[4] The OED credits Francis Bacon in his Essays (1605) with the first use of "Cabinet council", where it is described as a foreign habit, of which he disapproves: "For which inconveniences, the doctrine of Italy, and practice of France, in some kings' times, hath introduced cabinet counsels; a remedy worse than the disease".

[4] There were ministries in England led by the chief minister, which was a personage leading the English government for the monarch.

Despite primary accountability to the monarch, these ministries, having a group of ministers running the country, served as a predecessor of the modern perspective of cabinet.

Both he and George II made use of the system, as both were not native English speakers, unfamiliar with British politics, and thus relied heavily on selected groups of advisers.

[6] The total number of Cabinet ministers who are entitled to a salary is capped by statute at 21, plus the Lord Chancellor, who is paid separately.

[7] Some ministers may be designated as also attending Cabinet, like the Attorney General,[8] as "...it has been considered more appropriate, in recent times at any rate, that the independence and detachment of his office should not be blurred by his inclusion in a political body – that is to say the Cabinet – which may have to make policy decisions upon the basis of the legal advice the law officers have given.

[citation needed] The Cabinet is the ultimate decision-making body of the executive within the Westminster system of government in traditional constitutional theory.

This interpretation was originally put across in the work of 19th-century constitutionalists such as Walter Bagehot, who described the Cabinet as the "efficient secret" of the British political system in his book The English Constitution.

The political and decision-making authority of the cabinet has been gradually reduced over the last several decades, with some claiming its role has been usurped by a "prime ministerial" government.

In recent governments, generally from Margaret Thatcher, and especially in that of Tony Blair, it has been reported that many or even all major decisions have been made before cabinet meetings.

[citation needed] The combined effect of the prime minister's ability to control Cabinet by circumventing effective discussion in Cabinet and the executive's ability to dominate parliamentary proceedings places the British prime minister in a position of great power, that has been likened to an elective dictatorship (a phrase coined by Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone in 1976).

[22] The classic view of Cabinet Government was laid out by Walter Bagehot in The English Constitution (1867) in which he described the prime minister as the primus-inter-pares ("first among equals").

[24] Graham Allen (a government whip during Tony Blair's first government) makes the case in The Last Prime Minister: Being Honest About the UK Presidency (2003) that the office of prime minister has presidential powers,[25] as did Michael Foley in The British Presidency (2000).

[24][23][27] The current cabinet is led by the newly appointed Prime Minister Keir Starmer and succeeded the Sunak ministry.