No Post Office official in the United Kingdom has power to make a promotion. No one has power to do more than recommend for promotion. Each recommendation for promotion is examined by the surveyor, and is then sent to headquarters, where "a most vigilant check is always exercised, not from the suspicion that there has been favoritism, but in order to secure that favoritism shall not be practised."[286] Ultimately the Postmaster General passes upon every recommendation. Sometimes the action of the Postmaster General is merely formal, and is limited to the mere affixing of the Postmaster General's signature to the recommendation made by the permanent officers of the Department; at other times it is independent, and is preceded by careful consideration of the case by the Postmaster General himself. Whether or not the Postmaster General shall give his personal attention to a recommendation for promotion, is determined largely by the presence or absence of the political element, that is, the temper of the House of Commons. The Postmaster General is not a mere executive officer with a single aim: the efficient administration of his Department. He is first of all an important Minister, that is, one of the aids of the Prime Minister in keeping intact the party following. He must know to a nicety how any given administrative act in the Post Office will affect his party's standing, first in Parliament, and then among the constituents of the Members of Parliament. It is true that no British Postmaster General would convert the Post Office into a political engine for promoting the interests of his party; but it is equally true that no British Postmaster General would for a moment lose sight of the fact that Governments have not their being in either a vacuum or a Utopia, but that they live in a medium constituted of Members of Parliament and the constituents of Members of Parliament.