Concept
Cabinet Office
Overview
The Cabinet Office is the ministerial department and senior decision-making office of the Government of the United Kingdom, responsible for supporting the prime minister and Cabinet. The Cabinet Office is also the corporate headquarters of the British Civil Service and it is composed of various units that support Cabinet committees and coordinate the delivery of government objectives via other departments. As of March 2026, it had more than 5,385 staff, mostly civil servants, many of whom work in Whitehall and Canary Wharf. Staff working in the Prime Minister's Office, 10 Downing Street, are part of the Cabinet Office.
After becoming prime minister on 20 July 2026, Andy Burnham created an Office for the Prime Minister and Cabinet (OPMC) within the Cabinet Office as part of a reorganisation of the centre of government. The OPMC is led by the Cabinet Secretary, Dame Antonia Romeo, and comprises the Prime Minister's Office at 10 Downing Street, London, the No. 10 North unit at Heron House in central Manchester, and core Cabinet Office functions serving the Prime Minister and Cabinet. It will also contain a new AI Taskforce. Many of the Cabinet Office's remaining functions will be managed by a new "OneGov Delivery Agency" to manage operational services at arm’s length, including the Government Recruitment Service, Pensions, Shared Services, Government Car Service, and Security Vetting.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
There is no necessary incompatibility between this principle and the other. It is easy to give the effective power and the full responsibility to one, providing him when necessary with advisers, each of whom is responsible only for the opinion he gives. In general, the head of a department of the executive government is a mere politician. He may be a good politician, and a man of merit; and, unless this is usually…
John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government
States what Cabinet Office is.
What then is government? An intermediate body set up between the subjects and the Sovereign, to secure their mutual correspondence, charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of liberty, both civil and political. The members of this body are called magistrates or _kings_, that is to say _governors_, and the whole body bears the name _prince_.[1] Thus those who hold that the act, by which a people…
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The social contract & discourses
States what Cabinet Office is.
All the magistrates that are concerned with the ordinary routine of administration are elected by lot, except the Military Treasurer, the Commissioners of the Theoric fund, and the Superintendent of Springs. These are elected by vote, and hold office from one Panathenaic festival to the next. All military officers are also elected by vote. The Council of Five Hundred is elected by lot, fifty from each tribe.
Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution
States what Cabinet Office is.
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of Value (ethics).