Talk:Wellington caretaker ministry

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Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Is there any evidence that Wellington was official the Secretary of State (as per the old pre1660 use of the term) as opposed to just holding all the ministerial offices with that in the title? Timrollpickering 19:58, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don't have any direct evidence, but technically there is only one office of Secretary of State, the departmental affixes being used simply to distinguish between its several holders (see Secretary of State (United Kingdom)). If all the departments are headed by the same person, as is the case here, this distinction becomes unnecessary. The original source I used when beginning this article, British Historical Facts 1830-1900 by Chris Cook and Brendan Keith (Macmillan, 1975) says in a footnote to Wellington's listing as Secretary of State in this government: "Constitutionally speaking, the appointment of one Secretary of State is sufficient, since each Secretary of State has full power to transact the business of any or all the departments into which the office is divided." For what it's worth, Wellington's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography reads "With Peel absent in Italy, the duke was sworn in as first Lord of the Treasury and secretary of state on 17 November to act as temporary head of a new government until his colleague's arrival three weeks later. He then [my italics] became foreign secretary." Opera hat 16:07, 19 September 2007 (UTC)Reply

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Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

'I suggest that this article should be renamed 'Wellington caretaker ministry', by analogy with Churchill caretaker ministry. See also Talk:List_of_British_governments, paragraph 1 - 'Articles that cover the ministries of one PM should be titled “Name ministry”, e.g. Major ministry.'

Alekksandr (talk) 20:11, 13 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Clicking on this page just now is literally the first time I have ever heard this referred to as the "Wellington caretaker ministry" - indeed it always used to be a matter of debate whether it really qualified as a ministry at all or whether it was just Wellington going into the office once a day to test-fire the boiler and pick up the mail. As for the brief Churchill ministry of May - July 1945, "the Caretaker Ministry" was a mildly derogatory nickname imposed by its opponents, which stuck because the ministry was so short-lived. Despite a lot of lazy assertion by writers who haven't looked into it, I've never found anybody focussing on the matter in hand who states that Churchill was asked to form "a caretaker ministry". He was just asked to form a government.Paulturtle (talk) 02:11, 5 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

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