Philip inherited a medieval tax administration that was inadequate for the new imperial role. All revenue collection was delegated to private individuals and controlled after the fact by powerful royal accountants. These resisted all Philip’s attempts to modernize the procedures.

In Chapter 5, the development of industrial power and its influence on government reveals the strong impact of technological determinism, which favors the protection of industry as an inapt proxy for human well-being.

Government is inevitably a key actor in the co-management of renewable natural resources. However, government is not monolith and many parts of government and the state may be involved in co-management, including multiple government ministries, local as well as central government, the judiciary and police. This chapter considers the roles of government in co-management and how these are influenced by political ideology on the size and remit of government. The chapter examines how the concepts of state and bureaucracy have been defined and how bureaucrats, referred to as ‘street-level bureaucrats’, involved in policy implementation have been associated with interpreting and adjusting policy and legislation. The chapter introduces the related concept of ‘interface bureaucrats’, referring to officials at the level of decentralized government navigating the government–citizen interface. Implications of insights on the role and nature of central and local government for the practice and outcomes of co-management are identified.

An overview of the topics addressed in fourteen original chapters investigating Leviathan’s relation to others of Hobbes’s works and its distinctive treatments of governance, law, liberty, motivation, and religion.

Our task was not helped by the fact that the civil service had been prevented by the Cameron government from making any preparations for a leave vote. In fact, the civil service and No. 10 generally were still in a state of shock. The only real European policy experts all came from the ‘Remain’ side of the fence. While their professionalism was not in doubt, it was clearly going to be a huge task for them to pivot to embrace the new reality of the UK’s changed status with the EU. It wasn’t long before the UK’s long-serving Ambassador to the EU, Ivan Rogers, was moved on. His expertise was never in question, but in the weekly meetings with the Prime Minister in her study behind the Cabinet Room, he barely sought to disguise his dismay at the UK’s decision. Treating Brexit as a problem to be managed rather than an opportunity to be seized was never going to go down well with the Brexiteers still drunk on their own success. What Ivan saw as pragmatism, the Brexiteers saw as pessimism. He quickly became public enemy number one and was swiftly replaced.

Contrary to many libertarian arguments, the Declaration does not manifest hostility to government. Many of its complaints are that the British had provided too little government, not too much. It also makes repeated arguments about how the king and parliament had violated the British constitution. The Declaration’s deepest commitment is to constitutional government and the rule of law. “Under Law” is a better description of the nation’s founding than the “Under God” that was later added to the Pledge of Allegiance.

On the night of 23 June 2016, gathered together in the Thatcher Study at No. 10, the Cameron team saw the results in. I sat next to the Prime Minister, David Cameron; his daughter, Nancy, in her pajamas and cuddling a favourite toy, was under the round oak table made purposely to seat the G8 leaders at Lough Erne. ‘Dad, we are losing,’ said Nancy, as the results began to trickle and then pour in. Around 2am, when Sunderland declared a decisive result for Leave (61 per cent to 39 per cent), the trend was clear. John Curtice called it for Leave – who won by 52 to 48 per cent – roughly 17 million to 16 million (600,000 votes between the two) with a strong turnout of 72 per cent. At 3am, Cameron gathered a small group of us in his Den; it was game over. The answer to the question of whether the British people wanted to stay in the European Union was ‘no’. The decision to give them that choice was made by Cameron in a speech made at Bloomberg HQ on 23 January 2013, unleashing one of the most divisive periods we have known.

Civil service headcount expanded, but, as it grew, relationships between civil servants and ministers deteriorated and individual civil servants became targets as perceived blockers to true Brexit. Stasis in decision-making in Theresa May’s carefully balanced Cabinet degenerated into public disagreements between ministers as collective responsibility disintegrated. Ministerial churn accelerated. Ministerial frustration at Parliament’s refusal to pass any sort of Brexit agreement under the May government boiled over, and judges found themselves in the firing line as the process of exiting was litigated. The devolved governments were reminded that conventions were just that, without legal force. Northern Ireland suffered two Executive collapses in the Brexit period, the second a direct result of Brexit tensions, which left it governed by civil servants for half the time between 2017 and 2024. Under Boris Johnson, ministers went further – prepared to embarrass the Queen over the prorogation that the Supreme Court eventually found unlawful, introducing legislation to allow them to break international law and flirting with breaking domestic law.

It started with good intent; the battleground a different and older Union and an earlier referendum in 2014 over Scotland, not Europe. I didn’t see this at the time, but think if it hadn’t come hot on the heels of the Independence Referendum the civil service would have taken a different and more careful approach in 2016. We would have been more protective of the principle of impartiality and seen the EU Referendum as the deeply political and divisive vote that it turned out to be. It had been okay in Whitehall to express a view in the Scottish Referendum – we wanted the Union to stay together. So, just as we were happy in September 2014, people were upset at the result in June 2016. It was normal to express views in the open that leaving the EU would have grave and damaging consequences, especially economically, as it had been normal in 2014 to say the same about Scotland. For both the commonplace presumption was that the people who had voted to leave had not understood how things worked. We rolled from default remain to default remain.

The Leave vote gave voice to those whose dissatisfaction had been muted by the rules of UK electoral politics. It represented, amongst other things, a howl of protest from people who had given up on the political process and who turned out to demand that they should no longer be overlooked. In so doing, they transformed our politics. The referendum catalysed a division in British politics which, while not new, had hitherto not structured party competition decisively. That role had been played by class. As Peter Pulzer famously put it, ‘class is the basis of British party politics; all else is embellishment and detail’. However, the 2016 vote saw similar proportions of left- and right-wing voters opt for Leave (52% and 48%, respectively). People were divided not by class but by social outlook, with 72% of social conservatives but only 21% of social liberals voting to leave.

Parliament is the central institution of UK democracy. It is both a representative body, reflecting the diverse views of the nation, and its senior decision-making forum. In the years after the Brexit referendum, when both the public and the governing party were deeply divided, Parliament struggled to navigate these representative and decision-making roles. The arguments, both inside Parliament and about Parliament’s role, were frequently heated and controversial. Many Brexiteers had argued in favour of boosting Parliament’s sovereignty, and yet the institution emerged battered and bruised from the process – having been repeatedly maligned, shut down by a Prime Minister and reinstated by the Supreme Court, and described as ‘broken’ on the opening page of the 2019 Conservative manifesto. This chapter explores how such contradictions came about. It concludes that the blame laid at Parliament’s door by campaigners, journalists and politicians was often unfair, and damaging of public trust. The Brexit process left much rebuilding to be done.

Perhaps the greatest turning point for Parliamentary involvement in the Brexit process was the 2017 general election. Having won an unlikely majority in 2015, Cameron bequeathed to May a relatively functional dynamic in Parliament. But, tempted by artificial sentiment in polling, May and her team decided to call the 2017 election in an attempt to secure a greater popular mandate for her administration. That decision was fatal. The prior polling was erroneous, or at the very least misread the public appetite for an election, and the campaign May ran was self-defeating. The loss of the Conservative majority at the election left May in the treacherous position of needing a confidence and supply deal with the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Even in normal times, the instability of such an arrangement creates complications and often disaster for the ruling party. When you add in the unique circumstances of Brexit, plus the fact that the Northern Irish questions in Brexit were the most difficult and contentious elements of the negotiations, May’s dependence on the DUP was fatal.

The Introduction begins with a short paragraph of conventional views about the Declaration, drawn from legal and historical writings, and argues that everything in this paragraph is wrong. It argues that when we get the Declaration wrong, we get America wrong, and we need to get America right. It then provides an overview of the major themes of the book.

This chapter explores a number of key principles and concepts dealt with in the Commonwealth government’s National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. The chapter’s central focus is the impact and continuing effects that past ‘assimilation’ policies have had on the contemporary circumstance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It also explores the Inquiry’s observations regarding the meaning and intent of genocide, the notion of self-determination and the vexed question of Aboriginal ‘identity’.

There are many facets to the historical context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education in Australia, from the ways in which knowledge was transferred prior to invasion through to the deliberate withholding of information from all Australians. When we refer to Indigenous education in Australia, we must remember that this is both for and about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This chapter therefore discusses the historical context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education, beginning with how knowledge was transferred prior to invasion. Several ‘case studies’ – early evidence of First Nations children’s academic capabilities immediately following invasion – are cited in terms of the ‘grand experiment’, followed by reference to the inclusion/exclusion of Aboriginal children using the oft-quoted phrase ‘clean, clad and courteous’. The chapter then moves past the infamous exclusion of Aboriginal children to the formation of the National Aboriginal Education Committee, which so heavily influenced a change in the political landscape, to involvement in curriculum development, and discusses some of the strategies, plans and policies that have been put in place.

The Framers’ overarching theories for the control of faction included representation as a filter of popular passions, union, and an extended republic to limit the influence of factions by multiplying the number of distinct and competing interests, and divided sovereignty between the state and national governments. The theory of representation was familiar from their British heritage, but their theories of an extended republic and divided sovereignty between the national and state governments diverged from accepted political principles of the eighteenth century.