The Ethos of the Cabinet Office: A Comment on the Testimony of Officials

Abstract

Anthony Seldon’s description of the Cabinet Office in Chapter 6 conveys very accurately the formulations of those he has interviewed. But his methods fall short of providing a full explanation of the Cabinet Office’s position in British government. As he points out, interviewers are at the mercy of informants who unself-consciously project an official self-image. They need to find ways of decoding the information they are given. By taking a longer time scale than the first eight years of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership it should be possible to find a way of interpreting the material collected.