The British system provides for a government cabinet in which the prime minister is, at least in theory, first among equals

Over Thatcher's 11 years in power, critics complained that cabinet government became something of a private joke. - there was the wonderful contemporary joke

"The Thatcher cabinet are sitting in a restaurant. The waiter asks Margaret Thatcher for her order and she replies "Raw Meat". The waiter then asks "And for the vegetables?" to which Thatcher replies "Oh, they'll have the same".

Many of the strongest personalities left, driven out by her insistence on personally controlling policy until, in the end, she was left with a cabinet that was far less experienced and
usually reluctant to contradict or challenge her.

Historian Martin Gilbert, author of an eight-volume biography of Churchill.wrote of her
``Both of them (Thatcher and Churchill) also understood that the essence of leadership was to choose a course of action you knew to be the right one and stay with it, and not try to achieve compromise in order to have an easy ride whether in cabinet or Parliament "

Nevertheless, during WW2 Churchill was very much still a part of a wartime cabinet as released documents demonstrate.

There have been many assertions that Thatcher 'destroyed' the cabinet system creating a much more presidential figure.

Blair stepped neatly into these shoes and probably suceeded in putting the final nail into the coffin of 'first amongst equals' whose methods were described by Barbara Castle, a former minister, as

- no minister presented any policy to Cabinet.
Instead, Mr Blair drew up his own version and discussed it with the minister and departmental civil service head.
An agreement would be thrashed out "and then they railroaded it through Cabinet"

With the deliberate destruction of cabinet government so we get Thatcherism, Blairism etc....