A Prime Minister is the head of government of a country. In most parliamentary systems of government, the prime minister (or ‘premier’) has overall responsibility for running the country and setting policy, as well as selecting cabinet officials to implement their agenda. Prime ministers are usually voted in by parliament, but in some constitutional monarchies and parliamentary republics, a head of state plays a more ceremonial role. It is convention in English-speaking countries to refer to nearly all heads of government as ‘prime ministers’, although in Germany and Austria the position is known as Chancellor and in Japan it is called Minister of the Government and in the Vatican City it is referred to as the Secretary of State.
In the United Kingdom, a prime minister is also First Lord of the Treasury and the Minister for the Civil Service. This gives them the power to appoint the most senior civil servants and ensure that the people in government work together to achieve the policies that the prime minister was elected on.
The prime minister is expected to appear in front of the parliament each week and answer questions from MPs during Prime Minister’s Questions. This is one of the key ways that a prime minister can be held to account by parliament for their actions and policies.
As leader of the party that wins a general election, the prime minister chooses the MPs who will help run the Government. These are known as the cabinet, and their job is to come up with ideas about how the Government should be run. The PM has overall responsibility for how the cabinet works and can reshuffle them at any time. They also set the direction for the whole of the UK’s foreign and domestic policies through their ‘government statement’ which sets out the broad areas that they will be working on.
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