I once read in a book calling for the abolition of the British monarchy – I think it was The Fall of the House of Windsor, by Nigel Blundell – that the existence of the monarchy gives extraordinary power to the prime minister, who exercises the “royal prerogative” in the sovereign’s behalf, and thereby wields even more constitutional power within the British government than the POTUS within the American. But I can’t find the book and I’m vague on the details. Is that a fair assessment of the British constitution?
Well, unlike the US system with strict separation of powers, the prime minister is both the chief executive and leader of the majority party or coalition in the legislature. However, that’s a feature of most all parliaments, and not directly related to the existence of the monarchy.
The British constitution, spread as it is across various documents and conventions, doesn’t place many checks on the power of a Prime Minister. I’m not sure that it even mentions the office of Prime Minister. It has been described as an “elective dictatorship”, notably by one of Margaret Thatcher’s own ministers, Francis Pym, during her premiership.
Of course, in practice the PM is constrained by his or her MPs’ desire to still be MPs after the next election. But constitutionally, the PM is very powerful indeed.
I’m not sure why abolishing the monarchy would help–I suppose it would depend on what it was replaced with. The simplest possibility is that the powers of the monarch would devolve to the Prime Minister or to Parliament, who (as the OP noted) wield almost all of them in practice anyhow. If that happened, it would remove one of the few constitutional checks on the PM, the power of the monarch under unusual circumstances to recall the PM or to dissolve Parliament.
If an elected Head of State replaced the monarchy, then the balance of power would presumably remain what it is now without extensive legislation granting the Head of State new explicit constitutional powers now denied to the crown (or severely restricted in their exercise).
Any new limitation of the PM’s power would require extensive constitutional legislation, which could happen with or without the monarchy remaining in place.
The point is, William the Conqueror or Henry VIII had extensive governing powers. Events of the 17th Century placed a lot of these in Parliament, but from Queen Anne right down through Queen Victoria, a fair amount of power remained in the sovereign. Over time, and in particular with the evolution of the Prime Ministership during the long reigns of George III and Victoria, most of those remaining powers came to be exercised “on the advice of the Prime Minister/Cabinet” – a polite way of saying that the latter tells the Queen what to do, and she does it, making it official in her name, though it’s their decision. That’s what the Royal Prerogative is – the things which the Monarch does officially as opposed to what is done by authority of Parliamentary statute. In actual practice, a given Minister of State might do two things in cleaning up a morning’s work, the first decision being officially sanctioned by statue and the second being what he writes up and promulgates in the Queen’s name, using her prerogative.
If the monarchy were abolished, who’d get these powers? Probably those who actually make the decisions today.
The whole issue is, in any case, likely to change in the near future.
The Government issued a Green Paper (pdf) on the subject last July and Brown has indicated that he wants reform of this to be one of the Big Ideas of his premiership. For Brown, the perceived advantage is that this would distance him from some of Blair’s more controversial actions. Expect it to feature prominently in any future relaunch. Cameron had already said that the issue needed to be examined, so the basic idea of a reform would probably have cross-party support.
The assumption is that the main changes would be that the rights to declare war, to ratify treaties and to dissolve Parliament would be exercisable only with parliamentary approval.
There is the suggestion, also floated by Brown, that there should be a written constitution. The basis of ministerial power might well be the sort of thing that this would redefine. But, as things stand, it’s usually not the fact that a minister’s powers are theoretically those of the Queen that makes any practical political difference.
If the British monarchy were abolished, you would still need a head of state to do many of the things presently done by the Queen, including appointing prime ministers. In other republics with a parliamentary system – the closest to the UK is Ireland – that’s done by the President.
You then have two issues:
(1) how to choose the President.
(2) how to allocate powers between the President, Parliament, and other possible parts of the system.
Australia faced these issues in the debate leading up to the Republic Referendum of 1999, and never resolved them – so, as a result, even though a majority wanted a republic, the referendum was lost, because it embodied a particular model of how the president should be chosen.
And, of course, on top of those issues, the UK would face the issue of whether to disestablish the Churches of England and of Scotland, or whether to make the President head of those churches (which might be odd if, as might easily happen, the President were an atheist).
As I alluded to above, the convention that the dissolution of Parliament happens only on the advice of the Prime Minister is very strong, but I think there are some situations in which the Crown could likely dissolve Parliament on her own initiative. Would the proposed legislation eliminate this possibility, or would it merely dictate that the advice of the PM have the approval Parliament while leaving the restrictions on the Crown to convention?
The most likely possibility would be a Prime Minister who tried to continue governing without having a majority in the House of Commons. However, in such as case (based on the Australian precedent of 1975), the Queen could dismiss the Prime Minister, and commission the Leader of the Opposition as a caretaker prime minister, on the condition that the new PM would advise the calling of a general election.
I actually think you could implement a system in which there are shared Head of State responsibilities between an elected leader and a traditional Monarch.
For example you could have an elected President (or insert whatever title you want) who serves some of the Head of State functions that the Monarch “theoretically” has but never actually executes because the monarchy is not wanted as a serious agent in government since it is a hereditary anti-democratic agent.
I do think that the Prime Minister in systems similar to the UK’s (and obviously the UK’s own system) have an immense amount of power. It’d be like George Bush being both President and Speaker of the House as well as Majority Leader in the Senate, except imagine that party discipline in the United States is much more common place.
[On the other hand in some ways the President is more powerful within the United States than the British PM, because as Head of State the President is afforded a certain degree of official respect that is not afforded the PM. Furthermore because of the separation of powers the President can act on his own quite a lot within his own branch, whereas the British PM is grilled pretty regularly by the Commons.]
The authority of the Head of State to remove a PM in extraordinary circumstances, or to dissolve parliament is an important one. One that should probably be executed by a truly independent Head of State. As much as most people respect Queen Elizabeth, I doubt that very many truly believe she should actually execute these duties on her own prerogative. We do live in the 21st century and while the monarchy of the UK can be a great symbol of unity it is at its heart a hereditary monarch and not many people are probably comfortable with such a person wielding such important powers (in anything other than name.)
So you could introduce a political “Head of State” who would serve a lengthy, guaranteed term mostly defined by doing nothing but shaking hands and occasionally dissolving parliament if necessary.
You could keep the monarchy around as a ceremonial “Head of State” to meet with prominent foreign dignitaries and to be at big affairs of state.
Really? I was under the impression (largely gleaned from what Polycarp has said in earlier threads) that constitutional scholars were more or less united in believing these powers to still have actual effect, based on the Australian precedent mentioned by Giles and a Canadian one from earlier last century.
ETA–I misread “should” as “could” in your post, but I’ll leave the question anyway.