ABSTRACT
Ministerial responsibility to Parliament, or more specifically to the House of Commons, is the central principle of the political system. In European countries which have adopted the expectation of ministerial responsibility, the power of the popular assembly to remove ministers has, for most of this century, looked convincing because it has been exercised from time to time. In Britain ministerial responsibility was real, with several government defeats, for some thirty years in the mid-nineteenth century, but then the two parties became more distinct from one another and each became more strongly disciplined. The true meaning of ministerial responsibility looks rather hazy and uncertain. The classical theory of individual ministerial responsibility expressed through resignation, by now threadbare, received a little reinforcement through the resignation of Mr J. Callaghan as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1967.
