Sir, – I think Finn McRedmond, and many others in recent general media commentary, have been unfair to David Cameron in summaries of his role, and culpability, in the Brexit disaster (“Cameron failed when it mattered. So why is he back?”, Opinion & Analysis, November 16th).
It is generally agreed that he called the referendum to flush out the radical right in the Conservative Party. And of course, there were risks associated with this strategy. However, a key point, often overlooked, was that he counted on the support of the Labour Party to reject Brexit.
Normally this would have been a safe bet. But he was shafted by a wishy-washy Jeremy Corbyn who was, at best, ambiguous on the issue. I have always seen Mr Corbyn as the real culprit. – Yours, etc,
JOHN GRIFFIN,
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Kells,
Co Meath.
Sir, – In his piece about David Cameron’s return to frontline politics, Mark Paul says that Mr Cameron’s elevation to the House of Lords was necessary because “cabinet members must be a member of one of the Houses of Parliament in order to serve in government” (November 13th).
Strictly speaking, members of the UK cabinet need only be members of the Privy Council in order to be appointed.
This body had its origins in the 11th century as a small group of the monarch’s personal advisers, but now consists of 733 members, only a handful of which perform any day-to-day functions. The UK cabinet is simply a sub-committee of the Privy Council, and evolved into its present form during the reign of George I when it was granted much more day-to-day authority. With the arbitrary rule of the Stuarts in the late 1600s still within living memory, the convention arose that, for reasons of accountability and democratic legitimacy, senior ministers should also be members of the Commons or Lords. However, to this day this remains simply an unwritten convention which is not specifically established anywhere in law.
This was illustrated in stark terms in 1963, when Lord Home – a cabinet member and therefore already a member of the Privy Council – was appointed prime minister and disclaimed his peerage in order to seek election as an MP in a by-election, as it was no longer deemed acceptable for a member of the Lords to be prime minister.
As a result, Home held the office of prime minister for 20 days without being a member of either House of Parliament. – Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.