Humphrey was a cat employed as the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office at 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, from October 1989 to 13 November 1997.
The Number 10 Policy Unit is an elite body of policymakers based in 10 Downing Street, providing policy advice directly to the British Prime Minister. Originally set up to support Harold Wilson in 1974, it has gone through a series of guises to suit the needs of successive prime ministers, staffed variously by political advisers, civil servants and more recently a combination of both.
Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. On his resignation he was appointed Special Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East, a diplomatic post which he held until 2015. He has been the executive chairman of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change since 2016. As prime minister, many of his policies reflected a centrist "Third Way" political philosophy. He is the only living former Labour leader to have led the party to a general election victory; and one of only two in history to form three majority governments, the other being Harold Wilson.
The principal private secretary to the prime minister of the United Kingdom is a senior official in the United Kingdom Civil Service who acts as principal private secretary to the prime minister of the United Kingdom. The holder of this office is traditionally the head of the Prime Minister's Office in 10 Downing Street. In the Civil Service, the role is currently graded as director general.
The Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL) is an advisory non-departmental public body of the United Kingdom Government, established by John Major in 1994 to advise the Prime Minister on ethical standards of public life. It promotes a code of conduct called the Seven Principles of Public Life, also known as the Nolan principles after the first chairman of the committee, Lord Nolan.
The Downing Street chief of staff is the most senior political appointee in the Office of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, acting as a senior aide to the prime minister, a powerful, non-ministerial position within Her Majesty's Government.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), formerly the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), is the UK Government department for housing, communities, local government in England and the levelling up policy. It was established in May 2006 and is the successor to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, established in 2001. The department shares its headquarters building, at 2 Marsham Street in London, with the Home Office. From summer 2021, 500 members of staff and civil servants will start to relocate to Wolverhampton as the department prepares to be first UK government department to have a headquarters based outside of London. It is hoped the move will be completed by 2025. It was renamed to add Housing to its title and changed to a ministry in January 2018, and later reverted to a government department in the 2021 reshuffle.
Mark Regev is an Israeli diplomat and civil servant who is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies. In September 2021, Regev started a weekly column in the Jerusalem Post. In June 2020, he became the Prime Minister's Senior Advisor for Foreign Affairs and International Communications in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office. He previously was the International Spokesperson for the Prime Minister's Office from 2007 to 2015. Regev was also Ambassador of Israel to the United Kingdom from 2016 to 2020.
"Enemies of the People" was the headline to an article by the political editor James Slack, published in the British newspaper Daily Mail on 4 November 2016. The headline and associated article were about the three judges who had ruled that the UK Government would require the consent of Parliament to give notice of Brexit. The headline was widely criticised as being inappropriately condemnatory and attracted numerous complaints, given that the British judiciary is independent of the Government. The court had ruled on the question of whether the Constitution of the United Kingdom permitted the government to use the royal prerogative to invoke Article 50.
Joseph Edmund Johnson, Baron Johnson of Marylebone, is a British politician who was Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation from July to September 2019, as well as previously from 2015 to 2018. A member of the Conservative Party, he was Member of Parliament (MP) for Orpington from 2010 to 2019. He currently sits in the House of Lords. His older brother, Boris Johnson, has been Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since 2019.
Mark Philip Sedwill, Baron Sedwill, is a British diplomat and senior civil servant who served as Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service to Prime Ministers Theresa May and Boris Johnson from 2018 to 2020. He also served as the United Kingdom National Security Adviser from 2017 to 2020. He was previously the United Kingdom's Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010 and the NATO Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan in 2010. He was the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office from February 2013 to April 2017.
Jeremy John Heywood, Baron Heywood of Whitehall, was a British civil servant who served as Cabinet Secretary to David Cameron and Theresa May from 2012 to 2018 and Head of the Home Civil Service from 2014 to 2018. He served as the Principal Private Secretary to Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from 1999 to 2003 and 2008 to 2010. He also served as Downing Street Chief of Staff and the first Downing Street Permanent Secretary. After he was diagnosed with lung cancer, he took a leave of absence from June 2018, and retired on health grounds on 24 October 2018, receiving a life peerage; he died two weeks later on 4 November 2018.
The National Security Adviser (NSA) is a senior official in the Cabinet Office, based in Whitehall, who serves as the principal adviser to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Cabinet of the United Kingdom on all national security issues. The NSA post was created in May 2010 as part of the reforms that also saw the creation of the National Security Council. There have been five holders of the office to date, of whom two served more than three years in the post.
The Downing Street Press Secretary is an adviser to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on news media and how to manage the image of the British government to the press. The position is part of the Prime Minister's Office and involves using information on what is happening in the UK and around the world, to decide on how the Prime Minister should present his or her reaction to the media. The incumbent also advises on how to handle news stories and other information which could affect the current Prime Minister or the Ministry.
The Downing Street Director of Communications is the post of Director of Communications for the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The position is held by an appointed special adviser.
Simon Case is a British civil servant who is the current Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service since 9 September 2020, succeeding Sir Mark Sedwill.
James Slack is a British political advisor and journalist who served as Downing Street Director of Communications for Prime Minister Boris Johnson between January and March 2021.
Susan Gray is a British civil servant who in May 2021 became Second Permanent Secretary in the Cabinet Office, reporting to the Minister for the Cabinet Office.
The powers of the prime minister of the United Kingdom come from several sources of the UK constitution, including both statute and constitutional convention, but not one single authoritative document. They have been described as "...problematic to outline definitively."
Partygate is an ongoing political scandal surrounding gatherings or parties of United Kingdom government and Conservative Party staff that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, when there were public health restrictions that prohibited specified types of gatherings. While several lockdowns in the country were in place, reported social gatherings occurred at 10 Downing Street, its garden, and other government buildings. Starting in December 2021, these attracted substantial media attention, public backlash, and political controversy.
