The Prime Ministerial Court: Conservative Statecraft in the Twenty-First Century

Court politics is about who in British government did what to whom, when, how, why, and with what consequences.

In The Prime Ministerial Court Rod Rhodes provides a thorough depiction of the court politics of the Conservative governments of the twenty-first century, namely the courts of David Cameron, Theresa May, and Boris Johnson. Exploring specific topics, including the courtiers, the prime minister’s craft, reshuffles, resignations, and leadership challenges, and the political games and feuds in the court between ministers, advisers, and civil servants, Rhodes concludes that the British government has a new Establishment in which the skills of ’knavery’ abound. He finds evidence of betrayal, revenge, lying, scandals, and bullying with such machinations oiled by gossip, humour, and alcohol.

Analysing the everyday practice of the ’dark arts’ by the British political and administrative elite, each chapter includes a short case study of the court in action, covering the education wars, the 2018 election, and the Covid-19 crisis. Each case illustrates the personal, electoral, and governmental consequences of court politics.

Rhodes warns that there are more and more knaves, decency is in decline, and British government needs ’rules for rulers’. Above all, he cautions citizens - ’beware, here be dragons’.

R. A. W. Rhodes, Professor of Government and Director of the Centre for Political Ethnography, University of Southampton

Rod Rhodes is Professor of Government at the University of Southampton, Director of the Centre for Political Ethnography, and the author or editor of over 45 books. His most recent publication is Comparing Cabinets (with D. Grube and P. Weller, Oxford University Press 2021). He previously served as editor-in-chief of Public Administration and currently edits the Political Ethnography book series for Manchester University Press. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in both Australia and the UK. In 2015 the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) awarded him their biennial Lifetime Achievement Award for his ’outstanding contribution to all areas of political science, and the exceptional impact of his work’.