Introduction

Abstract

There is a substantive body of academic work on British Prime Ministers, with regular chronologically organised and thematically driven books being published, including notable contributions from Peter Hennessy (2000), Richard Rose (2001), Michael Foley (2000) and Dick Leonard (2005). In recent years, academics working on British political leadership have developed new areas of focus in terms of the career trajectory of British Prime Ministers. Recognising the famous comment of Anthony King in the aftermath of the fall of Margaret Thatcher that the role of Prime Minister is ‘a party job before it is a government job’ (King, 1991: 25), there has been a growth in academic research on party leadership selection (see, for example, Denham and O’Hara, 2008; Heppell, 2008a, 2010a). In addition to the increasing emphasis on how they acquire access to the party leadership and thereby the opportunity to be Prime Minister, such research also places a considerable focus on the ejection process. With this in mind, an interesting addition to the Prime Ministerial studies literature has been the recent study by Kevin Theakston on how former Prime Ministers utilise their status and influence once they leave Downing Street (Theakston, 2010).