It Could Be Said #29 The Palace Decides
The Dark Matter of The British Constitution Strikes Back
Before I begin this article could I give a shoutout to my Aunt Teresa, who turned one of the most hateful fortnights in my life to one of the most joyful weekends. Truly went above and beyond, as she always does.
Also quick plug for my first two City A.M columns; arguing for the DUP to stay strong on the Northern Ireland Protocol and against unfunded tax cuts.
In the brilliant Channel 4 adaptation of A Very British Coup, the US President mocks Britain by noting we don’t get to read our own history until decades after the fact. I hope to live long enough to know what really went down this past week but I’m pretty sure The Palace was at the centre of it.
The obvious role that they had is on the question of whether parliament should be dissolved a fresh election called. With the repeal of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act we are back to the status quo ante where the Monarch has ultimate authority over when elections are called. And in that type of twist which separates those of us who love Britain as it is, and the more sensible people who put up with the rest of us, that authority is limited not by holy text but by an anonymous letter to The Times, written by Sir Alan Lascelles in 1950.
Better known as Tommy, Lascelles was writing in his role as Private Secretary to King George VI, following Clement Attlee’s Labour squeaking a victory against Winston Churchill’s Conservatives, despite arguably winning fewer votes. This may sound like the distant past but as viewers of The Crown will know, Lascelles served another British Monarch; the current one.
In scenes that were both historic and histrionic the Liaison Committee of Select Committee Chairs pressed and probed Boris Johnson about whether he would try to call a snap election before the Tory Party could bring a fresh Vote of No Confidence. The fact that these questions were asked, that Johnson waffled rather than clearly answer them in the negative, the doubling down by elite actors that such a request would be rejected, and Tim Shipman reporting that when he wasn’t talking to The Palace, Simon Case was on broadcast that a dissolution request would be rejected, proves we had A Very British Constitutional Crisis, one that occurred behind closed doors lest the children get excited by their parents shouting. Indeed, given what his former mistress said over the weekend, the possibility that Johnson tried to parlay allowing a leadership election with a suspension of the rule preventing him restanding being suspended, so he had a fresh mandate to thwart his institutional foes, cannot be ruled out.
It is worth saying why this would be a constitutional abomination. It is one thing for a government to threaten a minority of its backbenchers with a snap election to push through controversial legislation, but this was a Prime Minister and his cronies threatening both his ministers and backbenchers with a snap election to short-circuit internal party democracy. And by that I don’t just mean evading a Vote of No Confidence, because he could also surely once again withdraw the whip from his enemies, so that even a Tory Party relegated to opposition was more loyal to him, due to enemies being denied the demagogue’s coupon. Preventing such egomanical vandalism is essential if political parties are to retain a separate identity to their current leader. Likewise party membership always move towards their leaders, so the idea that a Prime Minister could rally his party members against their MPs would reduce our elected representatives to party delegates.
But having seemingly faced down Johnson, The Palace did something strange; they picked him back up. With the discourse moving from the impossibility of removing Johnson to the urgency of removing him immediately, The Palace started approving his appointments of new ministers to replace those who had resigned. I don’t know whether they refused to let Johnson make the appointments his spokesperson promised to Sky News on Wednesday night, but I’m certain they could have refused him this privilege on Thursday morning and so forced him to depart that night.
The bathetic sight of Boris Johnson reassembling his cabinet whilst promising not to play vigiorusly with his new collection of misfit toys is in my mind something imposed on him by The Palace. As the American writer Dylan Matthews noted in his argument for constitutional monarchy, Monarchs intervene to remove Prime Ministers far less than elected Presidents. The danger with appointing an Interim Prime Minister is that it breaks the precedent that the incumbent is dutybound to stay in post until his replacement has been clearly identified. In the worst-case scenario that may mean our current Queen or future Kings are sifting through resumes to determine who will head up an Italian-style technical governments to resolve some crisis or deadlock in parliament.
Remember that the last time The Palace tried to choose the next Prime Minister it was such a diaster that the advisors to the current Queen told the Tories to develop formal leadership election structures lest that type of controversy ever happen again. The reason why the elevation of Sir Alec Douglas-Home in 1963 went wrong is that it created the possibility that the Cabinet and Party could disagree, so forcing the monarch to adjudicate between two competing claim for who acted as the vanguard of parliament.
Boris Johnson was roundly criticised for claiming that he had a personal mandate from the people who voted for the Conservative Party in 2019, as a way of escaping the fact that he no longer retained the confidence of his parliamenarty party. But imposing a Prime Minister on the recommendation of the Cabinet that didn’t have the confidence of their parliamentary party would be just as unconstitutional.
I’m glad Boris Johnson is leaving. I wish he was gone now. And I am no Royalist. But once again The Palace has charted a sensible and pragramtic path, saving British politics from the politicians. It may not make sense. But surely unlike kindness, appreciation of the surreal, is a key British value.