Items19The creator’s order
  1. 1Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of LiverpoolRobert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of LiverpoolLiverpool held office for nearly fifteen years, longer than any prime minister since, largely by managing a cabinet of stronger personalities: Castlereagh at the Foreign Office, then Canning, with Peel at the Home Office and Wellington. He kept bitter rivals, Canning and Castlereagh had fought a…0i
  2. 2Robert PeelRobert PeelBorn 5 Feb 1788Peel's 1841 cabinet was one of the most talented of the century, including the young Gladstone at the Board of Trade, and it reintroduced income tax and reformed banking. But he governed by persuading his cabinet rather than his backbenchers, and when he moved to repeal the Corn Laws in 1845, Lord…0i
  3. 3William Ewart GladstoneWilliam Ewart GladstoneBorn 29 Dec 1809Gladstone's four ministries show cabinet as a coalition of Whig grandees and Radicals. His first, from 1868, passed Irish church disestablishment, Forster's Education Act and Cardwell's army reforms through ministers he trusted to run their departments. The later cabinets fractured over Ireland: in…0i
  4. 4H. H. AsquithH. H. AsquithBorn 12 Sept 1852Asquith presided over perhaps the most talented peacetime cabinet in British history: Lloyd George at the Treasury, Churchill at the Board of Trade and Admiralty, Grey at the Foreign Office, Haldane at the War Office. He let them run, and the result was the People's Budget, old age pensions,…0i
  5. 5David Lloyd GeorgeDavid Lloyd GeorgeBorn 17 Jan 1863Lloyd George replaced the full cabinet with a small War Cabinet of five, created the Cabinet Secretariat under Maurice Hankey, which first kept minutes, and depended on Conservative partners, above all Bonar Law, to stay in office. After the war his coalition rested on Conservative votes, and it…0i
  6. 6Winston ChurchillWinston ChurchillBorn 30 Nov 1874The wartime Churchill is usually seen alone. In fact the coalition's War Cabinet included Attlee, Bevin, Greenwood and later Morrison, and it was Attlee, as deputy, who chaired most domestic committees while Churchill ran the war. In May 1940 the cabinet's support, Attlee's and Greenwood's…0i
  7. 7Clement AttleeClement AttleeBorn 3 Jan 1883Attlee's government is the classic case for this list. Bevin at the Foreign Office, Bevan at Health building the NHS, Morrison running the legislative programme and nationalisation, Cripps and Dalton at the Treasury: big figures who disliked one another, chaired by a quiet prime minister who rarely…0i
  8. 8Harold MacmillanHarold MacmillanBorn 10 Feb 1894Macmillan's premiership is bracketed by two cabinet moments. In January 1958 his entire Treasury team, Thorneycroft, Powell and Birch, resigned over spending, and he dismissed it as 'little local difficulties'. In July 1962 he sacked a third of his cabinet in a single day, the 'Night of the Long…0i
  9. 9Harold WilsonHarold WilsonBorn 11 Mar 1916Wilson's cabinets held more rivals than any other: George Brown, Callaghan, Jenkins, Crosland, Castle, Healey and Benn. He balanced them obsessively, suspected plots constantly and relied on an informal 'kitchen cabinet' including Marcia Williams. Richard Crossman's diaries, published in 1975 after…0i
  10. 10Edward HeathEdward HeathBorn 9 Jul 1916Heath's 1970 government lost its intended chancellor, Iain Macleod, within a month of taking office, a loss many historians think shaped everything that followed. Heath then relied on a small circle and officials rather than his cabinet, and the 1972 U-turn to industrial intervention and incomes…0i