How PM acts like president

• Prime ministers

  • Have become personalised, with prime ministers the focal point
  • Increasingly create strategic space between themselves and other institutions, including the cabinet, Parliament and their own party
  • Increasingly reliant upon their advisors, similar to a US president
  • Seek to act independently of Parliament in foreign affairs, similarly to how a US president takes action without the US Congress
• Prime ministers

  • Theresa May made the 2017 general election about her 'strong and stable leadership'
  • Cameron painted himself as a 'moderniser', out to reform his stuffy party by advocating policies such as legalising gay marriage
  • In his first year as prime minister, Boris Johnson allowed senior advisor Dominic Cummings huge influence over the machinery of government
  • Theresa May's use of the royal prerogative in the 2018 Syria bombings highlighted her preference to act separately from Parliament