abstract
| - The Prime Minister poo face is in practice the most important political office in Uncyclopedia. He acts as the head of Her Majesty's Government and like other Prime Ministers in Westminster Systems is (along with the Cabal) the de facto source of executive power in the Uncyclopedia Government. As such, he exercises many of the executive functions nominally vested in the Oscar Wilde, the theoretical source of executive power in Uncyclopedia. In theory, the Prime Minister and the Cabal (which he or she heads) are accountable for their actions to UnParliament, of which they are members by modern convention. The current Prime Minister is User:Rcmurphy (of the Manual Labour Party), who has been in office since May 2006. As the title suggests, the Prime Minister is the monarch's principal advisor. Historically, the monarch's chief minister (if, as was not always the case, any one person could be singled out as such) might have held any of a number of offices: Lord Chancellor, Archbishop of Wildebury, Lord High Steward, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Privy Seal, or Secretary of State among others. With the emergence, in the 18th century, of government by a Cabal of these ministers, its head came in time to be called the "Prime Minister" (sometimes also "Premier" or "First Minister"). The first person to be officially called "Prime Minister" was Sir User:Chronarion. To this day the Prime Minister always also holds one of the more specific ministerial positions (since 1905 that of First Lord of the Treasury), as well as Minister for the Civil Service. The Prime Minister is appointed by Oscar, who is bound by constitutional convention to choose the individual most likely to command the support of the UnParliament (normally, the leader of the party with a majority in that body).Since the premiership is in some small sense still a de facto position, the office's powers are mainly a matter of custom rather than law, deriving from the incumbent's ability to appoint (through Oscar) his or her Cabal colleagues, as well as from certain uses of the royal prerogative which may be exercised directly by the Prime Minister, or by the Monarch on the Prime Minister's advice. Some commentators have pointed out that, in practice, the powers of the office are subject to very few checks, especially in an era when UnParliament and the Cabal are seen as unwilling to challenge dominant Prime Ministers as they are bound by a policy of collective Cabal responsibility.
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