Jim Callaghan, who died last Saturday, was the last British prime minister in the commonly accepted sense of the word. After him several factors — the degradation of the Gladstonian idea of a disinterested Civil Service, the collapse of Parliament, the emergence of a professional political elite and the rise of the media class were four of the most important — irrevocably changed the nature of the post.
In other words Jim Callaghan was the last prime minister from the long age of representative democracy in Britain, which stretched roughly from 1867, the date of the Second Reform Act, till the general election of 1979 and the emergence of Margaret Thatcher as a presidential type of political leader.
Before 1867 Britain was governed by an aristocracy. From 1979 onwards we uneasily started to feel our way towards the new era of manipulative populism, the phrase which best describes today’s system of government, though its nature and consequences have yet to be fully worked out and understood. Margaret Thatcher had the first intimations of how such a system might work, then her successor John Major attempted without success to revert to the old order. Finally Tony Blair emerged to bring the novel method to some kind of perfection.
Callaghan was prime minister in the literal sense of the term, i.e., the foremost minister of the Crown, first among equals. He was a devout follower of the Cabinet system. His Cabinets almost always lasted several hours, sometimes stretching into days. He was sometimes content to be overruled by a Cabinet majority. He never went round the back of his own Cabinet, as it now seems certain Tony Blair did in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war, entering into a form of secret treaty with the United States to secure regime change in Iraq without referring back to the Cabinet, let alone Parliament.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in