Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 16, 2006

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is the head of Her Majesty's Government and so exercises many of the executive functions nominally vested in the Sovereign, who is head of state. According to custom, the Prime Minister and his or her cabinet are accountable for their actions to Parliament, of which they are members by (modern) convention. The current Prime Minister is Tony Blair of the Labour Party, who has been in office since 1997. As the title suggests, the Prime Minister is the monarch's principal advisor. Historically, the monarch's chief minister might have held any of a number of offices: Lord Chancellor, Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord High Steward, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Privy Seal, or Secretary of State among others. With the emergence, in the 18th century, of government by a cabinet of these ministers, its head came in time to be called the "Prime Minister"; to this day the Prime Minister always also holds one of the more specific ministerial positions, usually that of First Lord of the Treasury, if only in a nominal sense. Sir Robert Walpole is generally regarded as the first Prime Minister in the modern sense. (More...)