1952, actually.
http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/snapshots/dismissal/timeline.aspx
From the National Archives Timeline of 11 November 1975
This is true.
The “bedchamber crisis” is complicated, but the young Victoria essentially blocked the choice of the Commons from becoming Prime Minister.
After that, she married a man who was more in favor of keeping the monarchy out of politics than she was, although still not totally:
Victoria deserves tremendous credit for making Britain (and Canada, and Australia) true constitutional monarchies. This seems forgotten today. Could it be because her greatness consisted in giving up power, and that fits poorly into a feminist narrative? I’m sure there are other factors.
Like most monarchies the British and predecessor English monarchy has always been a sliding scale of power. In some measure, even Queen Elizabeth II has wielded some degree of power in her more than half-century on the throne. There are many decisions she makes, for example in what manner she fulfills her ceremonial duties, in what manner she directs her philanthropic activities and etc she can generate a great deal of attention for things. Far beyond what a private citizen could do, without the constant glare of attention that the monarchy has. That attention is a form of power.
If we’re talking “independent political power”, then arguably Edward VIII–his decision to disobey the Prime Minister’s advice that he end his relationship with Wallis Simpson and abandon plans to marry her was indeed an “independent political action.” His subsequent abdication was likewise a political action. These actions represented the extreme political weakness of the monarchy, but they were indeed “political actions” by the monarch.
Before him, his father George V was politically involved as well. He refused to state the Accession Declaration with its anti-Catholic passages, and Parliament responded by amending the declaration to remove them. George was known to want a somewhat more politically active role for the monarchy, but he never really pushed for it very hard because he also had people who were able to explain to him that the political reality did not allow any active attempt to resume royal involvement in day-to-day political affairs. But he did involve himself when possible. In the issue of Irish home rule he summoned the political primaries to the palace for discussions, and seriously considered withholding royal assent for the bill–but did not. George V throughout his reign was generally politically active in sharing his opinions, on foreign relations, on forming governments in tough times and etc, with high ranking politicians.
You could come up with further tales about every monarch before George V; but really I think my personal pick is George III. If we take the question to mean “last British Monarch to function as effective executive of the state.” George III never withheld Royal Assent, that distinction goes to Queen Anne (note however that in the American Colonies, eventually all the colonies had become royal colonies and had been required to have the monarch grant assent for legislation passed by the colonial legislature, and George routinely withheld assent on their legislation on issues where he felt the legislation was against the interests of the home island, for example when colonial legislatures attempted to abolish the slave trade.) But the importance of royal assent as a monarch veto was actually not super important historically because the King also traditionally had a great deal of power over who would serve as Prime Minister (and other similar offices that represented leadership of Parliament before the office of Prime Minister formally existed), and also whether or not that person could continue to serve as Prime Minister. With that power, the necessity to withhold Royal Assent to have a major check on legislation wasn’t frequently necessary, unlike in the American system where the President’s veto is his only major check on the legislative branch, the British monarch historically had also the power to decide who ran the country day to day, which would ultimately determine what manner of legislation Parliament would pass in the first place.
If you look at the span of his reign, George forced out several PMs when they displeased him. At other times, and this is most notable during the American Revolution, his support alone kept unpopular PMs in power even when they would’ve likely been forced out of Parliament in later eras. Lord North for example, tried to resign to the King on several occasions, but the King liked North being in charge of the war effort because he was willing to prosecute it exactly as the King desired. There were other elements in Parliament who were far more willing to abandon the American colonies, something George was adamantly opposed to doing. [While there were some genuine pro-liberty leaders in Parliament who wanted to end the war because they agreed with the justness of independence, most of the opposition to the war was based on it being tremendously expensive, its spreading to include other major European powers, the fact it seemed interminable, and the fact that it was exposing Britain’s wealthy Caribbean sugar colonies to potential foreign invasion and in the 18th century those colonies actually produced more direct revenue that went back to Britain than the American colonies did.] Additionally, for most of North’s premiership, one of the chief power brokers of the opposition was Charles James Fox, and George simply refused to ever allow Fox to be Prime Minister, he detested Fox and his politics and he was truly unwilling to ever allow it to come to pass.
During North’s tenure rioting in London, long a political pastime in Britain of this era, reached epidemic proportions. Several riots were lead by supporters of Fox, outraged at his continued exclusion from the halls of power despite his widespread popular support. But as long as the King was totally supportive of North, it dramatically limited his opponents abilities to see anyone else take his position.
An important watershed moment in the centuries long conflict between Parliament and monarch was when North was forced out on a no confidence vote, after 12 years, many of them plagued by deeply unpopular rule and what was perceived to be extremely incompetent management of the war effort. This was the first time a King’s chief minister had been forced to yield his position as leader of Parliament due to a vote of no confidence, and it boldly represented the leaders of Parliament saying that regardless of the King’s wishes, Parliament would not be lead by a man they did not support. A series of ministers followed, some shortened by death, others by political concerns. One that lasted for less than a year was the premiership of the Duke of Portland. This interesting administration was actually only figure-headed by Portland, as a matter of fact the two powers behind the PM were North and Charles James Fox, in an unlikely alliance.
At this point in time both Fox and North had fallen out with the prior administration, and the King. But together they commanded a majority. The King was never going to allow Fox to be Prime Minister, and was simply unwilling to bend on that point (showing the continued power of George, as he had repeatedly blocked a man with a majority voting bloc in the Commons from being the Prime Minister.) The King was willing to allow North and Fox to run the government in a coalition, but he required a figure head to serve as Prime Minister to avoid giving the office back to North or to Fox, so the Duke of Portland was chosen largely as an unoffensive figure.
George worked to sabotage this government from day 1, a traditional tool for governments of the day were royal offices to which supporters could be appointed, a form of patronage in the British political system of the day. George closed that door (something also unthinkable for later monarchs, who have long since lost real control over most royal appointments outside of the immediate household staff and closest personal advisers) by refusing to play along with the patronage game for this administration. They attempted an end run around this by proposing a bill to nationalize the East India Company, partly because it had been mismanaged for many years but also because it would allow them to appoint political allies to important (and well paid) positions with the company. Showing how Royal Assent isn’t necessary for Royal power to be felt in the legislature, the King let the Lords know that a single peer voting for the legislation would be his sworn enemy. So the legislation failed in the Lords, and immediately after the King dismissed Portland and ended the administration.
He then appointed William Pitt the Younger, his chosen candidate, and someone he had wanted as Prime Minister earlier on after North’s first administration had fallen and before the string of short-lived administrations that followed. But Pitt was in favor of various constitutional reforms and other policies that were not then popular in the commons, and he didn’t want to be PM like North was, with minimal commons support and a no confidence vote hanging over his head. But by the time the North-Fox coalition was dismissed by the King, Pitt felt he had a strong enough position in the commons to take a run at it. Pitt however didn’t have quite enough support to stop a no confidence vote that hit him very early in his administration, but just as Lord North had set a precedent a few years before in being the first PM to be forced out by a vote of no confidence, Pitt set his own by being the first (and maybe only, I’d have to research it) PM to simply ignore a no confidence vote and continue running the government. This is because of the enduring real power of King George–the King’s support for Pitt did not waver, and with the King openly supporting Pitt continuing in his position it limited the ability of Parliament to do much to force Pitt out. In any case, a general election was due not too long after this, and while Pitt may have considered stepping down if his support had shrank even further the exact opposite happened–Pitt’s faction won a large increase in support. This cemented his position firmly, and his first term as PM went on to last for 17 years. Part of the reason this happened was the huge amount of support the King gave Pitt, and this was often very decisive in general elections of this era because the King had a lot of gravy to spread around the country that could be very decisive, especially for things like negotiating with powerful men who controlled rotten boroughs. However it wasn’t pure patronage, Pitt had a legitimate groundswell of popular public support, and in most open boroughs (non-rotten boroughs that largely had real democratic elections) Pitt won resoundingly.
While George continued to meddle off and on, the long administration of Pitt actually saw him slowly remove himself from politics. Part of this is that George always had favored issues to get involved on, but had always preferred to be largely uninvolved with the nitty-gritty of day-to-day government concerns. The other part is the affliction that plagued George for most of his life, in which he had attacks of psychosis, slowly debilitated him. By the end of Pitt’s first administration he was a shell of the man he was, and by the end of Pitt’s second administration in the early 19th century George was largely mad, and his son would become regent permanently for the final ten years of his reign.
While Pitt was never a direct opponent of the King’s power, in a way his reforms and his long time at the helm, and his concentrating and modernizing the running of civil government served to somewhat reduce the real power of the monarchy. The long running wars with France in the 19th century also further increased Parliament’s power because they all required special taxes and basically the permanent day-to-day involvement of Parliament in military affairs.
In some ways George’s insanity may have hastened the demise of the monarchy, because it created on a few occasions serious constitutional problems relating to the extreme importance in the political system of the single person of the monarch. For example his first serious bout of insanity in 1788, happened after Parliament had been adjourned. It could not open a new session to even debate what was to be done about the incapacitated monarch until the speech from the throne had been read. The speech could be read by a designate (one of the Lords Commissioners), but the King had to authorize such delegation of authority. The only way the King could do so was to personally affix the Great Seal of Great Britain to a document delegating authority (he could delegate essentially any duty of the monarch in relation to Parliament, including opening parliament, adjourning parliament, or granting assent to laws), and that sticking point there was no extant legal mechanism to bypass. Pitt’s scheme at the time involved simply affixing the seal anyway, and saying that what makes the document legal is the seal being affixed to it, not the King doing so personally.
Both Edmund Burke and the Duke of York (one of the King’s sons) denounced the scheme, the Duke calling it “unconstitutional and illegal.” In the 1788 incident the King actually recovered before things could go any further, but when he entered his long incapacity in the final decade of his life, the same procedure was repeated again which saw George IV assume a year later the full powers of the monarchy until assuming the throne himself.
Compounding the monarchy’s decline, George IV was never political and was not interested in being actively involved in politics. He was instead quite interested in the high income of the regency and later the monarchy itself, but disinterested in much else. His and his younger brother’s reign saw several decades of strong Parliament with no monarch really willing to much care, and by the time Victoria was crowned it was essentially the end of active political involvement by the sovereign. Even Victoria’s biggest political involvement, involving the appointments of personal ladies in waiting by the Prime Minister (and Victoria’s refusal of a new PM’s appointments, viewing the ladies as her personal friends and confidantes and not a political office) which resulted in a new PM resigning was over a matter on which it’d have been unthinkable for her grandfather to be tested by Parliament. George III used royal positions as patronage, and chose to let a PM he supported dole them out as patronage or not on his whim and based on his support of the PM. George III fired several PMs, refused appointment of several, hand picked several, and was heavily involved in quashing legislation he disliked and cajoling Parliament to pass legislation he desired. None of that was seriously possible by his granddaughter’s time.
Thanks for that, one minor point. The term insanity is not really used anymore. The ‘madness of king george’ is not 100 percent known but its thought to have been a severe form of bipolar disorder type I. Bipolar type one during manic phases can cause delusions and psychotic episodes similar to schizophrenia. It’s also fairly common for it to only effect someone later in life.
I actually worked for five years for the bureau here in Virginia that deals with “Behavioral Health”, which covers mental health and drug addiction and some other stuff–largely disorders that cause personal behavior problems that impact a person’s ability to function in society. I’m aware that in a clinical/professional context “insanity” is not a PC word and isn’t used, neither are words like “lunatic” or etc. Even some terms that were appropriate when I worked there (like our MR/DD division, drawn from the DSM-IV (now replaced by the V, was short for Mental Retardation/Developmental Disorders, now MR isn’t used and is substituted with Intellectual Disability), are no longer appropriate today.
But I was speaking historically, and the word insanity is appropriate term in that context to describe a set of behaviors that we as modern people would recognize as being indicative of diagnosable mental illness.
I’ve read quite a few theories on what the source of George III’s mental affliction was, with a few good candidates–but at the end of the day I don’t believe it’s possible to know exactly what the cause was, he’s been dead too long and while we have exhaustive records from his doctors they were 18th century men not able to take a lot of diagnostics that would be useful for settling the matter. I do agree that the most popular theory, remitting attacks of acute porphyria, probably was not the actual cause. A form of bipolar disorder better fits the records, but again, it’s impossible to say for sure. His last years of regency he was in his 70s and died over 80, so he also could’ve been suffering from any number of conditions at that point that may have been in addition to the malady he suffered as a younger man.
Idi Amin?
Late stage syphilis.
As others have pointed out, power has seeped from monarch to parliament over the centuries.
Perhaps the last real monarch to be ascendant was Charles I - for a time. he tried to rule without parliament and actively fought them. Did not win…
Then there’s Lord Protector Cromwell, the last ruler who walked in and basically told parliament “you have sat too long” and made it stick. he effectively eliminated parliament for a while IIRC.
With the Return of the King then Charles II could not afford to ignore parliament. This was later reinforced with the replacement of James. So the balance had switched as to who was actually in charge.
In the past few decades, or century, the monarch’s power is best described as the “nuclear option”. They can cause a great deal of problems and a major constitutional crisis - so they had better be sure of what they intend to do and that it is necessary, and it will probably still mean the end of the current arrangement.
As for replacing the monarch with an elected president - as both Italy and Israel have shown, this tends to simply recycle used politicians who call in their IOU’s and carry legal risks, and any of Charles’ or Andy’s shenanigans are less serious and more entertaining… 
Correct me if I’m wrong but it was only in the 20th century when commoners had a one-vote power to elect MP’s? If so, Britain has been a democracy for less than 116 years. Before that it was the aristocracy that ruled.
It was more gradual than that. The franchise was extended to all adult men in 1918 and to all adults in 1928, but that doesn’t mean that no “commoners” had the vote before that. Instead, it was restricted to people who owned property. Over a long period, various age/property/gender restrictions were abolished by various acts of parliament.
Yes, it was basically land holders before that (in fact I recall districts were defined by the size of the property covered.) So after King John I, power was shared with the nobility (and the Church.) With Henry VIII, it reverted to absolute monarchy. With Charles II (or maybe earlier) it was parliament (aristocracy.)
But that started to change in the early-mid 19th century, not the 20th. I suppose it is a matter of opinion, how broad you require the franchise to be before you consider a country to be a democracy. Some people in the UK want 16-year-olds to have the vote. Perhaps they consider that it is still not a democracy.
See my point above, you can pretty much choose any monarch, as the last with power.
British Monarchs were never absolute. They have always had some assemblies that regulated them in some ways even all the way back to the dark ages. On the other hand (on paper at least) the current monarch still has a great deal of power (it is up to her who forms a government it’s only convention that say it should be the winner of a general election).
Gradually over time the regulations (and conventions) that restricted them got stronger, and the assemblies they reported to got more representative. There are a number of important moments (from Magna Carta to the death of Prince Alfred, and giving women the vote). But there was a never a watershed moment where you can say before this British Monarchs had power and afterwards they were figureheads.
It wasn’t pure democracy but it was better than what most of Continental Europe had.
It’s also a matter of how many of the levers of power are not accessible to the people or their democratic representatives at all. Hereditary Lords still wielded meaningful power in the 20th century.
See the Putney Debates of the English Civil War.
On the one hand, the representatives of the Army argued that their service to Parliament’s cause was their interest in society, and (to quote the famous words of Rainborough):
“For really I think that the poorest he that is in England has a life to live as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it’s clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he has not had a voice to put himself under. ”
Whereas Cromwell and Ireton and other representatives of Parliament argued that
"I think that no person has a right to an interest or share in the disposing or determining of the affairs of the kingdom, and in choosing those that shall determine what laws we shall be ruled by here — no person has a right to this that has not a permanent fixed interest in this kingdom…
I am sure, if we look upon that which is the utmost within any man’s view of what was originally the constitution of this kingdom, upon that which is most radical and fundamental, and which if you take away there is no man has any land, any goods, or any civil interest, that is this: that those that choose the representers for the making of laws by which this state and kingdom are to be governed are the persons who, taken together, do comprehend the local interest of this kingdom, that is the persons in whom all land lies and those in corporations in whom all trading lies. "
But by the end of the seventeenth century, one of the most prominent radicals at Putney had made his way in society and into Parliament and was arguing against reducing the property qualification to extend the franchise…
‘Commoner’ literally meant someone whom the Commons was meant to represent. Lords had their chamber, with the Bishops; the commoners had theirs. But yes, only the better sort of commoner (from medieval French ‘commune’ meaning community) could elect an MP. Although what this meant in practice varied wildly from place to place - some towns had relatively broad electorates, and some poor people could vote while richer ones couldn’t, while others had very closed, select electorates, or even only members of the local ‘corporation’ (i.e. local government) could vote.
It was increasingly made to conform to national standards and regulated in the Nineteenth Century, while the suffrage was gradually extended.
Maybe if the UK winds up with a hung Parliament QE2 takes over direct rule. I know it’s a joke but things could be worse.
No, if Parliament became deadlocked on an issue then there would be a general election so that the voters could decide which party’s position (each party would presumably be representing a different side of the issue) the public preferred.