Abstract: Labour's electoral victory in May 1997 marked the first change in party control of British Government for 18 years. One of the implications of the transition was that only a small proportion of civil servants, almost exclusively among the older, senior cohort, had served under anything other than a Conservative Administration. Even fewer of the incoming ministers had any experience of government. Blair was the first Prime Minister since Ramsey MacDonald to take office with no ministerial experience.1 His first Cabinet did not contain a single individual with previous Cabinet experience.2 The 1997 transition was therefore always going to be a challenge: first, for the new ministerial team with virtually no knowledge of working in Whitehall; and second, for the Civil Service, after such a long period of one-party government. The importance of a successful transition by the core executive, in terms of being able to demonstrate that constitutional propriety had been observed and that the 'seamless web in government' remained intact, cannot be understated. It would allow both sets of actors, ministers and civil servants, to claim the sustained relevance of the Westminster model and so continue to protect their strategic interests and position of asymmetry within the broader policy-making arena (see Chapter 3). Conversely, if the transition revealed a number of serious or problems, then this would have the potential to lead to the unravelling of the model.
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 1
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