This Saturday marks a No 10 achievement to celebrate, whatever you think of Boris Johnson. It is the 300th anniversary of the office of prime minister. Robert Walpole, MP for King’s Lynn, was appointed First Lord of the Treasury on 3rd April 1721 and soon recognised as “prime” or “first” minister, and before too long was given an official residence in Downing Street, much like the other 54 holders of the office since.
The longevity of the post is remarkable. It is, I think, the oldest office of national executive leadership in the world besides the Pope (who even now retains residual temporal power over the Vatican micro-state) and the rulers of similarly miniature Monaco and San Marino. Since 1721, both Monaco and the Vatican have been invaded. The latter was occupied by Napoleon in 1798, with Pope Pius VI taken prisoner and later dying in captivity in France—a fate which William Pitt the Younger, then in his 15th year in No 10 but still aged only 39, managed to avoid.
Herein lies the genius of the office: every prime minister since Walpole has belonged to one of the two houses of parliament and has summoned parliament every year since 1721. All have had to justify and debate their policies and seek consent for taxation and major changes to the law, even during the 30 years of these three centuries when Britain has been embroiled in wars of national survival.
There have been no extra-parliamentary dictators. Even the Duke of Wellington, who ultimately defeated Napoleon in 1815, only became prime minister briefly as a civilian many years later and was a notable failure. His resistance to the post-war nationwide agitation for MPs to be given to Britain’s new towns and cities created by the industrial revolution led to his rapid replacement by Earl Grey, he of the tea, who is maybe the most under-estimated of the 55 premiers. His Great Reform Act of 1832 not only paved the way for what we today call democracy, but he also abolished slavery. Both measures were enacted by acts of brilliant parliamentary and executive dexterity in less than four years in office.
For the British premiership is at once a powerful yet also a powerfully limited office. Prime ministers since 1721 have largely exercised the executive powers of the monarch while, crucially, not becoming head of state, just as they have been ascendant in parliament while, crucially, never being able to perpetuate their rule without the consent of a freely and regularly elected House of Commons. All the most dominant prime ministers have been ejected while still strong. Churchill lost the 1945 election by a landslide and Gladstone lost by two landslides, while Lloyd George, Thatcher, Blair and Walpole himself were all forced out of office by parliamentary colleagues at the height of their power.
There have been surprisingly few changes to the essentials of the office since 1721. All prime ministers since Walpole have ruled with a Cabinet, all of whose members have also belonged to one or other house of parliament. The relative power of the monarch has diminished and that of the House of Commons has increased: no prime minister has served from the House of Lords since 1902. The last peer-premier was the Marquess of Salisbury, a Cecil of Hatfield House tracing his governing ancestry back to Queen Elizabeth I.
However, elitism is still the rule, not the exception. As late as 1963, an earl became prime minister and left the Lords for the Commons to take office as Sir Alexander Douglas-Home KT MP. More than a third of Britain’s 55 prime ministers went to Eton, including five of the last 13 and two of the last three. Another 13 went to Harrow or Westminster, so 60 per cent of all the occupants of No 10 since Walpole went to just three private schools.
Maybe the biggest shock in the entire three centuries was the first woman prime minister in 1979. It was certainly the greatest shock of my lifetime. Margaret Thatcher was the first woman to be elected leader in any major western democracy. But even Thatcher was a Tory and the only woman MP in her own Cabinet for her entire 11 and a half years in office, the longest tenure since the Earl of Liverpool in the 1820s.
Will there still be a prime minister in another 300 years? Of all human failings, said George Eliot, prophecy is the most unnecessary. Yet I can’t help but note that another defining institution of the modern British state is just 14 years older than the office of prime minister: the union with Scotland.
