An acting Prime Minister is a Cabinet member (often in a Commonwealth nation) who is serving the role of prime minister, whilst the individual who normally holds the position in unable or unwilling to do so. The role of Acting Prime Minister is often performed by the Deputy Prime Minister. The office is also commonly used when the prime minister is absent from the territory of that nation. An Acting Prime Minister should not be confused with a caretaker prime minister, which refers to an outgoing prime minister following an electoral defeat, and who by convention does not implement new policies or an Interim Prime Minister who is appointed to perform a similar role to a Caretaker Prime Minister, but who is typically not a prime minister at the time of being appointed.
Read more about Acting Prime Minister: Statutory Authority
Famous quotes containing the words prime minister, acting, prime and/or minister:
“Being prime minister is a lonely job.... you cannot lead from the crowd.”
—Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925)
“We are always acting on what has just finished happening. It happened at least 1/30th of a second ago. We think we’re in the present, but we aren’t. The present we know is only a movie of the past.”
—Tom Wolfe (b. 1931)
“And this must be the prime of life . . . I blink,
As if at pain; for it is pain, to think
This pantomime
Of compensating act and counter-act,
Defeat and counterfeit, makes up, in fact,
My ablest time.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“He had a gentleman-like frankness in his behaviour, and as a great point of honour as a minister can have, especially a minister at the head of the treasury, where numberless sturdy and insatiable beggars of condition apply, who cannot all be gratified, nor all with safety be refused.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)