This article reports the findings of a large-scale survey investigating the experiences of the large number of MPs who left parliament following the 2010 general election. We have found that: the widely-held perception that MPs make a smooth transition into lucrative private sector employment after leaving Parliament is largely mistaken; the MPs' expenses scandal has seriously undermined the status of MPs and, as such, may also have made a career in Parliament less enticing for good prospective parliamentary candidates; and the job of an MP remains fraught with difficulties for women due to the strain it places on family life. Shortly after losing his marginal seat of Broxtowe in Nottinghamshire by just 389 votes in the May 2010 general election, former Labour MP Nick Palmer signed on at his local Jobcentre and applied for unemployment benefits. He was offered a specialist CV review with a recruitment expert and enrolled with several recruitment agencies. After securing some freelance work as a translator, he became Director of International and Corporate Affairs for the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection and Director of Policy for Cruelty Free International, an animal protection campaign. In 2013 he was re-selected to fight his old seat in the 2015 election, but lost again as the Conservative majority increased to over 4000 votes. After his 2010 election defeat, former Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Öpik tried his hand at various forms of popular entertainment, including stand-up comedy, TV comedy shows, appearing in a pop video and in a professional wrestling match (prompting the newspaper headline 'Can this man sink any lower?'). That this profile may have damaged his future political prospects is suggested by his failure to secure a seat on his party's federal executive committee, its nomination for the 2012 London mayoral elections, or its nomination for the position of police and crime commissioner in Northumbria. He has admitted to feeling 'crushed' by his defeat, saying the 'trauma of rejection' triggered depression lasting three years and left him facing 'a long period of virtual insolvency' (Öpik, 2015). However, he did eventually secure a number of nonexecutive director roles that built on career experience he gained before he became an MP as an international training manager with Procter & Gamble. Planning for her retirement, former Conservative MP and minister Ann Widdecombe was clear that she did not want to take on non-executive directorships when she stepped down in 2010. 'I did not want any more piles of paper to crunch, any more bulging briefcases'. She would happily have gone to the House of Lords but believes that David Cameron vetoed that, and though she was offered the post of British ambassador to the Vatican health problems led her to turn it down. She was sounded out as a possible Tory candidate for police and crime commissioner in both Kent and Devon, but refused because of the lack of powers in the role. Continuing with the media work she had undertaken while still an MP, she ha...
Individual prime ministers' personalities, leadership styles and political skills matter and make a difference. It is important to develop ways of understanding and analysing the components of prime-ministerial leadership and personal style and skills within a framework permitting comparison, generalization and evaluation. The paper argues that some of the most influential accounts of the US presidency should be explored to assess their potential for enhancing our understanding of British prime ministers and the premiership. Drawing upon Fred Greenstein's influential analysis of The Presidential Difference, the paper evaluates Gordon Brown's leadership style and skills under six headings: (1) proficiency as a public communicator, (2) organizational capacity, (3) political skills, (4) policy vision, (5) cognitive style and (6) emotional intelligence. Overall, Brown can be seen as someone not well equipped for the highest office, in terms of the key leadership abilities, characteristics and skills that Greenstein identifies. This does not mean that he was bound to fail and to go down to electoral defeat.But in the situation he and the Labour government were in after 2007, it made it very much harder to be successful.
This article reports the results of a 2004 survey of academics, specialising in British politics and/or modern British history, asking them to rate all the 20th‐century British prime ministers in terms of their success in office and also asking them to assess the key characteristics of successful prime ministers. The top‐ranked PMs were (in order) Attlee, Churchill, Lloyd George and Thatcher. In contrast to the many and regular surveys of American academics ranking US presidents, this is the first large‐scale exercise of this type in British political science. Analysis of the findings in terms of the characteristics of the survey respondents helps shed light on the survey results.
This article contributes to the developing literature on prime ministerial performance in the UK by applying a critical reading of Stephen SkowronekÕs account of leadership in Ôpolitical timeÕ to evaluate David CameronÕs premiership. This, we propose, better understands the inter-relationship of structure and agency in prime ministerial performance than existing frameworks, particularly those based on GreensteinÕs and BulpittÕs approaches. We identify Cameron as a disjunctive prime minister but find it necessary to significantly develop the model of disjunctive leadership beyond that offered by Skowronek. We identify the warrants to authority, strategies and dilemmas associated with disjunctive leadership in the UK. We argue that Cameron was relatively skilful in meeting many of the challenges confronting an affiliated leader of a vulnerable regime. However, his second term exposed deep fractures in the regime which proved beyond CameronÕs skills as a disjunctive leader. Research highlights This article:¥ Contributes to the debate about the best theoretical frameworks for evaluating prime ministerial performance in the UK. ¥ Argues that an historical institutionalist framework is able to address the major shortcoming of existing frameworks, namely evaluating prime ministerial performance in the structural context of the political environment in which holders of that office act. ¥ Adapts Stephen SkowronekÕs account of the performance of US presidents to the constitutional, institutional and political circumstances of the UK polity and significantly develops SkowronekÕs account of regime vulnerability and the characteristics and constraints of disjunctive leadership ¥ Applies this adapted model for the purposes of a systematic evaluation of David CameronÕs premiership. This identifies that although Cameron was relatively successful in negotiating the challenges and constraints of disjunctive prime ministerial leadership in his first term he made commitments which, in his second term, exposed key fault lines in the regime and proved beyond CameronÕs skills as a disjunctive leader to manage.2
Who has been the best British prime minister since the Second World War? As David Cameron passes up and down the Grand Staircase in Number 10 Downing Street every day, the portraits of his predecessors as prime minister stare down at him. They are arranged in chronological order, with the most recent at the top of the stairs. If they were to be arranged in order of greatness, success or effectiveness in office, or policy achievement and legacy, the sequence would look very different.We report here the results from the latest survey of academic experts polled on the performance of post-1945 prime ministers. Academic specialists in British politics and history rate Clement Attlee as the best post-war prime minister, with Margaret Thatcher in second place just ahead of Tony Blair in third place. Gordon Brown's stint in Number 10 was the thirdworst since the Second World War, according to the respondents to the survey that rated his premiership as less successful than that of John Major.The prime-ministerial 'ratings game' is widely played. Prime ministers rate each other.
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