The news came overnight Sydney time that Liz Truss has resigned as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after just 44 days in the job. This has come after a period of time where Boris Johnson was forced to resign after a series of indiscretions, a cabinet that has seen more people enter and exit than a Wimpy's, the Pound Sterling tanking faster than the HMS Colander and a Conservative Party in complete disarray. Lis Truss' only major achievement apart from a mini-budget when sent financial markets into panic, was that she just happened to be the resident of Number Ten Downing Street when Queen Elizabeth The Second died. This kind of parliamentary insanity kind of makes you wish for "Chaos with Ed Milliband" that David Cameron said would happen. If we would have had chaos under Ed Milliband, then what is this exactly?
I live in Australia and ten thousand miles away from Blighty. Looking at Britain's Festival Of The Thirsty Knife looks very similar to our own periodic premiership pugilism. We are quite happy to yell "Spill!" in the morning and find that in the afternoon that we have a new Prime Minister. Yet being an Australian makes me more acutely aware of the vissitudes of parliamentary democracies; namely that we the public do not elect Prime Ministers. Prime Ministers are installed in the same way that you might get an electrician to install a new water heater; which also means that when they go bang and fail, they can be removed quite easily. Indeed, Australia has had four Prime Ministers who have all served for shorter periods than Liz Truss with Arthur "Floody" Fadden reigning for 40 days and 40 nights, John McEwen for 22 days, Sir Earle Page for 19 days, and Frankie Forde who was Prime Minister for only 7 days. There may have been one other; which I will touch one later.
The office of the Prime Minister is not explicitly mentioned in the Australian Constitution. Furthermore, it is not immediately obvious as to whether or not there even needs to be one. It could be for instance that if someone were to imagine another system for organising executive cabinet, with a duumvirate or triumvirate or a cabinet of actual equals, that the functions of the cabinet could happen quite easily. It could be for instance that there is no explicit head of the executive cabinet, save for someone who has been appointed immediately for the purposes of chairing the meeting. Remember how I said that there may have been a Prime Minister for a short period than Forde? Billy Hughes may have been Prime Minister for the morning of 28th August 1941, for the purposes of chairing the meeting to decide who would replace Menzies. I do not know if he was or was not but he may have been if there was a writ of commission which was given to him by the Governor-General, for the express purpose of having the United Australia Party and Country Party to decide in caucus who would be the Prime Minister.
Herein lies an interesting point of order. Ultimately in Australia, political parties do not actually decide who the Prime Minister is. Convention would usually dictate that the Prime Minister is the leader of the party with the most members on the floor of the House of Representatives because that is where the supply and control of appropriation of monies of the Crown is decided. However, as we saw with the premiership of former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the Governor-General can make and unmake Ministers at a whim and the only limitation is that the person appointed as a Minister of the Crown then obtains a seat in Parliament within 90 days.
His Majesty's United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has no written constitution. This means that there is even less direction at law on the King than there is on the Governor-General of Australia. Previous Kings and Queens have appointed Members of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords to the office in the building with the famous black door on Downing Street. Given that there is no written constitution in the United Kingdom and that the Conservative Party is in more confusion than a herd of Meowths after Psyduck has used Confuse on them (it's super effective), then I can think of an easy solution which presents itself and which doesn't involve herding cats who want to chase money.
The King should appoint the Prime Minister.
King Charles III is the current officer of the person that is the Crown. The Crown is distinct from the monarch, as the Crown is corporation sole, with one indissoluble share, which exists in perpetuity, under someone like Cromwell comes along again and decides that the head and corpus of the monarch should part company. As King Charles III is the current officer of the person that is the Crown, he is in fact the sole officer of the functions and powers of the Crown. It is also fact that the Crown owns parliament. Legally speaking it is His Majesty's United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, His Majesty's Cabinet, and His Majesty's Loyal Opposition. Just like in Australia, political parties do not actually decide who the Prime Minister is. It is the King who makes and unmakes Ministers; including the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
King Charles III should just bypass the entire of the Conservative Party and do the job of appointing a Prime Minister; which they are incapable of doing. This would look different to the King–Byng affair and the 1975 Australian Constitutional Crisis because instead of the Crown interfering in parliament, parliament is already so much of a rabble that it needs some stability given to it.
The Conservative Party is obviously and demonstrably so bereft of any real leadership, commonsense, and stability at the moment, that if I were King, I'd install Nicholas True, Baron True, who is the current Leader of the House of Lords and Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, as the Prime Minister. If the Commons can't get its act together, then the Cabinet should be chaired by someone who is above the rough and tumble and stuff and nonsense of all that. A Prime Minister appointed by the King would in all likelihood give the job more seriousness and gravity than what has been shown recently.
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