Since its creation in the depths of the Great War in December 1916, the Cabinet Office has retained a uniquely central place in the ever-changing political landscape of the last century. While the revolving door of 10 Downing Street admits and ejects its inhabitants every few years, the Cabinet Office remains a constant, supporting and guiding successive Prime Ministers and their governments, regardless of their political leanings, all the while keeping the British state safe, stable and secure. It has been at the centre of everything – wars, intelligence briefings, spy scandals, disputed elections, political crises – and its eleven Cabinet Secretaries, ever at the right hand of their political masters, have borne witness to them all. The true 'men of secrets', these individuals are granted access to the meetings that determine the course of history, trusted with the most classified information the state possesses. Written with unparalleled access to documents and personnel by acclaimed political historian, commentator and biographer Anthony Seldon, this lavishly illustrated history is the definitive inside account of what has really gone on in the last 100 years of British politics.

The first, definitive history of one of Britain's most important political institutions.

The COVID-19 pandemic is the first time that many of the UK population, including its national politicians, have become aware of the practical dimensions of devolution to its four nations through the delivery of support to those affected by the virus. Part of the COVID Collection, this topical book explores how the public perception of the decentralized governments has changed during the pandemic and uses case studies to discuss the actions taken by central government to undermine the devolution settlement. Assessing the role of local government in supporting communities despite cuts from central government, it makes a vital contribution to the debate on the future options for the UK within the context of Brexit and what follows.

This book is the official history of British Cabinet Secretaries, the most senior civil servants in UK government, from the post-war period up to 2002. In December 1916 Maurice Hankey sat at the Cabinet table to take the first official record of Cabinet decisions. Prior to this there had been no formal Cabinet agenda and no record of Cabinet decisions. Using authoritative government papers, some of which have not yet been released for public scrutiny, this book tells the story of Hankey’s post-war successors as they advised British Prime Ministers and recorded Cabinet’s crucial decisions as the country struggled through the exhaustion that followed World War II, grappled with a weak economy that could not support its world ambitions, saw the end of the post-war economic and social consensus and faced the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers symbol of Western dominance. It looks at events through the eyes of politically neutral senior civil servants, the mandarins of Britain. It shows how the dramatic foreshortening of timescales and global news have complicated the working lives of those who daily face the deluge of potentially destabilising events – the skills required to see dangers and opportunities around corners, when to calm things down and when to accelerate action; why secrecy is endemic when government comes close to losing control or when political ambition threatens self-destruction. This book will be of great interest to students of British politics, British history and British government.

This book shines a spotlight on the way in which parliamentary scrutiny of regulations provides the primary support for democratic legitimacy for regulations in the UK and Australia. This democratic safeguard is supplemented by public consultation processes. Despite commonly expressed concerns that regulation-making is secretive and undemocratic, it can be recognised to be a democratically sound and important feature of modern law. There are, however, modern practices that remove or limit these safeguards on regulation-making, raising concerns about executive aggrandisement. This book has two aims. The first is to explain the systems of parliamentary scrutiny in the UK and Australia and their historical development. The development of parliamentary checks on regulation-making through the 20th century established the primary basis for the democratic legitimacy of regulations. The second aim is to examine recent developments in regulation-making that avoid or minimise this safeguard. Constitutional changes in the UK, transnational regulation, and emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic have affected regulation-making in a manner that avoids or minimises the parliamentary checks that were carefully developed and implemented in the 20th century. The book contributes to public law in the UK and Australia by analysing recent developments that involve executive over-reach, with reference to the historical development of parliamentary checks on regulation-making.