Historian warns court on ‘dangerous ground’
ATTEMPTS have been made to bring the Queen into politics in a way unseen for a century – since Georgev agreed to create sufficient new Peers in 1911 to force government policy through Parliament.
Jeremy Corbyn has demanded that Boris Johnson apologise to the Queen for “misleading” her.
This ignores the obvious fact that the Queen’s constitutional role in a political decision such as prorogation is to follow the Prime Minister’s advice: she does not have to be persuaded, and hence cannot be “misled”.
So the Queen in person has not been forced onto the perilous ground of taking sides.
But the Crown – that is, the institution of government – has come under attack in a way unheard of since the 18th century, when George III installed youngwilliam Pitt as Prime Minister against the will of the House of Commons.
By the way, Pitt called an early election and won a landslide.the present attacks on the Crown may well EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AT CAMBRIDGE AND AUTHOR OF THE ENGLISH AND THEIR HISTORY
end in a similar way – a reminder that the people have often backed the Crown against Parliament.
Nevertheless, for the time being, the situation is dangerously unstable.why does it matter?we have – or until 2019 we had – what was traditionally called a “balanced constitution”, in which different functions of sovereignty were exercised by separate elements of the state.
This is what the French philosopher Montesquieu in the 1740s called the “separation of powers”, which he considered the foundation of freedom. The Crown governed. Parliament made laws.the courts applied the laws.this principle, developed in 18th century England, is the basis of all modern democratic constitutions.
But having invented this system, we now seem to be trashing it.
In a democracy, governments are in reality responsible to the electorate as well as to Parliament.we all know this.
But the Supreme Court and the Speaker of the House of Commons now act as if we are in a pre-democratic age, when the common people had no political rights.
Do they really think the country’s future can be decided by a chaotic House of Commons which refuses to face its electorate, and by a Supreme Court which is accountable to no one?
They are on dangerous ground. Given their own actions, they have no ethical or logical grounds for objecting to the Government – the Crown – using any legal means to exercise its proper authority and carry out its popular mandate.