Why would British PM resign over a scandal with the King?

Factual Questions
22

I encourage anyone interested in this scenario to see the excellent British political thriller To Play the King, starring Ian Richardson (not as good as its predecessor House of Cards, but still quite good). The irony is that the do-gooder King’s a nice person and only wants to help his country, while the Prime Minister is just about as evil as he can be… but is constitutionally in the right. By the end, almost inevitably, the PM is the last man standing.

And of course:

(4) it has almost untrammeled legislative powers.

23

On most matters, it’s not like that at all. The advice given is completely uncontroversial. The Prime Minister advises the Queen to grant the royal assent to all bills which have been through the legislature, for instance I(thereby making them law). Regardless of the content of the bill, there is absolutely no doubt that the Queen must and will grant the royal assent. If the Queen is unhappy about the contents of the bill, she’ll have two thoughts: one, that’s not her business; and, two, any unhappiness she may feel is directed at Parliament for passing the bill, and not at the PM for advising her to assent to it.

Similarly, when the PM advises the Queen to appoint so-and-so as Secretary of State for Defence, even if the Queen thinks that someone else would make a better fist of the job she will not resent the advice, since she knows that selecting the Secretary of State for Defence is the PM’s job, and not hers. She can, and may, discuss her views about who would make the best Secretary of State with the PM, but it won’t get personal, so to speak.

There’s really only room for a confrontation in the tiny, tiny minority of situations where the advice affects the monarch or the royal family personally and directly.

If there is a confrontation - say, over whether Edward VIII should marry Mrs Simpson - then in theory the king does have the option of letting the PM resign and either (a) sending for another politician who can live with the marriage, inviting him to form a government and hoping he can find a majority in parliament, or (b) dissolving parliament, and hoping that the ensuing election returns a majority of MPs who can live with the marriage. And in fact these courses of action were considered in 1936, if not by the king then certainly by supporters of his.

But there is a contrary view that this would be constitutionally improper, since the king is not supposed to engage in political controversy or intervene in party politics. He has no mandate to do so, and it is not seen as a good thing that he should seek one, or that there should be a “king’s party” in parliament, supporting the king generally or on any particular matter, and a rival party taking the opposite stance. And Edward VIII took that view, and decided that the only courses of action open to him after getting Baldwin’s advice were either to give up Mrs Simpson or to abdicate.

24

Yes, but that’s not an essential part of the model. In Canada and Australia, the relationship between the Governor-General, the Prime Minister and the Parliament is similar to that between the monarch, the PM and the Parliament in the UK. However, Canada and Australia are federal states, and the parliaments of the Canadian provinces and Australian states can legislate on many matters that their federal parliaments cannot.

25

No choice other than, I don’t know, not resigning? What would happen in that case?

(Why, yes, I am an American. :slight_smile: )

26

Well, generally the PM will have discussed the matter with his/her colleagues (as Baldwin did in 1936 – including the PMs of other countries in the Commonwealth as his colleagues), or the matter will have gone through Cabinet or the Parliament. If the PM did not resign, soon others will be asking what’s going on, and they may be demanding the PM’s resignation, since the PM obviously cannot govern effectively.

27

In all this talk of the PM resigning (in a showdown with the monarch) — do we mean he’s resigning merely the leadership of his party, or is he resigning from office entirely?

28

I believe he’s resigning as prime minister. He remains leader of his party, ready to contest an election.

29

I don’t think there’s been a case where a resignation has been effected by a prime minister or premier because of a disagreement with the monarch or viceroy, but I would think it would be just as prime minister or premier.

If the prime minister or premier still had the support of a majority in the lower house, there would be no need to retire as party leader. A case in point is Gough Whitlam, who was dismissed as Prime Minister of Australia on 11 November, 1975, but continued as leader of the Labor Party until the resulting general election and after. (The Labor Party lost the election, so Whitlam was leader of the opposition after the election.)

30

Neither. He is resigning as Prime Minister. He may still lead his party, and may still remain an MP. Depending upon the next phase of the crisis he may resign as leader of his party, but this is not a given. If the crisis is to result in a general election he would probably stay on as leader, with the hope that he would be re-elected, and his party would win a majority. At which point he would present himself to the monarch as having the confidence of the parliament. The monarch has the problem now, as he would be exepected to invite the ex-PM to form a government and to appoint his back as PM. This is the mechanism by which the monarch is effectively subject to the opinion of the people. A monarch who refused to acceed to the election result would essentially be saying that they were no longer able to act as monarch, and would be forced to abdicate.

31

There’s also the matter that Canada (unlike the UK and I think Australia) has a constitution, including a Charter of Rights, that strongly circumscribes the ability of Parliament to legislate in certain areas, as well as tradition/political conventions that very strongly discourage Parliament from exercising certain powers it theoretically has, such as the ability to override certain sections of the Charter.

32

Just to expand on what others have said: in this hypothetical, by just resigning as PM, but keeping his position as leader of the party and his seat, the outgoing PM would paradoxically have the upper hand over the monarch.

The monarch has to have someone to form a government, which can command a majority in the House of Commons. Since the outgoing PM is resigning simply because the monarch has refused to follow the PM’s advice, and not because the PM has lost the confidence of his party or the Commons, he’s put the monarch in the difficult position that there is likely no-one else who can form a government in the Commons as currently constituted. That means that the monarch will have difficulty finding someone who can form a government, without calling a general election. And at that general election, the outgoing Prime Minister will campaign, not really against the new PM, but against the monarch, who has intervened in the political process.

There are three examples where this sort of events occurred.

The oldest example was in the UK in 1831-32, over the great Reform Bill. The Whigs under Earl Grey had won an election on the bill, but the Lords were trying to delay its passage. Prime Minister Grey advised King William IV to appoint new peers immediately to ensure the bill’s passage. William declined, and Grey and his Ministry resigned. William called on the Duke of Wellington to form a new government, but Wellington had to decline. Wellington had a majority in the Lords, but the Whigs still had a firm majority in the Commons. Wellington could not form a government.

The King had no choice but to call on Earl Grey to come back, accepting that he would need to follow Grey’s advice as a condition of Grey forming a government. This is the basic precedent for the principle that the PM resigns if the monarch refuses his advice, but also the basic example for how difficult the monarch’s position is if the PM resigns but retains the majority in the Commons.

The two more recent examples were in Canada in 1926 and Australia in 1975. In the Canadian example, Prime Minister King was facing a vote of censure in the Commons and advised the GovGen to dissolve Parliament and call a new election. The GovGen refused to take that advice, because there had been a recent election and King did not have a clear majority in the multi-party Commons - the GovGen thought that in those circumstances, he should call on the leader of the Opposition, Meighen, to try to form a gov’t. Meighen formed a gov’t, but it was defeated in the Commons shortly afterwards. Meighen advised the GovGen to dissolve Parliament and call elections, the same advice King had given, and this time the GovGen did so. In the ensuing election, King ran against the actions of the GovGen, arguing that he had taken too great a role in politics and favoured Meighen over King. King won a majority in the general election.

In Australia in 1975, the GovGen sacked Prime Minister Whitlam and appointed Fraser, the leader of the Opposition, as PM, on condition that Fraser then advise a dissolution of Parliament and a general election on the budget issue which had triggered the dismissal of Whitlam. In the ensuing election, Fraser won a majority.

All three examples show the difficulty which the monarch (or GovGen) faces: if their PM resigns or is dismissed because the monarch doesn’t take their advice, the monarch can only succeed if the political situation is fluid enough for the new PM to gain a majority in Parliament. And, the monarch’s actions will be heavily criticized, for intervening in the political process and going against the will of the outgoing PM, instead of remaining politically neutral.

33

Now I have a mental image of a Monty Python sketch where Mr. King gets into a constitutional crisis with His Majesty Prime Minister II.

34

Understood, but you had written, “the House of Commons is like the Electoral College in the United States, and elects the head of government, except that…” and listed three ways in which it was different. I added a fourth, the legislative power, which is perhaps the most important of all.

35

The divorces were more of a public excuse then anything else, the fact is that Simpson and her ex husband, with whom she was still very friendly; were very pro German.

In 1936 it was looking more and more likely that G.B. would be at war in the near future with Germany, and having a King who was passionately in love with, and married to someone sympathetic to Nazi aims;was not an option.

Of course it didn’t help that the Simpsons were known to be “swingers”, and involved in shady deals aswell.

36

The American form of government is not immune to constitutional crises caused by one branch of government failing to obey the rulings of another branch of government, of course.

37

I’m not sure if that’s the whole story. Edward VIII admired Hitler, true, but so did the likes of Stanley Baldwin. Edward and Baldwin were also motivated by a desire to avoid war and get Hitler on their side (more out of hatred of war than anything). I put much of the appeasement policy at Baldwin’s door.

Nonetheless the King was more inclined to get involved than his father or brother, so it was more a need to intercept this (as in, nip it in the bud, ‘give an inch he’ll take a mile’, kind of thing). But I think the King would have had a slightly higher chance of marrying AND keeping his throne if he’d approached the matter much more maturely.

Instead of how he actually approached the problem, which was to say to the government, ‘I’m marrying this woman with the throne or not, screw you if you don’t like that!’ he could have said ‘I love this woman and I want to marry her. I want to remain your King, but I realise this will be constitutionally problematic. I will do anything to reconcile this, but if there is no way I will abdicate’.

38

Yes, maybe, but from all I’ve read, Edward VIII seemed incapable of that kind of thoughtful, mature approach.

39

Except that Edward was the one who did not see it as an either-or issue. Although his preferred option was clearly that Mrs Simpson should become Queen, he was willing, if necessary, to settle instead for a morganatic marriage. It is even possible that he had viewed that as a viable fallback position from the outset. It was only because Baldwin (with the full backing of the Cabinet and the Dominions) rejected that as a option that he was left with the straight choice between Wallis and the throne.

40

Ah ha. A new vocabulary word for me. Not one very applicable in my own day-to-day affairs, but still.

Now in that scenario, none of their children would have been heirs to the throne. So who would have succeeded Edward VIII then? (Assume people in the alternate history lived and died the same way they did in ours.)

41

So it is basically a political pissing contest where the PM says, “The monarch is simply a figurehead. You will do what I tell you. If you do not do what I tell you, then I will force your hand and make you wish you did what I tell you because the ensuing shitstorm will probably leave you and your children out of the cushy gig that you have.”?