We have provided an in-depth and detailed investigation into the length of tenure of British ministers. We have examined some of the elements of the job of a British minister and provided some discussion of what British prime ministers look for in their cabinets. We have collected extensive data on the hiring and firing of ministers in the period 1945 to 2007. That data, gathered over several years, records the length of ministerial spells, the background characteristics of those who served in government, and measures of their performance. This is the first book-length study of such micro-level data on British political careers and contributes to a new and engaging literature that looks at issues of accountability in parliamentary democracy in a more extensive and quantitative manner than previously. In analysing that data we have tried to account for the length of tenure of ministers, and provide some new insights into the nature of ministerial accountability.

When looking at the departure of ministers we have done so in two different ways. We examined descriptively the forced departure of ministers either due to disagreements within cabinet, or due to some scandal or other issue. We coded these forced exits into a series of categories which can be considered the proximate reasons for their resignation. The proximate reason is the story behind the removal. In order to get a handle on the proximate reasons for removal we also needed to code for resignation issues that did not lead to a forced exit.