In reading about Edward VIII and his desire to marry Wallis Simpson, I read that Edward was given three choices - drop his marriage plans, abdicate or go ahead with the marriage and have the government resign en masse in protest.
While, I agree that having the government resign stinks for PR purposes, I’m at a loss to see why this is such a problem. Wouldn’t that just bring a call for new elections?
Obviously, I’m missing something here. What would have been the effects if the government had resigned?
I don’t think the threat was that all the members of Parliament would resign their seats. I think it was more that the the PM would resign his commission, as would all of the other ministers. This would then have left Edward VIII in the difficult position of having to commission one of the minor party leaders to form a new government that could command a majority in the House of Commons. And I’m fairly sure that Baldwin had already discussed this with the Opposition leader and that all of the major parties were in agreement that the issue of the King’s marriage was definitely a constitutional one and that the King should go if he insisted on the marriage.
[thread=348840]This thread[/thread] about Edward VIII is interesting. [post=6884932]This post[/post], in particular, can at least partly answer the OP’s question.
It’s a problem, because the monarch cannot govern without ministers who have a majorioty in the House of Commons. If HM’s advisers had all resigned, either the Leader of the Opposition would have accepted the commission as PM, or no MP would have. The Leader of the Opposition could not have had a mojority in the Commons, so the fiorst time the Commons met, there would have been a successful vote of no confidence, and there would have had to be a general election – and the main issue of the election would have been the King’s proposed marriage. Not a comfortable prospect, since the PM had probably worked out that a majority of the voters would not accept a double divorcee as their Queen.
Behind all of this is the fact that HM’s government needs money to operate, and that can only come from taxes and approipriations supported by the House of Commons. So, if the King had defied convention, sooner or later the government would have run out of money, and would have come to a standstill. So the PM was just reminding him of the reality behind the convention, and that if the King did not do as his advisers told him, he could not goverrn.