Continuity of Government, Continuity Of The State.

The Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been admitted to hospital, and since moved to an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) after becoming affected by the COVID-19 virus. This has meant that he is temporarily unable to carry out his duties as Prime Minister, causing the Foreign Secretary to stand in as the temporary PM.

This has led to a raft of speculation about what this means for UK national security, much of it rather unhelpful. The purpose of this short article is to try to calm nerves and set context around this delicate issue.

There is perhaps some confusion around the relative amount of power the Prime Minister has, versus a President or other Government Head. It is in fact surprisingly limited, and members of their Government are central to getting work done.

It is often not realised the extent to which UK Cabinet Ministers enjoy a surprising amount of autonomy and ability to get things done that sit within their department. This power is vested in them and they can exercise it without necessarily having to go the PM for approval – for example Ministers can authorise bugging operations, approve clandestine intelligence missions, authorise air strikes that will kill people, endorse the deployment of military assets and approve the Rules of Engagement that will determine whether UK military personnel can open fire or not.

They do this on the basis of good advice from their Civil Servants, who will set out recommendations, options and suggestions on what to do. But the decision on what to do within their department rests with them and them alone – the power is staggering.

On a daily basis the Prime Minister will play little to no direct part in the operation of departments or the practical execution of the functions of state. They are too busy leading the Government, trying to set a broad policy vision or embracing the Machiavellian world of politics by leading their party.

It is better to think of the PM as someone who issues direction and lets their Ministers get on with it using the machinery of Government to make it happen. Occasionally they will take a more direct interest – for example through using the National Security Council as a policy making organisation to consider broader strategic questions and how they impact the future national position.

These set piece events though are very much about bringing together Whitehall in a collegiate manner to discuss how to shape policy in the broadest sense, and are not about the PM speaking to an assembled throng of Ministers with little notebooks waiting to take down his guidance. Where the PM cannot make it, others can, and do, chair on his behalf.

This is the key thing here – every part of the Whitehall machinery is replaceable in some way by a stand in, a deputy or someone who can take charge and carry on. For example, COBR is nominally a very senior decision taking body that can be chaired by the PM – but if the Prime Minister isn’t available, then other Ministers are empowered to act on behalf of the Government and take decisions then and there that commit the Government to acting.

While the PM not being available is disruptive, in some ways it is no different to the holiday season when Ministers of all departments routinely travel away and business is conducted as usual – there are arrangements in place to ensure that business can continue, even if at a lower pace than before, and the system does not break down.

The Prime Minister is not a President – his word, although it carries weight, does not act as the final say on the matter, for a successful Prime Minister leads through collegiately working with their Cabinet. Government works because it is not reliant on the individual as a single point of failure – if the Prime Minister is indisposed, the British Government can, and does, continue as before.

The UK system of government is not so much about vesting power in one person to the detriment of others. Rather a good Prime Minister is not the captain of the football team, leading their group to victory on the pitch – instead they are the teams manager, appointing people to different posts, letting them play to their preferred style, and setting an overall vision of strategy and success in order to win. The risk of course is that when things go badly, any number of the team, the fans and the management board can intervene to fire the Manager…

So while there is perhaps understandable concern that the PM being in hospital puts the UK in a leaderless position, the reality is that this is very much business as usual from a governance perspective. Military operations continue unabated, decisions continue to be taken, and the work of Government continues to resolve the COVID-19 crisis.

One area where particular concerns were raised was over that most delicate of subjects , namely ‘who has their finger on the nuclear trigger’? The UK, unlike other nuclear powers has long practised a very British approach to nuclear command and control. The Prime Minister is not the President of the United States – (s)he is not followed at all times by an aide with a ‘football’ able to order the use of nuclear weapons. There is no lengthy constitutionally approved chain of command succession ensuring that in the event of a crisis there is someone able to approve a launch (cue the show Designated Survivor).

Instead the PM is perhaps the only head of Government who has to request the launching of nuclear weapons (in a terribly British way the PM requests, the Chief of the Defence Staff gives the legal order to fire). Indeed over the years the UK has had a fairly fatalistic attitude towards who actually makes the request at all – in the Cold War it was widely expected that the PM and senior war cabinet would be wiped out in London during any nuclear exchange.

It is perhaps curious to consider that in the most critical of all functions of the State, the Cabinet Office fully expected to not have the actual Prime Minister alive in order to carry out that role in person.

In the mid 1960s during the run up to war, certain Ministers were expected to be dispersed to locations like Strike Command in High Wycombe, or the bunker in Corsham (often referred to as BURLINGTON). The expectation was that even with London wiped out, there would be sufficient time for the stand in Prime Minister to release the V-Force to embark on a one way mission. At least one Prime Minister (Macmillan) nominated the two Ministers in question as ‘First & Second Gravedigger’.

Later, as it was clear that the existing structure of bunkers would not survive, the UK developed a system called (initially) PYTHON which saw small groups of lowly Ministers dispersed across the UK to various obscure locations ranging from Highland Castles to Aberystwyth University accompanied by a small signal detachment able to, in a crisis take on the mantle of Prime Minister and ensure that an appropriate response could be made. In the event of a nuclear attack, the groups would seek to establish communications and find out who was left and which surviving Minister had been anointed Prime Minister.

PYTHON was (probably) formally abandoned at the end of the Cold War but for decades there were always lists of Ministers held in the most secure of safes in 70 Whitehall, containing the PM’s nominations of otherwise unremarkable ministers whose final role in life would to be that of stand in Prime Minister to launch a nuclear strike. One of the better known likely occupants of this role seems to have been the MP and former editor of the Daily Telegraph, Bill Deedes, who at one stage was reportedly likely to have gone to the West Country as a stand by Prime Minister.

There is a curious irony at the moment that one of the likely PYTHON locations was intended to be at sea on both the Royal Yacht, and also the aviation training ship RFA ENGADINE, who was replaced by RFA ARGUS. That ARGUS should be at sea now, on her way to the West Indies to provide medical support in the region reminds us that she may well have been intended to provide a very different safe haven indeed at one stage in her career.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

As an ultimate last resort, every British SSBN has deployed with letters in a small safe handwritten by the Prime Minister of the day, setting out the instructions on what they are to do in the event that  a nuclear attack appears to have occurred, and they cannot make any contact with any surviving authorities over a sustained period. Then they are to open the safe, read the Prime Ministers note (hopefully being able to understand the handwriting – not always a given based on some PM’s writing!) and then act in accordance with their wishes.

No Prime Minister has ever stated what those letters said, but what is reassuring to think though is that even in the most darkest of cases, the State will find a way to ensure continuity of control. This matters because there is perhaps a sense in some quarters that people feel that the UK is somehow strategically rudderless and unable to cope without the presence of the PM able to do his or her job. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, it is surprising that people assume that the UK state is so vulnerable as to be at risk from the destruction of a single individual. As anyone who has followed Yes Minister over the years would know, in Government, one thing is certain – the State will always endure…

Sir Humphrey: There has to be somewhere to carry on government, even if everything else stops.

Hacker: Why?

Sir Humphrey: Well, government doesn't stop just because the country's been destroyed! I mean, annihilation’s bad enough without anarchy to make things even worse!

Hacker: You mean you'd have a lot of rebellious cinders.