This blog post examines the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit 2001 to 2005, which was created during Tony Blair’s premiership. The Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit acted as a nexus of power between No.10 and Whitehall.
The Downing Street Policy Unit[i] has been part of the inner workings of British government for half a century. It was created by Prime Minister Harold Wilson in March 1974.[ii] All successive prime ministers have retained the Policy Unit, adapting …
On 5th July 1948 the National Health Service was established in the United Kingdom. Britain was the first western country to offer free at the point of use medical care to the whole population.[1] Seventy-five years on the NHS continues …
An early task of any new Prime Minister is to familiarise themselves with the UK's intelligence agencies – the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS/MI6), Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the Security Service (MI5). Yet, for all the interest they may have …
In March 1962 a secret report landed on the desks of senior officials in the Foreign Office. Written by Foreign Office Historian Rohan Butler it was a forensic and critical account of the loss in 1951 of Britain’s single biggest …
Professor Jonathan Conlin of The Lausanne Project explains how that "most superior person" (as he was described by contemporaries at Oxford) met his match at Lausanne 100 years ago. Of all the treaties negotiated in the wake of World War 1, …
By Dr Michelle Clement, Researcher in Residence at No.10 Downing Street Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-reigning monarch in British history, celebrates her Platinum Jubilee this week. Festivities will be held across the country to mark the Queen’s incredible …
We’ve got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs. We’ve got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it. “This thing” as British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin put it, was the Atomic Bomb. Bevin was quoted …
The most that we can say is that we have made the best of a bad bargain, not that we have got a fair deal (Prime Minister Edward Heath, 1 September 1971) Fifty years ago, Ambassadors representing the 4 Occupying …
The principles set out in the Atlantic Charter eighty years ago remain key to the global vision shared by the UK and US. But its terms also contained the roots of international tensions that persist today: for example in relation …
Sixty years ago simmering Cold-War tensions were dramatically brought to a head in Berlin. A new volume of documents from the FCDO Historians tells how Britain responded to the crisis brought about by the construction of the Berlin Wall. In the …