Collective ministerial responsibility

CMR

• Gov’t ministers agree decisions are taken collectively and should be supported in public by all ministers

• If they don’t feel they can defend such decisions in public (even if disagreeing in private) should resign or be sacked

Anneliese Dodds 2025

• Resigned as International Development Minister

• Disagreed w/Starmer’s decision to cut foreign aid budget by 0.2% of GDP that would then go towards defence budget

Vicky Foxcroft 2025

• Resigned as Labour Whip as couldn’t support cuts to welfare

Robert Jenrick 2023

• Resigned as Immigration Minister

• Protest at gov’t immigration policy, especially 🇷🇼 (which he didn’t feel was tough enough)

Robin Cook 2003

• Senior L minister, former Foreign Sec

• Disagreed with decision to go to war in 🇮🇶 w/out resolution from UNSC

  • Gave speech from backbenches outlining his reasons

Lord Frost 2021

• Previous SPaD to BoJo and was responsible for Brexit (been given peerage to sit in Cabinet)

  • Resigned over gov’t plans to introduce Plan B COVID restrictions

Lord Agnew 2022

• Resigned as Treasury Minister

  • Thought that gov’t was failing to adequately deal with fraudulent claims by companies for COVID-19 relief

Number of ministers that resigned over Brexit due to CMR (under May)

36

David Davis

• Resigned as Brexit Sec

• Leave during campaign but was side-lined by May and withdrew after Chequers Plan

Boris Johnson 2018

• Resigned as Foreign Sec over Chequers Plan

• Disagreed with detachment from 🇪🇺 economic rules (thought it should be more)

• Pushed CMR boundaries, e.g. wrote Daily Telegraph column in 2017 and laid out vision of Brexit different to that of May

Wes Streeting 2025

• Reigned as Health Sec due to loss of confidence in Starmer

  • Had pushed CMR, with word on the street being a possible leadership challenge (provoking the traitor/faithful comment)

Number of resignations over Party/pinchergate in July 2022

62 out of 179 members of extended gov’t

4 examples of suspension of CMR

1. Brexit Referendum (both 1975 and 2016)

2. Coalition gov’t

3. Free votes in HoC

4. To appease some ministers

2 examples of suspension of CMR on bills

1. Assisted Dying Bill

2. Same-Sex Marriage Bill (Owen Paterson and David Jones (cabinet ministers) voted against)

CMR during Coalition

• Relaxed/set aside

  • LD Business Sec (Cable) criticised C immigration, economy and Europe policies

CMR during Brexit Ref (2016)

• 5 Cabinet members actively campaigned to leave

  • If Cameron enforced CMR it would have necessitated a sig prop of cabinet resigning/being sacked

May and BoJo

• May made BoJo Foreign Sec because he was a big beast

  • He criticised her policies in the media but because of his popularity she couldn’t sack him

4 strengths of CMR

1. Can be flexible

2. Reinforces fact of Cabinet Gov’t

3. Encourages joined-up thinking as departments have to consider impacts of their policies on other depts

4. Encourages debate behind closed doors and not hashing it out in the media (e.g. removing free lateral flow tests Sunak/Javid)

4 limits of CMR

1. Many leaks — can brief against each other and maintain plausible deniability (e.g. Brown and Blair)

2. Some ministers are too powerful to sack (Brown)

3. Again only at discretion of PM and would harm if just sacked everyone

4. Based on convention so cannot be scrutinised by Plmt