The Royal Marriages Act 1772 placed a lot of restrictions on descendants of George II. However, the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 removed most of the rules. Now, only the first 6 people in line of succession need the boss’ permission to marry, and marrying a Catholic is no longer forbidden. Practicing Catholicism yourself, however, still disqualifies you.
However, the sections that ban Catholic succession were not repealed. Catholics are still officially termed as being “naturally dead and deemed to be dead” in terms of succession. This distinction was first legislated in the Bill of Rights 1689.[28]Jacob Rees-Mogg (Con) also confirmed “the Act of Settlement deems somebody who has been a Catholic for a minute to be ‘dead’ in terms of the succession, and it passes over them ‘as if they were dead’. It is an absolute. If at any moment in their whole life they were in communion with Rome, they are excluded from the throne, deemed to be dead.” Mark Durkan (SDLP) made a comparison of this with McCarthyism, "In effect, it is the McCarthyite question: ‘Are you now or have you ever been a Catholic?’”. He then went on with a summary of the proviso saying, “For anybody who has ever been a Catholic in any shape or form, that is it, they are out; they count as dead for these purposes.”[29] The ban continues. A person who has never been a Catholic but who is not Protestant is permitted to succeed if they convert to a Protestant communion, since a Protestant monarch is required by the Acts of Union 1707.
I wonder: If your parents had you baptized Catholic, but you never did Confirmation, could you claim that you were never REALLY a Catholic, and thus remain eligible to succeed?
But the 2013 act did not reinstate those who were disqualified because their ancestors, many generations back, married a Catholic. So you’d have to trace marriages throughout the centuries, assessing them against the disqualification criteria at that time.
There wasn’t a disqualification on the children of a marriage to a Catholic, so long as the marriage was approved. The children of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, for example, were not raised Catholic, so they remained in the line of succession even when their father was barred for entering into the marriage that produced them.
Given sufficient negatives in one sentence to melt bitumen I might have misunderstood.
But if the monarch/head of state in a constitutional monarchy refuses Assent then the country gets a new sovereign/monarch/head of state, not a new government.
The last one who tried that ended up with the very rough end of the pineapple.
ISTR reading somewhere that the monarch could justifiably refuse royal assent if the PM advised them to, which is pretty unlikely since the PM would have been responsible for getting the bill passed in the first place.
I also recall reading that in the aftermath of Princess Di’s death, Tony Blair “advised” the Queen to address the nation, with the implication that he’d have to resign if she didn’t since the PM can’t govern on behalf of a monarch who refuses their advice.
This is all hypothetical anyway, since there’s probably nothing short of a nuclear war or the total collapse of civil society that would drive a British monarch to think they could attempt to rule by decree.
Missed the edit window; and as someone upthread noted, the practical fix to that kind of constitutional crisis would probably be “find a new king, get them to assent to the bill, and figure out the details later”.
No.
But then like your goodself, there is a lot of stuff I read on the internet that I wish was true but isn’t.
The British PM meets with their monarch weekly. I expect it is a generally convivial, nea congenial occasion.
If Blair had advised “M’am, I think you should make a public statement”, that might have been regally considered and rejected without causing a constitutional crisis.
But if Blair had come to the Palace with a Bill passed by both Houses requiring QEII to make a public address to the nation regarding the death of her ex daughter-in-law she would have given the Royal Assent and complied.
Yeah, but you seem to think the monarch could rule by dissent. They can’t.
The nearest they can get, AFAIUI, is a private “Are you sure that’s wise?”, or a counter-suggestion from Private Secretary to Private Secretary. I once read that when there was talk of trying to forestall UDI in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) by arranging for the Queen to visit there, her Private Secretary wrote to the PM’s PS to say that of course she would do as advised, if of course the advice came in writing with precise plans and proposals. And no more was heard of that, saving her from getting embroiled in a heated controversy.
It seems to me that Americans cannot separate the Head of State (the monarch) from the Head of Government (e.g. a Prime Minister). That’s understandable, as Americans have known nothing else: their President is both.
But to those of us in constitutional monarchies, the Head of State and Head of Government are two separate offices in two different people. The Monarch, and the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister tells the Monarch what to do, based on votes from the electorate through seats in Parliament, and by bills passed in Parliament, and by the Senate, and by tradition, the Monarch always assents to what the people of Canada (or other Commonwealth realms) want to do. You cannot possibly be more democratic.
Americans, why is this so difficult to understand?
Not necessarily. A Private Member bill could be introduced and passed without the consent of the PM, although this is only likely in a minority parliament. Generally speaking only money bills (budget and taxation) are automatically considered confidence motions which would cause the PM to resign and call for an election if they fail.
Yes, that happened once in Ontario a long time ago, when party disciple was less fluid. A bill got passed in the Assembly over the objections of the gov’t, and premier Mowat (if I’m remembering correctly) advised the Lt Gov to deny Royal assent, which the Lt Gov did.
I think you’re confusing two things here. One is the constitutional convention that the monarch never refuses royal assent from a bill that has been duly passed by both Houses of Parliament (or the Commons under the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949).
The other is the constitutional convention that the monarch acts on the advice of his or her ministers. That’s a separate rule that has nothing to do with legislation; it’s a rule that applies to acts of the executive and states, quite simply, that executive powers are really held by the PM, even if, as a technical formality, they are exercised by the monarch. The monarch has to follow the PM’s advice in this regard. In the Diana case, it would have been within the PM’s discretion to consider that it would be in the public interest for the Queen to make a statement, and if the PM had decided to advise accordingly, the Queen would, by constitutional convention, have been bound to comply.
There is a distinction between the PM saying in their fireside chat; “M’am”, I think you should wear green when you meet with the German delegation tomorrow" and “Your Majesty, your government requests that you wear green when you meet with the German delegation tomorrow”.
Both can be considered advise, but one is personal and the other official. If it was the latter Her Maj would have worn green.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable that the PM didn’t want to officially intrude into a matter of personal grief within the family. As it turns out the Palace reading of the situation was wrong and the advise was sound.
[and that’s certainly way too far into a thread hijack of a thread on family nomenclature]
Suppose Charles were to go completely off his rocker and tried to do something like, let’s say, have the Lord Chancellor beheaded for refusing to acquiesce to the supremacy of the Church of England, and Parliament decided it was in everyone’s interest that he not be king anymore.
Would there be an obligation or expectation that they would offer the crown to William first, or could they choose anyone they wanted to be king, Act of Settlement be damned?
If the King goes off his rocker, then the Regency Act kicks in and Wills becomes Regent, exercising most of the King’s powers.
However, as Regent, he has no power to assent to a bill to change the succession.
If the two Houses of Patliament (which are not Parliament without the King) wanted to change the line of succession, they would have to do so along the lines of the Glorious Revolution, which declared that James II had abdicated, the throne was empty, and they could give it to WilliamandMary.
To do that, they would be dethroning Charles and passing over Wills.
It would be a revolutionary Act. Strikes me that they would need a strong political case to do so.
And (as I don’t need to tell @Northern_Piper, a Canadian lawyer, but it’s worth pointing that out in this thread), it would be a revolutionary act that would have to be coordinated among the Commonwealth kingdoms, to maintain the personal union among them - otherwise, the King of the United Kingdom would end up being a different person than the King of Canada, the King of Australia, etc. They’d want to avoid this (which is why the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 was enacted with identical wording in all the Commonwealth realms).
Or, alternatively, the other Commonwealth simply convert themselves, on that occasion, to republics.
Well, every few years there’s another Commonwealth realm turning itself into a republic - the last one was Barbados in 2021. As I understand it, the only reason why Australia hasn’t done it yet is because they don’t agree on how the president who’d replace the King would be elected.
Exactly. And that is a difficult issue: how much power do you want the new head of state to have, and how do you then select the new head of state? That’s why the previous attempt failed in Australia. There was no consensus on that issue.
Plus, in Australia and even more so in Canada, there are rigid amending formulas, given their federal nature. It’s much easier for unitary states to ditch the monarchy. I think Canada will keep the Windsors for a long time.
I guess the self-suggesting option would be to rebrand the governor-general as President but otherwise largely following the same principles: Chosen by the governing party (probably via an election by parliament - obviously you couldn’t have the PM send a nomination to the King). Gets to open parliament in a fancy ceremony once a year, also gets to appoint a PM and assent to bills, and doesn’t do much otherwise. But I guess some Australians would have preferred a more presidential system than that.
