Great Offices of State

The Great Offices of State in the United Kingdom are the four most senior and prestigious posts in the British parliamentary system of government.[1][2] They are the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary.[1][3][4] Since 11 May 2010 these posts have been held by David Cameron, George Osborne, William Hague and Theresa May, respectively. According to convention, when the Prime Minister names his or her Cabinet, either after a general election or mid-term reshuffle, the first announced Cabinet ministers will be the Chancellor, Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary, and usually in that order.
James Callaghan is the only person to date to have served in all four positions.[1][5] In the past hundred years, several other people came close to approaching this distinction: Herbert Henry Asquith and Winston Churchill both served as Chancellor, Prime Minister and Home Secretary while Harold Macmillan and John Major served as Prime Minister, Chancellor and Foreign Secretary. Rab Butler and Sir John Simon served as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary. Two of the Great Offices of State have often been held simultaneously by one person, most recently by Ramsay MacDonald, Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary in 1924; Arthur Wellesley, the famous Duke of Wellington, is the only person to have held three of the Great Offices simultaneously, serving as Prime Minister, Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary in the Conservative Provisional Government 1834. If Jack Straw's belief that the Secretary of State for Justice is the fifth Great Office of State (see below) then two other ministers have held three of the offices, Jack Straw himself, as Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and Justice Secretary, and Ken Clarke as Home Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer[6] and Justice Secretary.[6]

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