Preparation for government by opposition parties or leadership challengers

The UK has had a lot of recent experience of changes of government. But underneath the political drama, these shifts pose real difficulties for politicians and civil servants alike. With new prime ministers taking power almost immediately, they, their political teams and the civil service need to be ready to hit the ground running.

For that reason, preparation – on all sides – is essential. So how do potential governments or prime ministers prepare for transitions of power? What do the civil service do ahead of these changes? And what are the challenges involved for officials, advisers and ministers?

What is a change of government?

A ‘change of government’ can happen in one of two ways. Either a new political party and prime minister takes power after a general election, or the prime minister changes between elections through a change in the leader of the governing party.

The general election route seems more conventional, but since 1945 there have been more changes of prime minister mid-term than those coming in through a general election. Since 2016, changes of prime minister and government through party leadership contests have occurred with great frequency. While the change in these cases is usually less profound (the governing party, after all, remains the same), they can still bring major shifts in government direction. Mid-term changes in prime minister also tend to take place against a backdrop of political turmoil and uncertainty, making effective preparation far more difficult.

What is preparation for government?

When a change of government occurs in the UK, the transition is almost immediate. After general elections the leader of the winning party formally takes power just a few hours after the result is known. There is similarly a very short wait before the prime minister changes through a party leadership election, taking over with a day or so of winning a contest. 

In both cases, both the new prime minister and their wider team take power having just finished a gruelling campaign, during which their every effort and full attention has been on winning. They have typically not had time to properly consider how they would run the country. This makes the UK unusual internationally.  In several other countries (most obviously the United States but also other Westminster systems like Canada), there is a transition period built in after elections.

This is why preparation is important. For opposition parties, it means they must prepare for government well before the election campaign begins. By contrast, the specific pressures involved mean that it is almost impossible for incumbent party leadership candidates to prepare effectively.
 

How is preparation for government organised?

What form any preparation work takes depends mostly on the aspiring prime minister, whether they are leading a party into a general election from the opposition benches or running a campaign to replace a party leader and prime minister in government. All recent opposition leaders and aspirant prime ministers have been central to deciding how much preparation they would do for the role, who they would designate to lead any work, and making decisions that are then taken into government. 

Opposition parties

Since 2010, the main opposition parties have followed a similar pattern of establishing a preparation for government team separate from those leading the election campaign work. This has often focused on coordinating policy work, thinking about potential personnel and particularly considering potential implementation or structural questions on behalf of the future government.

Most opposition leaders have hesitated to focus too much on preparation for government personally. This is partly explained by a reluctance to divert their attention or further resources from the day-to-day work of opposition or of preparing for the election campaign, and partly through fear of being seen to take the election for granted.

Leadership contenders

For many prime ministers taking over mid-term, both the rigours of leadership campaigns and lack of the time, resources and structures compared to political parties in opposition has meant that preparation has often been limited and rushed. Gordon Brown – who succeeded Tony Blair as Labour prime minister in 2007 – had undoubtedly thought about the premiership for years, but did limited formal preparation for his transition to prime minister.

It is only with more recent mid-term changes of prime minister that we have seen slightly more structured approaches by both aspirant prime ministers and the civil service towards a mid-term change. This has included leadership challengers appointing nominated people to lead preparation for them, though multiple people or groups have sometimes conducted such work with limited or unclear licence from the top.

What sort of preparation is undertaken?

The three main areas for incoming prime ministers to consider are structures, people and policies.

• Structures: Incoming prime ministers have significant scope to change the structure of UK central government. This might include changes to departmental portfolios, establishing new public bodies or changes to policy that requires structural change, or changing the structure of No.10 to suit their ways of working. 
   
• People: New prime ministers need to decide who to appoint to a large number of roles. These include well over 100 ministerial roles, and a significant number of positions in No10. A new party in government means an entirely new cabinet and ranks of junior ministers, but even prime ministers whose time in office begins mid-term must decide which ministers will stay in post and which they will change. The scale of change can be seen as either a political statement – rewarding supporters with new or increased portfolios and balancing party factions – or sending a signal on policy shifts.
   
• Policy: Developing the right level of detail for new policy or major policy shifts is one of the hardest tasks facing both oppositions and aspirant prime ministers. Both opposition parties and leadership challengers will come into office facing a range of policies that are already in progress, so have to decide what to continue, change or stop.

What support exists to help potential new governments or prime ministers prepare?

Opposition parties

UK opposition parties receive some resources to help them prepare for government, including financial support (from public funds) for policy development. In the run up to a general election they are also granted ‘access talks’ – confidential discussions with senior civil servants about their plans for government. These help officials to prepare, but the discussions can also be a useful prompt for opposition parties to think through some of their plans in more detail, and spot potential challenges. Crucially however, the civil service cannot provide advice or support during these talks.

Leadership contenders

The nature of mid-term changes in prime minister prevent anything like the level of resources opposition parties can put into preparation. Because leadership contests are purely party matters, there is no public funding or resources provided to help candidates prepare for the possibility of being prime minister, though individuals might receive financial or in-kind donations. 

While a welcome convention is developing whereby leadership candidates are granted access talks when leadership contests have been underway, time constraints mean they are far more limited than those given to opposition parties before an election.

What are the challenges in preparing for government?

Opposition parties

Opposition parties often find it challenging to set aside the necessary time to prepare for government, for the reasons outlined above. But even if they did, they still face significant challenges.

One is the overwhelming information disparity between opposition and government. Government policy is developed with access to a huge amount of research, information and data which is often confidential and only available to the government.

A related factor is access to the civil service. Officials provide the government with expert advice around both the development and implementation of policy, as well as sheer numbers of people to work on it – advice and resources which, again, opposition parties have no access to. It is difficult for the opposition to make implementable policy without these resources, which can lead to challenges and U-turns once in office.

Opposition parties do, however, have time to develop new thinking, build relationships with those outside government and consider political and other trade-offs, if they choose to do so.

Leadership candidates

For potential changes of prime minister mid-term, the ability to prepare is even more challenging. Leadership challengers are potentially contemplating preparation in the midst of a gruelling campaign to lead the party (or win a by-election), and the timetable for preparation can be in the order of weeks, as opposed to the years available to oppositions.

Their resources for preparing are also far more limited. While an opposition party has more stable funding, and the infrastructure of shadow cabinet teams and policy advisers, leadership contenders may only have a small number of staff or supportive MPs. These pressures around time and resources make policy preparation more difficult – candidates are forced to develop policy positions without the time and resources to think them through in detail. They usually do not have the capacity to consider what to do with niche areas of policy, or even with entire portfolios. Even though the change in policy direction is, in theory, less extreme after a mid-term leadership change than following an election, these factors can set up real difficulties for a new prime minister.

Preparing personnel is a further consideration. In theory, opposition parties benefit from having time to think through the shadow team of ministers and advisers they want to take into government. While the roles and necessary skills to succeed in opposition can be quite different to those required in government, opposition leaders will be able to build up a team with the skills and knowledge they want.

This is again very different for leadership campaigns. Aspirant prime ministers don’t have years to build a shadow team and test them in their roles, or for such teams to familiarise themselves with their briefs. While they do typically have a larger pool of ministers and advisers from their party with recent experience in government, a recurrent problem in recent years has been the tendency for leadership candidates to build support by promising, or allowing people to hope for, particular jobs in government. This has led to last minute decisions where candidates have over-promised and do not have sufficient posts to go around. And of course, significant churn in ministers and advisers will mean a larger proportion of the government spending time getting up to speed in their portfolio, reducing time available to implement policy.   

What does the civil service do to prepare?

Before a general election

Ahead of an election, the civil service prepares for a range of scenarios. This is important because of the UK’s practice of changing government almost immediately following an election. Officials must be as well prepared as possible to begin implementing the new government’s policies.

The civil service must balance this need to prepare against their primary duty to serve the government of the day. For that reason only limited preparation – some planning by small numbers of officials in departments and the centre of government – takes place before an election campaign begins. More detailed preparation begins during the campaign. This often focuses on developing first day briefings for new ministers. Permanent secretaries will also begin thinking about changes they may need to make to their departments to meet the policy changes that might occur. For general elections the civil service will, as part of its preparation, look over manifestoes and other public commitments to start thinking about new policy and implications for existing policy.

Access talks can be useful here, ensuring departments understand parties’ priorities and the thinking behind public and manifesto statements of policy. The talks are also crucial for potential ministers to begin developing relationships with the civil servants who would serve them in office.

These preparations are only possible because of the well-understood procedures and conventions that apply before general elections. The range of results that might theoretically be possible before an election requires civil servants to prepare for all eventualities. And the campaign and restrictions on government activity during it change the context for civil servants, providing more time to prepare without neglecting other duties.

During a leadership campaign 

Changes of prime minister mid-term are trickier for the civil service. The procedures and conventions in place for a general election do not apply, and during a leadership contest officials must continue to serve incumbent ministers at full pace. It would be inappropriate for those in departments to start extensively preparing for a potential reshuffle of their ministers. 

Mid-term changes also bring a lack of clarity around policy continuity. Before a general election, civil servants can work on the expectation that all previously collectively agreed policy could change, and a new government starts with a new slate of their own policies. But with a change in prime minister – of the same party – the policy direction will be the same in some areas and different in others, meaning officials may find it far harder to establish whether a particular policy still stands. This, again, makes effective preparation difficult.

We have only recently started to see new conventions being developed around civil service preparation for mid-term transitions. Boris Johnson for example – following the announcement of his resignation – authorised access talks with the two contenders during final stage of the leadership campaign. Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss were provided with factual briefings and talks, and a limited number of civil servants worked on preparation. When the likelihood of Truss’s victory became clear, her access talks developed far beyond what is normal, extending into detailed support for policy development and enabling the civil service to move more quickly once she became prime minister. This was to an extent justified by the circumstances of the energy price shock at the time and the need for immediate action once Truss became prime minister. But it was only possible because some of her incoming ministers – and Truss herself – were already serving in key roles in the Johnson government.

You can read more about our how opposition parties prepare for government in our 2024 report. The Institute also provides a range of guides for ministers and special advisers to help them prepare.