Cameron came to office in May 2010 promising that decisions would no longer be made in secretive inner circles which bypassed the full cabinet. The cabinet would be restored to its textbook role at the heart of government. As Anthony Seldon has argued, ‘Cameron was…clear that his premiership would see a return to formal cabinet government’.
David Cameron came to power having famously declared that he was the ‘heir to Blair’. Cameron certainly sought to emulate Blair’s election-winning machine. However, in one crucial area at least, he tried to distance his premiership from Blair’s. He came to power promising a return to cabinet government. He rejected Blair’s ‘sofa government’ style of decision making and also sought to distance himself from Gordon Brown’s chaotic style of leadership. Under Cameron the cabinet would discuss issues of substance, and advice would be sought from the traditional civil service. He would be merely a chairman of the (cabinet) board, rather than an all-powerful chief executive.
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