Nitpick: Australian Prime Ministers aren’t elected. They are invited to become PM by the Governor-General on the basis that they can command the confidence of the House of Representatives, and can get their legislation through Parliament.
Whitlam’s problem was that he couldn’t get essential legislation - the budget - through Parliament. Hence, the Governor General dismissed him and invited the leader of the opposition to take the job, on the basis that the leader would immediately advise a dissolution of Parliament and would seek a mandate in the ensuing election. Which is what happened.
Ok, but what does the Commons “winning” entail with regard to Edward? The Commons can’t stop the marriage, can it?
I don’t see how the precedents of William IV or James II affect anything with Edward. If Baldwin resigns, then wins a new election, ok–he’s PM. Edward’s still king. Baldwin refuses to form a gov’t so Edward asks someone else. Big whoop. Is your argument that NO ONE would form a gov’t for Edward?
And James II fled to France. Parliament didn’t dethrone him as much as he dethroned himself. I can’t imagine Edward facing a similar fate–Wallis was not Catholic, nor was she in a position to produce Carholic heirs to the throne.
I’ve always thought if Edward had let the “Constitutional Crisis” play out, he would’ve kept his girl and his throne.
If Baldwin wins the election with a majority, there’s nobody else able to form a government without convincing some of his MPs to join. But why would Baldwin’s MPs defect and join a pro-marriage government when they’d just fought and won an election on the issue of opposing the King’s marriage?
Why would they have to defect to avoid that? The opposition, in this scenario, doesn’t have the votes to actually govern. If Baldwin is returned with a majority, he can keep any other government from governing so long as he keeps his majority in line.
If the Commons passes a resolution (not a law) by a large majority, in which they “regret” the suggestion that HM may contemplate marrying a twice divorced foreigner and states that it would not be good for the nation, then Edward is staring right down the cliff of acting against the express wishes of the democratically elected House. If he were to go ahead and marry in that situation, he would be putting his throne in jeopardy, because the basic duty of the monarch is to respect the wishes of the popularly elected House.
Baldwin would not be PM. Winning a majority in the Commons doesn’t make him PM. The King has to appoint him. And the King can’t force him to become PM. If Baldwin has a majority in the Commons, but refuses to become PM if the King won’t take his advice on the marriage issue, then no-one else can realistically form a government. If the King appointed someone else as PM who had a minority in the Commons, but who is willing to agree to the marriage, and Baldwin moves non-confidence in the government because of the marriage issue, then the government is defeated, and there have to be new elections.
Neither James II, nor his heirs, ever agreed that he had abdicated. The Convention declared the throne vacant and offered it to William and Mary, on the condition they agree to the Bill of Rights. They did, and Parliament’s declaration that the throne was vacant became law. That precedent establishes that Parliament, not the monarch, decides who will be the monarch.
It could as a coalition. Or fine, Parliament refuses to pass laws. How does that force the king to do anything? Have ANOTHER election. If the electorate continues to return to office a party that refuses to act, then no laws are passed. The people’s will prevails–no functioning Parliament.
If he goes ahead and marries Wallis when the divorce is final in April 1937, which would probably have come after express advice from both government and parliament not to do so, they pass a resolution regretting that the King, by his flagrant disregard for the church’s teachings on the indissolubility of Christian marriage, has fallen out of communion with the Church of England and has therefore ceased to be King. Baldwin convenes a council, summons the Duke of York, and has him proclaimed King. Edward can try to raise an army willing to fight his former Parliament and his own brother, or he can get on the boat to France and sulk. This was in a climate where people were reluctant to go to war against Adolf Hitler who was carving up Europe at his pleasure. Why would they fight Stanley Baldwin over a divorced woman?
From what I’ve heard, the opposite was true. Edward was very eager to be King and felt that he should have real power.
In fact, I think it’s possible that this was the real unspoken issue behind the abdication. Edward wanted to exercise more power than Parliament wanted to grant him. And Edward had political views that were not in agreement with Parliament. So there was the basis for a major domestic crisis, which nobody wanted to deal with in 1936 when there were major international crises on the horizon.
The solution was to push Edward out for a non-political reason. That way Parliament could get rid of the individual monarch who was a problem without having to rock the boat on the institution of the monarchy.
I realize that. But the situation with James II did NOT set a precedent that Parliament can remove the monarch and pick a new one, which seemed to be what you were suggesting.
To form a coalition, you need a majority of the votes. If Baldwin has a majority in the Commons, the coalition fails as soon as he moves non-confidence.
The government has to have the control of the Commons.
If the King triggers two separate elections, both fought on the issue of whether he should marry Wallace, and the people vote for the anti-Wallace party both times, and the King still insists on marrying Wallace, then he is declaring himself above Parliament and above the democratic will of the people.
He loses his throne, because the British monarchy has to respect the democratic process.
There is a pretty good BBC miniseries called “Monarchy” available on Netflix that starts with the earliest days of Britian (with Aethelbert), getting you through the Norman conquest, the Lancesters and Yorks, the Tudors, Cromwell, and up to the Hanoverians (when the series ends). Britian’s monarchy was always rather tribal and feudal - until Cromwell and then it really became much more ceremonial. By tribal and feudal I mean that it was John’s barons who made him sign the Magna Carta - it sure wasn’t his idea, it wasn’t unusual to get overthrown by your second cousin if he could get enough nobles with armies behind him, and so making sure that you ruled in such a way as to not piss off enough of your own nobility with an army has always been a thing - or was until Cromwell made it sort of moot. In Britain, you simply didn’t rule without consent. Or you’d find yourself fielding an army and buried under a car park in Leicester.
When George III went mad the first time, there was no law allowing for a regency, and passing such a law would require his assent which he was in no condition to give. So they decided that if they needed to, they’d basically just forge it, by having the Lord Chancellor affix the great seal to an instrument assenting to the bill even though the King never approved such an action. That wasn’t really legal, but they needed to figure something out, because things were going to grind to a halt with no regent. (When George III suddenly recovered, the bill was abandoned as unnecessary, but he agreed that their plan would have been correct had he remained ill.)
ETA: Come to think of it, they could try this on an abdication act, I suppose.
Okay, so what does he do about it? If he doesn’t have the support of anyone willing to force others to recognize his authority, his belief that the law says he’s king ultimately matters no more than the views of American tax protesters who are dead certain that the 16th Amendment was never ratified.
There is ultimately no magic force that compels society to continue obeying inconvenient laws, if that’s what you’re looking for.
Sure it did. By the law prior to 1688 and the Convention, James was the King. After the passage of the Bill of Rights by the Parliament, with the assent of William and Mary, James was not the King. He never agreed to that, but it didn’t matter: Parliament had decided he was no longer king.
There’s legally binding, and politically binding. If the King is defying Parliament and the people, Parliament and the people will find a way to get rid of the King, just as they did with James II.
None of the steps which resulted in James getting the boot were legal, in the sense that they followed the established law:
A convention was summoned, consisting of the Commons and the Lords. However, it was not Parliament, because the King, James, had not summoned it.
The Convention passed the Bill of Rights, declaring the throne vacant, and presented the Bill to William and Mary, offering them the throne if they would accept the terms of the Bill of Rights. That was not a law, because the Convention was not Parliament and King James did not assent to it.
William and Mary accepted the terms of the Bill of Rights.
The Convention declared them to be joint monarchs.
As joint monarchs, they retroactively declared the Convention to be a Parliament and the Bill of Rights to be a law.
It was an extraordinary process, not according to the established legal norms, but the end result was that James ceased to be King of England, against his will.
Where you lose me is at “He loses his throne.” I get that he has made himself wildly unpopular, perhaps even hated, but I don’t understand the process for his removal, against his wishes.
LF’s claim that a group of ministers can declare the Supreme Governor of the C of E out of communion with the Church seems unlikely to me. Where’d they get THAT authority?
The problem is ULTIMATELY it is up to the British people and not the Commons. What if the people believe that as distasteful the marriage was that it was not worth removing the Monarch over?
I was just speculating as to how it might go down. It could happen other ways too. But the point is that it could happen, even if there’s some strict legalism that says it’s impossible. Call it a coup if you want.