The Prime Minister is the head of government of a country. As such, he or she leads the Cabinet and the council of ministers (and has real authority over them), chairs the Council of Ministers, and is ultimately responsible for the overall performance of the Government. The prime minister is also, in principle, the only person who can advise the monarch to dissolve Parliament and call an election, although political reality, conventions and the Constitution sometimes limit this power.
Until the late eighteenth century, however, it was not always clear that there was a permanent office of prime minister and its status varied over time. The term first appeared on official documents during Benjamin Disraeli’s administration and was not formally recognised as an office until 1905, when it was given a place in the formal order of precedence. In 1917, the Prime Minister was officially recognised as residing at Chequers with the enactment of the Chequers Estate Act.
Prime Ministers often hold other ministerial posts, including Minister for Civil Service and the Ministry of Defence. They are also usually Privy Counsellors, although Sir Alec Douglas-Home became Prime Minister without holding that honour on his appointment in 1963 (the last person not to be a Privy Counsellor was Ramsay MacDonald in January 1924).
In addition to these ministerial responsibilities, Prime Ministers have traditionally used their influence and powers to oversee specific policy areas. For example, Margaret Thatcher personally intervened to introduce changes in Britain’s football stadiums such as the use of steel cages to pen crowds, which were later abandoned after the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. In this way, the role of a Prime Minister has been to manage the delicate balance between political and policy concerns.