How small could the Cabinet be?

By Mark Pack | Thu 4th June 2009 - 11:52 pm

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It looks like Gordon Brown might be finding it a bit hard to persuade people to serve in the Cabinet. But good news for him, there’s plenty of historical precedent of small Cabinets. George Grenville in the mid-eighteenth century had a Cabinet of just nine, whilst the Fox-North coalition of the late eighteenth century managed with only seven. So that’s Gordon, Ed Balls and er…

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5 Comments

Terry Gilbert 5th Jun '09 - 12:06am

Tee hee!
Methinks government had a bit less to do in those days, Mark!
Kasch 5th Jun '09 - 12:23am

Alan Sugar!!!
Tom Papworth 5th Jun '09 - 12:49am

Terry has a point.

We could return to just four departments (Treasury; Foreign; Home; Defence) and be free of about 20 politicians and around 400,000 civil servants!
Frank H Little 5th Jun '09 - 12:54am

From Parkinson’s Law, the chapter named “Directors and Councils”: “Somewhere between the number of three (when a quorum is impossible to collect) and approximately twenty-one (when the whole organism begins to perish), there lies the golden number. The interesting theory has been propounded that this number must be eight. Why? Because it is the only number which all existing states [as of 1961] have agreed to avoid. Attractive as this theory may seem at first sight, it is open to one serious objection. Eight was the number preferred by King Charles I for his Committee of State. And look what happened to him!”
Huw Dawson 5th Jun '09 - 1:02am

There were 5 members of the WW2 War Cabinet – Churchill, Atlee, Bevin and two others.

Darn my inability to remember political facts at 1am!