Government at the Centre

Abstract

The prospect of a change of government in the United Kingdom inevitably leads to speculation about the extent to which the incoming administration will attempt to alter the structure of departments or rearrange the pattern of central government responsibilities. The results of the 1979 general election gave more reason than most transfers of power for such speculation and for a certain nervousness in Whitehall. Margaret Thatcher came to office as a radical prime minister committed inter alia to a reduction in the size of the civil service and to a new search for efficiency in government — a theme which, as one senior civil servant was later to comment, has come to dominate current political debate about the bureaucracy (Wass, 1982). Thatcher also brought with her a reputation for challenging departmental assumptions and was expected to display an inherent distrust of the civil service at the abstract level, though her personal relationships with departmental advisers appear to have been warm. Since 1964 at least, all governments have come to power expecting their policies to conflict with the preferences of the civil service; but the economic and political climate in 1979 was such as to maximise the suspicion between the political and the permanent elements of the administration.