Thursday, August 29, 2019
Constitutional crisis? But where is the Queen?
There are varying interpretations of the decision by Prime Minister Johnson to prorogue Parliament until after the party conference season, most of them unfavourable.
There is already a million plus signature petition calling for the prorogation to be reversed, whilst in the Guardian, the Shadow Attorney General, writing from her privileged and unelected position in the House of Lords, argues that the shutdown is unconstitutional.
What is certain is that this five week hiatus will aid and abet those who want to reinterpret the outcome of the 2016 referendum by crashing us out of the EU without a deal. It limits the time for opponents of no deal, reputedly a majority in the House of Commons, to organise legislation to stop it, if indeed that was possible.
Scrutiny will be curtailed and Ministers will be able to make crucial decisions without challenge. It is little wonder that the Speaker blew a gasket and issued a blazing statement of condemnation from his holiday destination.
But where was the Queen in all this? She is meant to be a constitutional monarch, the guardian of our unwritten constitution. Faced with a similar crisis in 1911, her grandfather insisted on a General Election before consenting to aiding the democratically elected government to force its budget through the House of Lords and introduce new conventions to restrain peers in future. Boris Johnson has not even won an election as Prime Minister.
Here, in 2019, the Queen apparently rolled over in the face of Jacob Rees Mogg's cheerless charm. In my view she should have insisted on limiting prorogation to the days before the proposed Queen's speech, allowing MPs the opportunity to cancel the conference recess and return to Parliament to debate the crisis facing us.
If our constitutional monarch is just going to rubber stamp everything put in front of her, then why do we persist with retaining a monarchy at all? A directly elected head of state would have had far more authority to intervene in this process and allow a proper democratic process to unfold.
There is already a million plus signature petition calling for the prorogation to be reversed, whilst in the Guardian, the Shadow Attorney General, writing from her privileged and unelected position in the House of Lords, argues that the shutdown is unconstitutional.
What is certain is that this five week hiatus will aid and abet those who want to reinterpret the outcome of the 2016 referendum by crashing us out of the EU without a deal. It limits the time for opponents of no deal, reputedly a majority in the House of Commons, to organise legislation to stop it, if indeed that was possible.
Scrutiny will be curtailed and Ministers will be able to make crucial decisions without challenge. It is little wonder that the Speaker blew a gasket and issued a blazing statement of condemnation from his holiday destination.
But where was the Queen in all this? She is meant to be a constitutional monarch, the guardian of our unwritten constitution. Faced with a similar crisis in 1911, her grandfather insisted on a General Election before consenting to aiding the democratically elected government to force its budget through the House of Lords and introduce new conventions to restrain peers in future. Boris Johnson has not even won an election as Prime Minister.
Here, in 2019, the Queen apparently rolled over in the face of Jacob Rees Mogg's cheerless charm. In my view she should have insisted on limiting prorogation to the days before the proposed Queen's speech, allowing MPs the opportunity to cancel the conference recess and return to Parliament to debate the crisis facing us.
If our constitutional monarch is just going to rubber stamp everything put in front of her, then why do we persist with retaining a monarchy at all? A directly elected head of state would have had far more authority to intervene in this process and allow a proper democratic process to unfold.
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Spot om Peter. A constitutional monarch that doesn't defend our constitution isn't worth having.
# posted by 
: 12:21 PM
: 12:21 PM
Yes. I would not be at all surprised if she was bamboozled by Mogg and his use of words etc. Having said that is it not possible that for many a year she has been a rubber stamper for PMs. Keep her and the Windsors as a 'tourist attraction'. If she has not the bottle to stand up against constitutional skullduggery
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