Sir Robert Walpole - The First British Prime Minister. Born in August 1676 at Houghton Hall in Norfolk England, and once spending some time in the Tower of London, Walpole is regarded as the first Prime Minister for the Whig party serving between 1721 to 1742.
Earl of Liverpool, Tory, 1812 - 1827 Liverpool is the second longest serving prime minister in British history (after Robert Walpole), winning four general elections and clinging on to power despite a massive stroke that incapacitated him for his last two years in office.
There is no specific date for when the office of Prime Minister first appeared, as the role was not created but rather evolved over a period of time through a merger of duties.
In 1803, William Pitt the Younger, also a Tory, suggested to a friend that "this person generally called the first minister" was an absolute necessity for a government to function, and expressed his belief that this person should be the minister in charge of the finances. William Pitt the Younger addressing the House of Commons.
In 1905, the post of prime minister was officially given recognition in the order of precedence. Modern historians generally consider Sir Robert Walpole, who led the government of Great Britain for over twenty years from 1721, as the first prime minister.
Today often viewed as the first British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole was described by contemporary opponents as the 'Screen-Master General', adept at pulling all the political strings. He was First Lord of the Treasury for over twenty years, an unusually long period in office by any standard.
Academic opinionPrime MinisterPartyTenureWinston ChurchillConservative1940–1945 1951–1955Clement AttleeLabour1945–1951Anthony EdenConservative1955–1957Harold MacmillanConservative1957–196318 more rows
Winston ChurchillWinston Churchill was an inspirational statesman, writer, orator and leader who led Britain to victory in the Second World War. He served as Conservative Prime Minister twice - from 1940 to 1945 (before being defeated in the 1945 general election by the Labour leader Clement Attlee) and from 1951 to 1955.
Sirima Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike (Sinhala: සිරිමා රත්වත්තේ ඩයස් බණ්ඩාරනායක; Tamil: சிறிமா ரத்வத்தே டயஸ் பண்டாரநாயக்கே; 17 April 1916 – 10 October 2000), commonly known as Sirimavo Bandaranaike, was a Sri Lankan politician.
Winston Churchill, in full Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, (born November 30, 1874, Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England—died January 24, 1965, London), British statesman, orator, and author who as prime minister (1940–45, 1951–55) rallied the British people during World War II and led his country from the ...
May 1940In May 1940, he became Prime Minister, replacing Neville Chamberlain. Churchill formed a national government and oversaw British involvement in the Allied war effort against the Axis powers, resulting in victory in 1945. After the Conservatives' defeat in the 1945 general election, he became Leader of the Opposition.
Arthur Neville Chamberlain FRSArthur Neville Chamberlain FRS (/ˈtʃeɪmbərlɪn/; 18 March 1869 – 9 November 1940) was a British politician of the Conservative Party who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940....Neville Chamberlain.The Right Honourable Neville Chamberlain FRSPreceded byStanley BaldwinSucceeded byWinston Churchill33 more rows
Winston Churchill is forever remembered for his contributions as Prime Minister (PM) during World War II. On May 10, 1940, with the Germans attacking western Europe, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigned and King George VI asked Churchill to become Prime Minister and form a government.
Anthony EdenThe Right Honourable The Earl of Avon KG MC PCPreceded byWinston ChurchillSucceeded byHarold MacmillanLeader of the Conservative PartyIn office 6 April 1955 – 10 January 195746 more rows
Tōjō was the prime minister of Japan during most of the Pacific War. He was one of the architects of Japan's expansionist policies in Asia and directed Japan's military efforts during its earliest and most successful campaigns.
Potential activities: Students research the term 'policy of appeasement' in the 1930s as linked to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain before the outbreak of the Second World War.
University Study Portal. Search. HOME : PRIME MINISTER. Sir Robert Walpole – The First British Prime Minister. Born in August 1676 at Houghton Hall in Norfolk England, and once spending some time in the Tower of London, Walpole is regarded as the first Prime Minister for the Whig party serving between 1721 to 1742.
He entered King’s College, Cambridge in April 1696, but his university education was cut short by the death of his eldest brother in 1698. Walpole returned to Norfolk, now the heir, to learn how to manage the family estates and married the daughter of a wealthy timber merchant, Catherine Shorter, soon afterwards.
This return to office coincided with the serious financial crisis following the South Sea Bubble and Walpole played an important role in restoring government credit. His skill in retaining office when George I died in 1727 was noteworthy in an age when a new monarch typically meant a new administration.
Walpole was appointed First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1715, but followed his brother-in-law and political mentor, Charles, 2nd Viscount Townshend, into opposition in 1717 when the Whigs split.
The Tory government elected in 1710 targeted Walpole: he was found guilty of corruption and briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1712, becoming a Whig martyr in the process. The accession of the Hanoverian King George I in 1714 returned the Whigs to power.
Sir Robert Walpole, first Earl of Orford, was born on 26 August 1676 at Houghton in Norfolk. His father, another Robert, was a prominent Norfolk landowner and MP. Robert junior was admitted to Eton in 1690, becoming a King’s Scholar. He entered King’s College, Cambridge in April 1696, but his university education was cut short by the death ...
Walpole’s father had been a Whig, a supporter of the 1688 to 1689 ‘Glorious Revolution’ which gave Britain a constitutional monarchy. Robert junior inherited those views, although he was also perceived as a political moderate and an efficient administrator. His political rise was swift.
In the late 1730s, Spain became a subject of debate in press and Parliament partly due to the refusal of the South Sea Company to pay its debts to the Spanish government in exchange for its right to trade in enslaved Africans with the American colonies (‘the asiento’).
The Whig Party supported this new constitutional form of monarchy, and generally promoted intellectual liberalism and commerce, while the Tories tended to be more royalist and concerned with protecting the interests of the landed elites.
The Tory opposition united under a banner of expansionist, imperial patriotism, which they claimed was standing up for mercantile and commercial interests. Walpole was committed to avoiding war, but unable to effectively manoeuvre thanks to a hostile press whipped up by this jingoistic sentiment.
In 1733, keen to keep taxes low for landowners to gain their votes (something several members in his own party resented), Walpole drove through an Excise bill that would shift the tax burden for the government to trading communities.
Thanks to his deft handling of the financial and political crisis that followed the bursting of the South Sea Bubble in 1720 and the extensive corruption it had exposed, Walpole was largely able to shield the government and the South Sea Company from much of the fall out 2.
He remains the longest holder of this office, serving 21 years, and left a lasting impression on the role he helped to shape and secure to the British constitution. It was to Walpole that the Downing Street premises (originally three houses) were first offered by George II, and Walpole only accepted on the condition that they be a gift to ...
It has become known as the ‘Age of Party’, when a two-party parliamentary system emerged following the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, when the Catholic James II was removed from the throne and replaced with his niece, the Protestant Mary II and her husband, the Dutch prince William of Orange.
The first English Parliament was convened in 1215, with the creation and signing of the Magna Carta, which established the rights of barons (wealthy landowners) to serve as consultants to the king on governmental matters in his Great Council.
By this time, citizens were given the power to vote to elect their representatives—the burgesses—to the House of Commons. In 1414, Henry IV’s son, Henry V , assumed the throne and became the first monarch to acknowledge that the approval and consultation of both houses of Parliament was required to make new laws.
On a local level, “moots” were meetings of local bishops, lords, sheriffs and, importantly, commoners who were representatives of their counties or “shires.”. These institutions functioned—with varying degrees of success—as law-making bodies and law enforcement agencies throughout England during the Middle Ages.
Parliament’s Humble Beginnings. The present-day Parliament is a bicameral (“two chambers”) legislature with a House of Lords and a House of Commons. These two houses, however, weren’t always joined, and had their earliest beginnings in the Anglo-Saxon council governments of the 8th century. The Witan was a small council ...
During Henry IV’s time on the throne, the role of Parliament expanded beyond the determination of taxation policy to include the “redress of grievances,” which essentially enabled English citizens to petition the body to address complaints in their local towns and counties.
Four years later, at the English university town of Oxford, the noblemen who served in Parliament at the time drafted the “Provisions of Oxford,” which called for regular meetings of the legislative body, composed of representatives from each of the counties.
However, the House of Lords does play a role in government accountability, through its questioning of cabinet ministers and the formation of special committees to address important matters of state. Its members are now mostly appointees, not peers who inherit their seats in the House of Lords.
The only peer ever to do so and become prime minister was Douglas-Home, formerly the 14th Earl of Home, who assumed the office when Harold Macmillan retired due to ill health. He was the first prime minister in the post-war period not to win his own mandate (be elected or re-elected by popular vote).
Earl of Liverpool, Tory, 1812 - 1827. Liverpool is the second longest serving prime minister in British history (after Robert Walpole), winning four general elections and clinging on to power despite a massive stroke that incapacitated him for his last two years in office.
Asked what he was doing these days, Baldwin replied: 'I am the prime minister.'. Having come to power following Andrew Bonar Law's resignation, he called an election in the hope of gaining his own mandate (election by popular vote), but lost. Andrew Bonar Law, Conservative, 1922 - 1923.
The introduction of the 1867 Reform Act made Derby's third term as prime minister a major step in the true democratisation of Britain. The Act extended the vote to all adult male householders (and lodgers paying £10 rental or more, resident for a year or more) living in a borough constituency.
This coalition of socialist groups would win two seats in the 1900 general election and 29 seats in 1906. Later that same year, the LRC changed its name to the Labour Party. Despite failing health, Salisbury agreed to stay on to help Edward VII manage the transition following the death of his mother, Queen Victoria.
Britain's first female prime minister came to power with the country descending into industrial and economic chaos. A relatively inexperienced politician, she nonetheless adopted a personal style of indomitable self-confidence and brooked no weakness in herself or her colleagues. Derisively dubbed the 'Iron Lady' by the Soviet press, she wore the moniker with pride. Her government's free-market policies included trade liberalisation, deregulation, sweeping privatisation, breaking the power of the unions, focus on the individual and the creation of an 'enterprise culture'. 'Thatcherism' has had a profound and lasting economic and social impact on Britain, and still sharply divides opinion to this day. The first PM to serve three consecutive terms (including two 'landslide' victories) she was eventually toppled by her own party following the disastrous imposition of a 'poll tax'. Nonetheless, she is generally considered to be one of the best peace time prime ministers of the 20th Century.
MacDonald went to the king, George V, to proffer his resignation. George suggested MacDonald to try and form a 'national government' or coalition of all the parties. (This is the last recorded direct political intervention by a British monarch.)
Strictly speaking, the first prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was William Pitt the Younger. The first prime minister of the current United Kingdom, i.e. the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, was Bonar Law, although the country was not renamed officially until 1927, ...
Modern historians generally consider Sir Robert Walpole, who led the government of Great Britain for over twenty years from 1721, as the first prime minister. Walpole is also the longest-serving British prime minister by this definition. However, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was the first and Margaret Thatcher the longest-serving prime minister ...
For the next three years, the government was headed by Lord Townshend, who was appointed Secretary of State for the Northern Department.
By the late Stuart period, the Treasury was often run not by a single individual (i.e., the Lord High Treasurer) but by a commission of Lords of the Treasury, led by the First Lord of the Treasury. The last Lords High Treasurer, Lord Godolphin (1702–1710) and Lord Oxford (1711–1714), ran the government of Queen Anne.
Bath was invited to form a ministry by George II when Henry Pelham resigned in 1746, as was Waldegrave in 1757 after the dismissal of William Pitt the Elder, who dominated the affairs of government during the Seven Years' War.
Bottom left: Margaret Thatcher was the first female prime minister. Bottom right: Boris Johnson is the current prime minister. The prime minister of the United Kingdom is the head of the Government of the United Kingdom, and chair of the British Cabinet. There is no specific date for when the office of prime minister first appeared, ...
However, the term was regularly, if informally, used of Walpole by the 1730s. It was used in the House of Commons as early as 1805, and it was certainly in parliamentary use by the 1880s. In 1905 the post of prime minister was officially given recognition in the order of precedence.
Lord Fredrick North – Led Great Britain into the American War of Independence (1775). Although blamed for Britain’s subsequent defeat, many of the military operations were hampered by infighting within the British high command in North America. Tory.
Prime Ministers of Great Britain. The Prime Minister is the political leader of the United Kingdom and is the head of the Government. So far there have been 14 Prime Ministers during the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, some more than once.
The official residence of the Prime Minister of Britain is 10 Downing Street, London. Sir Robert Walpole – Restored confidence in the country following the South Sea Bubble financial crash of 1720. Dominated the political scene during the reigns of George I and George II. George II made Walpole a gift of 10 Downing Street.
Tory. Sir Robert Walpole, Lord North, William Pitt The Younger. 1763-65. George Grenville – The introduction of the Stamp Act of 1765 imposed a direct tax on the British colonies and plantations in America, one of the sparks that would help ignite the American War of Independence.
The conflict however, was not going well and so with deadlock in the trenches, Asquith resigned. David Lloyd George – The only Prime Minister to have spoken Welsh as his first language, Lloyd George accepted an invitation to form a government following the resignation of his fellow Liberal, Asquith.
He was in office at the time of The Great Exhibition of 1851. Whig. 1852. Edward Smith Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby – Considered by many to be the father of the modern Conservative party, his government collapsed when the budget of his Chancellor, Benjamin Disraeli, was rejected by the house.
1835-41. William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne – Returning to office for the second time, Melbourne found the new Queen Victoria much more agreeable than William IV. Tutoring the young queen in the ways of politics, they formed a close relationship. He resigned after a series of parliamentary defeats.
Having given the Catholic Church its marching orders, he was worried that the Catholics would not go quietly. To stop the Welsh coming under their influence, he decided Wales would be ruled by England.
Ireland also had its own parliament from the 13th Century. In 1542, Irish MPs decided that whoever was king of England should also be king of Ireland. They kept their parliament going though.
It was also prompted by the failure of a colonial venture in central America, which left Scotland bankrupt and in need of money - even if it was English cash. The 1707 Act of Union brought England and Scotland together - with one king and no more Scottish Parliament. Scottish MPs and Lords made their way down to Westminster. But there were complaints, elegantly summed up by Robert Burns, that Scotland had been "bought and sold for English gold".
He annexed Scotland and Ireland into a full union with a single parliament at Westminster. The 1654 parliament was the first one in which the whole of Britain was represented. But Cromwell dissolved it pretty quickly when MPs refused to do his bidding.
The 1707 Act of Union brought England and Scotland together - with one king and no more Scottish Parliament. Scottish MPs and Lords made their way down to Westminster. But there were complaints, elegantly summed up by Robert Burns, that Scotland had been "bought and sold for English gold".
The Scottish referendum looks set to bring change to the UK Parliament. But Westminster has seen plenty of that over the past 900 years.
Some barons got fed up with Henry III - not least because of his failed, expensive battles in Wales. The ambitious Simon de Montfort sidelined Henry and made himself ruler. De Montfort was a big fan of Parliament. The one in 1265 was the first to involve "ordinary" folk - knights, not just the super-rich.
However, this appellation is traditionally given to Sir Robert Walpole, who became First Lord of the Treasury of Great Britain in 1721.
For the various personages who presided over the government of England and subsequently Great Britain at the pleasure of the monarch, usually with said monarch's permission, prior to the government under Robert Walpole as Prime Minister in 1721, see List of English chief ministers .
The Tories were in power for almost 50 years, except for a Whig ministry from 1806 to 1807. Lord Liverpool was prime minister for 15 years; he and Pitt held the position for 34 years. Under their long, consistent leadership, Cabinet government became a convention of the constitution.
They were given a reserved place, called the Treasury Bench, to the Speaker's right where the prime minister and senior Cabinet members sit today. The Revolutionary Settlement gave the Commons control over finances and legislation and changed the relationship between the executive and the legislature.
Beginnings of the prime minister's party leadership . Political parties first appeared during the Exclusion Crisis of 1678–1681. The Whigs, who believed in limited monarchy, wanted to exclude James, Duke of York, from succeeding to the throne because he was a Roman Catholic.
During the first 20 years of his reign, George III (1760–1820) tried to be his own "prime minister" by controlling policy from outside the Cabinet, appointing and dismissing ministers, meeting privately with individual ministers, and giving them instructions. These practices caused confusion and dissension in Cabinet meetings; King George's experiment in personal rule was generally a failure. After the failure of Lord North 's ministry (1770–1782) in March 1782 due to Britain's defeat in the American Revolutionary War and the ensuing vote of no confidence by Parliament, the Marquess of Rockingham reasserted the prime minister's control over the Cabinet. Rockingham assumed the Premiership "on the distinct understanding that measures were to be changed as well as men; and that the measures for which the new ministry required the royal consent were the measures which they, while in opposition, had advocated." He and his Cabinet were united in their policies and would stand or fall together; they also refused to accept anyone in the Cabinet who did not agree. King George threatened to abdicate but in the end reluctantly agreed out of necessity: he had to have a government.
Thus, the convention that sovereigns do not attend Cabinet meetings was established primarily through royal indifference to the everyday tasks of governance. The prime minister became responsible for calling meetings, presiding, taking notes, and reporting to the Sovereign.
The political groupings that became the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party emerged from a 19th century realignment of the Whig and Tory parties that developed from the cleavages surrounding the English Civil War (1642-51) and the Glorious Revolution (1688).
This opened up the possibility of a political party oriented toward the working class. The Labour Party was founded in 1900, universal male and partial female suffrage followed in 1918 and equal female suffrage in 1928.
The most recent U.K. general election, in May 2010, took place with an electorally untested prime minister and in the context of the fallout from the war in Iraq and the global financial crisis. Historically, few U.K. parties have led governments as long as Labour had, and when those parties lost power, they tended to lose big. One might have thought the Conservatives were set up for a massive victory. But the Conservative vote and seat count had been depressed since 1997, and even with a gain of nearly 100 seats, the Conservatives secured only 306 on 36 percent of the vote, short of the 326 needed for a majority. Whereas in the 1950s and 1960s, disaffected voters might have swung from Labour to Conservative and back, across the 2005 and 2010 elections, the Liberal Democrats and other parties gained more than the Conservatives.
But the Conservative vote and seat count had been depressed since 1997, and even with a gain of nearly 100 seats, the Conservatives secured only 306 on 36 percent of the vote, short of the 326 needed for a majority.
The Labour government lost seats in by-elections triggered by member of Parliament retirements and deaths and by 1979 no longer had a majority. In March, the government lost a vote of confidence by a single MP, and a new election was called, bringing in a Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher.
Beginning in 2011, the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP), advocating exit from the European Union and a substantial reduction in immigration, began to rise, from winning 3 percent of the national vote in the 2010 election to polling at 15 percent in mid-2013 to consolidating that level of support through 2014.
political system looked a lot more like the U.S. political system than it does today; the two-party system began to break down in the 1970s.