looked like a natural reshuffle, but Howe was frozen out of the inner circle. When Howe attended a meeting with The Queen he found to his surprise that Britain had joined the ERM before he had been informed about it - the ERM had been Howe's policy. The pound sterling was thus pegged to the Deutsche Mark, instead of the U.S. Dollar and the consequence was that Britain's currency was pommelled into devaluation by a much stronger German economy. The option to leave cost Britain billions in 1992. But at the Rome Summit in October 1990, Thatcher was said to have uttered the immortal words, in a fit of pique "No, no, no" to the Delors Plan, and repeated the government's policy at Paris summit on 18–20 November.  She also repeated the "no, no, no" message in the House of Commons on her return to Westminster. Howe had told Brian Walden (a former Labour MP) on ITV's Weekend World, that the "government did not oppose the principle of a single currency," which was factually inaccurate.

Resignation

Howe tendered his resignation in a famous moment on 1 November. Sometimes mocked as "Mogadon man" - a well-known sleeping pill - Howe delivered a blow to Thatcher's government in full view of PMQs and a packed House of Commons on 13 November. Howe later contended that the Community Charge was incompetently implemented, but it was the direction of European policy rather than domestic rioting that tipped the balance. Howe's dispute with Thatcher was over substance more than style; a move back towards a more centralist position on constitutional and administrative issues, such as taxation and European integration. Howe represented a kind of moderate whiggery in the party being educated lawyerly; diligent and direct, but conciliatory and collegiate in style. Howe wrote a cautiously worded letter of resignation in which he criticised the PM's overall handling of UK relations with the European Community. After largely successful attempts by Number 10 to claim that there were differences only of style, rather than substance, in Howe's disagreement with Thatcher on Europe, Howe chose to send a powerful message of dissent. In a famous resignation speech in the Commons on 13 November, he attacked Thatcher for running increasingly serious risks for the future of the country and criticised her for undermining the policies on EMU proposed by her own Chancellor and Governor of the Bank of England. 

He offered a striking cricket simile for British negotiations on EMU in Europe: "It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease, only for them to find, as the first balls are being bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain".
 
He ended his speech with an appeal to cabinet colleagues: "The time has come for others to consider their own response to the tragic conflict of loyalties, with which I myself have wrestled for perhaps too long." 

A few days later the Labour leader in the Lords remarked with thinly-disguised pleasure, I much regretted the departure of Sir Geoffrey Howe from his office and from the Government. Sir Geoffrey was an outstanding member of the Prime Minister's Administration since 1979 and his decision to leave reveals a fatal flaw in the management of our affairs. 

Although Howe wrote subsequently in his memoir Conflict of Loyalty that his intention was only to constrain any shift in European policy by the Cabinet under the existing Prime Minister, his dramatic speech is widely seen as the key catalyst for the leadership challenge mounted by Michael Heseltine a few days later. Although Thatcher won most votes in the leadership election, she did not win by a large enough margin to win outright and subsequently resigned as Prime Minister and party leader on 22 November. Five days later, Chancellor of the Exchequer John Major was elected party leader and thus became prime minister. The change proved to be a positive one for the Tories, who had trailed Labour in most opinion polls by a double-digit margin throughout 1990 but soon returned to the top of the polls and won the general election in April 1992. 

Retirement

Howe retired from the House of Commons in 1992 and was made a life peer on 30 June 1992 as Baron Howe of Aberavon, of Tandridge in the County of Surrey.  He published his memoirs Conflict of Loyalty (Macmillan, 1994) soon after.  In the Lords, Howe continued to speak on a wide range of foreign-policy and European issues, and led opposition to the Labour government's plans from 1997 to convert the second chamber into a largely elected body  – a position reiterated in the face of Coalition proposals in 2012.  He retired from the House of Lords on 19 May 2015.  

Following his retirement from the Commons, Howe took on a number of non-executive directorships in business and advisory posts in law and academia, including as international political adviser to the US law firm Jones Day, a director of Glaxo and J. P. Morgan, and visitor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

His wife, Elspeth Howe, related to royalty, and a former chairman of the Broadcasting Standards Commission, was made a life peer in 2001.   The Baroness Howe of Idlicote and her husband were one of the few couples who both held titles in their own right. Lord Howe was a patron of the UK Metric Association and the [http://cfcconline.org.uk Conservative Foreign and Commonwealth Council]. Howe was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 1996 Birthday Honours.  He was an honorary fellow of SOAS.  From 1996 to 2006 he was president of the Academy of Experts and in November 2014 was made an honorary fellow of the organisation in recognition of his contribution to the development of methods of dispute resolution. 

Howe was a close personal friend of Ian Gow, the former MP, parliamentary private secretary, and personal confidant of Margaret Thatcher. He delivered the principal appreciation of Gow at the latter's memorial service after Gow was assassinated by the IRA in July 1990.  Obituarists noted how he was "warm and well liked by colleagues",  with Nigel Lawson writing that he would be remembered by those who knew him "as one of the kindest and nicest men in politics"  who, according to Andrew Rawnsley of The Observer, was frequently spoken of by fellow politicians "as one of the most honest and decent practitioners of their profession."

Howe's dramatic resignation speech in the House of Commons formed the basis of Jonathan Maitland's 2015 play Dead Sheep.  Howe was interviewed in 2012 as part of The History of Parliament's oral history project.

Howe died at the age of 88 on 9 October 2015 following a suspected heart attack.

Styles of address

*1926-1964: Mr Geoffrey Howe
*1964-1965: Mr Geoffrey Howe MP
*1965-1966: Mr Geoffrey Howe MP QC
*1966-1970: Mr Geoffrey Howe QC
*1970: Mr Geoffrey Howe MP QC
*1970-1972: Sir Geoffrey Howe MP QC
*1972-1992: The Right Honourable Sir Geoffrey Howe QC MP
*1992-1996: The Right Honourable The Lord Howe of Aberavon PC QC
*1996-2015: The Right Honourable The Lord Howe of Aberavon CH PC QC Nigel Lawson, Baron Lawson of Blaby PC (born 11 March 1932) is a British Conservative politician and journalist.  He was a member of parliament (MP) representing the constituency of Blaby from 1974 to 1992, and served in the Thatcher Cabinet from 1981 to 1989.  Prior to entering the Cabinet, he served as the Financial Secretary to the Treasury from May 1979 until his promotion to Secretary of State for Energy.  He was appointed as Chancellor of the Exchequer in June 1983, and served until his resignation in October 1989.  In both Cabinet posts he was a key proponent of Thatcher's policy of privatisation of several key industries and deregulation and oversaw the Big Bang launched in London on 27 October 1986.

Lawson was a backbencher from 1989 until he retired in 1992, and now sits in the House of Lords.  He is still active in political life as President of Conservatives for Britain, a campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, and as chairman of the climate sceptic     Global Warming Policy Foundation think tank.

He is the father of six children, including Nigella Lawson, a food writer and celebrity cook, and Dominic Lawson, a journalist.

Early life

Lawson was born in 1932 to a wealthy Jewish family  living in Hampstead, London.  His father, Ralph Lawson (1904–1982), was the owner of a commodity-trading firm in the City of London, while his mother, Joan Elisa Davis, was also from a prosperous family of stockbrokers.  His paternal grandfather, Gustav Leibson, a merchant from Mitau (now Jelgava in Latvia), changed his name from Leibson to Lawson in 1925,  having become a British Citizen in 1911.

Education

Lawson was educated at two independent schools: at Beechwood Park School in Markyate (nr. St Albans) in Hertfordshire, followed by Westminster School in London (following in his father's footsteps),  and Christ Church, Oxford,[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6618848/Nigel-Lawson-Thatchers-Chancellor-takes-on-the-planet-alone.html Nigel Lawson: Thatcher's Chancellor takes on the planet alone] The Daily Telegraph, 21 November 2009 where he gained a first-class honours degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.    

Life and career

Lawson carried out his National Service as a Royal Navy officer, during which time he commanded a fast patrol boat, HMS Gay Charger.

Lawson began his career as a journalist at the Financial Times in 1956, writing the Lexicon column. He progressed to the positions of City editor of The Sunday Telegraph in 1961 - where he introduced his friend Jim Slater's Capitalist investing column - and then editor of The Spectator (1966–1970).

Early political career

Lawson stood unsuccessfully at the 1970 General Election for the Eton and Slough seat[http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/nigel-lawson/27077 Lord Lawson of Blaby] UK Parliament before becoming Member of Parliament for Blaby in Leicestershire in February 1974, which seat he held until retiring at the 1992 General Election.

While in Opposition, Lawson co-ordinated tactics with rebellious Government backbenchers Jeff Rooker and Audrey Wise to secure legislation providing for the automatic indexation of tax thresholds to prevent the tax burden being increased by inflation (typically in excess of 10% per annum during that Parliament).

In government

Financial Secretary to the Treasury

On the election of Margaret Thatcher's government, Lawson was appointed to the post of Financial Secretary to the Treasury.  Although this is the fourth-ranking political position in the UK Treasury, Lawson's energy in office was reflected in such measures as the ending of unofficial state controls on mortgage lending, the abolition of exchange controls in October 1979 and the publication of the Medium Term  financial Strategy. This document set the course for both the monetary and fiscal sides of the new government's economic policy, though the extent to which the subsequent trajectory of policy and outcome matched that projected is still a matter for debate.

Secretary of State for Energy

In the Cabinet reshuffle of September 1981, Lawson was promoted to the position of Secretary of State for Energy. In this role his most significant action was to prepare for what he saw as an inevitable full-scale strike in the coal industry (then state-owned since nationalisation by the post-war government of Clement Attlee) over the closure of pits whose uneconomic operation accounted for the coal industry's business losses and consequent requirement for state subsidy.  He was a key proponent of the Thatcher Government's privatisation policy. During his tenure at the Department of Energy he set the course for the later privatisations of the gas and electricity industries and on his return to the Treasury he worked closely with the Department of Trade and Industry in privatising British Airways, British Telecom, and British Gas.

Chancellor of the Exchequer

After the Government's re-election in 1983, Lawson was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in succession to Geoffrey Howe. The early years of Lawson's chancellorship were associated with tax reform. The 1984 Budget reformed corporate taxes by a combination of reduced rates and reduced allowances. The 1985 Budget continued the trend of shifting from direct to indirect taxes by reducing National Insurance contributions for the lower-paid while extending the base of value added tax.

During these two years Lawson's public image remained low-key, but from the 1986 Budget (in which he resumed the reduction of the standard rate of personal Income Tax from the 30% rate to which it had been lowered in Howe's 1979 Budget), his stock rose as unemployment began to fall from the middle of 1986 (employment growth having resumed over three years earlier). Lawson also changed the budget deficit from £10.5 billion (3.7% of GDP) in 1983 to a budget surplus of £3.9 billion in 1988 and £4.1 billion in 1989, the year of his resignation. During his tenure the rate of taxation also came down. The basic rate was reduced from 30% in 1983 to 25% by 1988. The top rate of tax also came down from 60% to 40% in 1988 and the four other higher rates were removed, leaving a system of personal taxation in which there was no rate anywhere in excess of 40 per cent.

In 1986 the City of London's financial markets were deregulated in the so-called 'Big Bang'. In an interview in 2010 Nigel Lawson said that an unintended consequence of the Big Bang was the financial crisis of 2007-2008. 

The trajectory taken by the UK economy from this point on is typically described as "The Lawson Boom" by analogy with the phrase "The Barber Boom" which describes an earlier period of rapid expansion under the tenure as Chancellor of Anthony Barber in the Conservative Government of Prime Minister Heath (1970 to 1974). Critics of Lawson assert that a combination of the abandonment of monetarism, the adoption of a de facto exchange-rate target of 3 Deutsche marks to the pound (ruling out interest-rate rises), and excessive fiscal laxity (in particular the 1988 Budget) unleashed an inflationary spiral.

Lawson, in his own defence, attributes the boom largely to the effects of various measures of financial deregulation. Insofar as Lawson acknowledges policy errors, he attributes them to a failure to raise interest rates during 1986 and considers that had Margaret Thatcher not vetoed the UK joining the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in November 1985 it might have been possible to adjust to these beneficial changes in the arena of microeconomics with less macroeconomic turbulence. Lawson also ascribes the difficulty of conducting monetary policy to Goodhart's Law.

His tax cuts, beginning in 1986, resulted in the "Lawson Boom" of the British economy, which had halved unemployment from more than 3,000,000 by the end of 1989.  However, this led to a rise in inflation from 3% to more than 8% during 1988, which resulted in interest rates doubling to 15% in the space of 18 months, and remaining high in spite of the 1990–1992 recession which saw unemployment rise nearly as high as the level seen before the boom began. 

Lawson opposed the introduction of the Community Charge (nicknamed the poll tax) as a replacement for the previous rating system for the local financing element of local government revenue. His dissent was confined to deliberations within the Cabinet, where he found few allies and where he was over-ruled by the Prime Minister and by the ministerial team of the department responsible (Department of the Environment).

The issue of exchange-rate mechanism membership continued to fester between Lawson and Thatcher and was exacerbated by the re-employment by Thatcher of Sir Alan Walters as personal economic adviser.  Lawson's conduct of policy had become a struggle to maintain credibility once the August 1988 trade deficit revealed the strength of the expansion of domestic demand. As orthodox monetarists, Lawson and Thatcher agreed to a steady rise in interest rates to restrain demand, but this had the effect of inflating the headline inflation figure.

Resignation

After a further year in office in these circumstances Lawson felt that public articulation of differences between an exchange-rate monetarist, as he had become, and the views of Walters (who continued to favour a floating exchange rate) were making his job impossible and he resigned.  He was succeeded in the office of Chancellor by John Major. 

Lawson's tenure as Chancellor of the Exchequer was longer than that of any of his predecessors since David Lloyd George, who served from 1908 to 1915.  This was subsequently passed by Labour's Gordon Brown (1997–2007).

Retirement

After retiring from front-bench politics, Lawson decided, on his doctor's advice, to tackle his weight problem. He is 5 feet 10 inches (178 cm) tall; he lost five stone (70 pounds, 30 kg) from 17 stone, or 238 pounds (108 kg) to 12 stone, or 168 pounds (76 kilograms) – (BMI 34 to 24) in a matter of a few months, dramatically changing his appearance, and went on to publish the best-selling The Nigel Lawson Diet Book. 

On 1 July 1992 he was given a life peerage as Baron Lawson of Blaby, of Newnham in the County of Northamptonshire. 

In 1996, Lawson appeared on the BBC satirical and topical quiz show Have I Got News For You  and, as a former Chancellor (the position of Chancellor being regarded as one of the "big four" Government positions, q.v.. Great Offices of State) he had held the highest political office of any guest.  He occasionally appears as a guest on his daughter Nigella's cookery shows.

Lawson serves on the advisory board of the Conservative magazine Standpoint. 

Corporate roles

* 2007: Chairman of Central Europe Trust Company Ltd (CET) 

* 2007: Chairman of Oxford Investment Partners 

Expenses scandal

During the United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal, it was revealed that Lawson managed to claim £16,000 in overnight allowances by registering his farmhouse in Gascony as his main residence. 

Position on global warming

Lawson is a global warming sceptic and believes that man-made global warming is exaggerated.

In 2004, along with six others, Lawson wrote a letter to The Times criticising the Kyoto Protocol and claiming that there were substantial scientific uncertainties surrounding climate change. In 2005, the House of Lords Economics Affairs Select Committee, with Lawson as a member, undertook an inquiry into climate change. In their report, the Committee recommend the HM Treasury take a more active role in climate policy. The objectivity of the IPCC process is questioned, and changes are suggested in the UK's contribution to future international climate change negotiations.  The report cites a mismatch between the economic costs and benefits of climate policy, and also criticises the greenhouse gas emission reduction targets set in the Kyoto Protocol. In response to the report, Michael Grubb, Chief Economist of the Carbon Trust, wrote an article in Prospect magazine, defending the Kyoto Protocol and describing the committee's report as being "strikingly inconsistent".  Lawson responded to Grubb's article, describing it as an example of the "intellectual bankruptcy of the [...] climate change establishment". Lawson also said that Kyoto's approach was "wrong-headed" and called on the IPCC to be "shut down".

At about the same time of the release of the House of Lords report, the UK Government launched the Stern Review, an inquiry undertaken by the HM Treasury and headed by Lord Stern. According to the Stern Review, published in 2006, the potential costs of climate change far exceed the costs of a programme to stabilise the climate. Lawson's lecture to the Centre for Policy Studies think-tank, published 1 November 2006  criticises the Stern Review and proposed what is described as a rational approach, advocating adaptation to changes in global climate, rather than attempting mitigation, i.e., reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Lawson also contributed to the 2007 documentary film The Great Global Warming Swindle.

In 2008, Lawson published a book expanding on his 2006 lecture to the Centre for Policy Studies, An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming.  He argues the case that, although global warming is happening and will have negative consequences, the impact of these changes will be relatively moderate rather than apocalyptic. He criticises those "alarmist" politicians and scientists who predict catastrophe unless urgent action is taken. The book has, in its turn, been criticised by the IPCC:   HM Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir John Beddington, is reported to have told Lawson privately that he had "incorrect" and "misleading" claims in the book. 

In July 2008 controversy was again incited when the Conservative magazine Standpoint published a transcript of a double interview with Lawson and Tory Policy Chief Oliver Letwin, in which Lawson described Letwin's views on global warming as "pie in the sky" and called on him and the Tory frontbench to "get real".

On 23 November 2009 Lawson became chairman of a new think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation,  a registered education charity.

In 2011, Bob Ward claimed the GWPF was "spreading errors" and "the 'facts'" Lawson "repeats are demonstrably inaccurate" Ward referred to Lawson's "many times" repeated statement that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change worst-case scenario predicted the rise in Third World living standards in 100 years would be limited to just nine times current levels. In fact, said Ward, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report estimates living standard will rise by a factor of 66 but crucially makes no assessment of how it will be affected by climate change. Ward also criticised Lawson for repeating in a 2010 BBC radio debate that Antarctic ice volumes were unchanged even after his error was highlighted by his opponent, Professor Kevin Anderson. According to Ward, Lawson provided no evidence to back his claim which is contrary to satellite measurements and he similarly incorrectly implied that the correlation between CO2 and sea levels was uncertain as sea levels were rising more slowly since 1950 than before it. The current sea level rise is accelerating.
Given the Charity Commission requires that statements by campaigning charities "must be factually accurate and have a legitimate evidence base"  Ward suggested that they review the GWPF.
Lawson's son Dominic Lawson is also a climate change sceptic, taking a similar viewpoint as his father in his columns in the Independent on Sunday.  

Economy

Lawson was a critic of David Cameron's coalition government economic policy, describing spending cuts consultation plans as a "PR ploy".  In November 2011 he called for the "orderly" dismantling of the euro.

In the media

Lawson was interviewed about the rise of Thatcherism for the 2006 BBC TV documentary series Tory! Tory! Tory!.[http://www.newstatesman.com/200611130013 Tory, Tory, Tory and the television truth] New Statesman, 13 November 2006

In 2010, he appeared on the Analysis programme to discuss banking reform.  Lawson explained that the 2007–2012 global financial crisis was an unintended consequence of the 1986 Big Bang after investment banks merged with high street banks putting depositors' savings at risk.

Lawson has also appeared on the Business News Network in Canada to discuss global warming.

In a debate with other former cabinet ministers and prominent journalists, Lawson has argued that political life is more in need of ideas and direction than grand political visions. 

Lawson is known for having coined several notable quotations, including "[t]o govern is to choose. To appear to be unable to choose is to appear to be unable to govern."

Personal and family life

Lord Lawson has been married twice having children from both relationships.
* To Vanessa Salmon (1955–1980), whose family founded the Lyons Corner House chain, from 1955–1980; three daughters, Thomasina, Nigella and Horatia and one son, Dominic
* To Thérèse Maclear, from 1980–2012; one son, Tom and one daughter, Emily

Lord Lawson is a member of the Garrick, Beefsteak and Pratt's Clubs.

Styles of address

*1932-1974: Mr Nigel Lawson
*1974-1981: Mr Nigel Lawson MP
*1981-1992: The Right Honourable Nigel Lawson MP
*1992: The Right Honourable Nigel Lawson
*1992-: The Right Honourable The Lord Lawson of Blaby PC

Bibliography

* An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming
* Thatcherism in Practice: A Progress Report
* The Retreat of the State
* The View from No.11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical
* The Nigel Lawson Diet Book
* The Power Game: An Examination of Decision Making in Government
* Conservatism Today: Four Personal Points of View By Robert Blake, Peregrine Worsthorne, David Howell and Nigel Lawson
* State of the Market (Occasional Papers S.)
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