This article disaggregates some of the debates that underpin claims that prime ministers have become too powerful. Since conventions are ambiguous and there is no constitutionally valid job description, prime ministers in Westminster systems can largely determine what they want to do and how they do it. They always did; the tests are political, not constitutional. The argument that prime ministerial government has replaced cabinet government presents a false dichotomy as prime ministers work through cabinet as often as they act individually. The idea that modern prime ministers seek power in a way that their predecessors did not ignores the evidence of history; the accusations are as old as the prime ministership. Technology indeed allows them to do things their predecessors could not, but the drive to power can be found in the history of prime ministers in every country and in every age.