https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7424-6626
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ABSTRACT
This article assesses the role and powers of the Queen as Head of State during the political crises surrounding Brexit and the prorogation of parliament in 2019. These crises in Westminster highlighted the lack of contemporary awareness of the Queen’s constitutional capacities and constraints in such tense political conditions. A consequence of this was widespread confusion and ignorance regarding the use of the prerogative powers by both the Queen as Head of State and the Prime Minister as Head of Government. It seeks to show the importance of understanding the Queen’s position as a political actor rather than a purely ceremonial one by drawing on modern British and Commonwealth history.
Acknowledgements
This article is a slightly amended version of my forthcoming chapter ‘Viceregalism at Westminster: The Role and Powers of the Queen in the 2019 Brexit Constitutional Crisis’ in Kumarasingham (ed.), Viceregalism – The Crown and Its Representatives in Political Crises in the Postwar Commonwealth, Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
ORCID
H. Kumarasingham http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7424-6626
Notes
1 An exchange recounted in Hugh Dalton’s diary, 28 July 1945, cited in Jay, The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations, 154.
2 Blackburn, “Queen Elizabeth II and the Evolution of the Monarchy,” 177.
3 Hennessy, Winds of Change, 499.
4 Cannadine, In Churchill’s Shadow, 81 and 50.
5 See the Court’s judgement: R (on the application of Miller) (Appellant) v The Prime Minister (Respondent) Cherry and others (Respondents) v Advocate General for Scotland (Appellant) (Scotland) On appeals from: [2019] EWHC 2381 (QB) and [2019] CSIH 49.
6 For an analysis comparing the that crisis with the lessons for the present see Saunders, “Breaking the Parliamentary Machine.”
7 This was discussed in April 2019 and remained a serious possibility in certain circles. See for example a letter from twenty-one academics and lawyers to The Times expressing their ‘profound dismay’ at the idea of Queen withholding the Royal Assent, 3 April 2019.
8 Evatt, The King and His Dominion Governors, 269.
9 See for example the different takes on prorogation from leading scholars Martin Loughlin, “The Case of Prorogation” and Paul Craig, “Prorogation: Constitutional Principle and Law, Fact and Causation.”
11 “Note for the Record – Events leading to the resignation of Mr Heath’s Administration on 4 March 1974,” PREM 16/231, TNA.
12 In Polly Toynbee’s opinion, for example of the Queen on 14 October: ‘“My government will … ” she intoned as if sucking lemons, but she has no government capable of doing anything at all’. Toynbee, “This Sham of a Queen’s Speech Could Prove the End.”
13 Kidd, Union and Unionisms, 299, fn 51.
14 Jennings, Cabinet Government, 343.
15 Hennessy, Muddling Through, 34–52.
16 Bogdanor, The Monarchy and the Constitution, 80.
17 The Supreme Court’s intervention into the reasons behind the prorogation seem to erode the convention in the United Kingdom stated in writing in 1986 by the Queen’s then Private Secretary, Sir William Heseltine, in The Times, that communications between the Sovereign and the prime minister are completely confidential. See Bogdanor, Monarchy and the Constitution, 71.
18 Harold Macmillan, diary entry, 29 August 1959 in Catterall, The Macmillan Diaries, vol. II, 243.
19 Hailsham, “Foreword” in Kerr, Matters of Judgement, xvii.
20 Murphy, Monarchy & The End of Empire, 157.
21 Brazier, “Royal Assent to Legislation”, 184–204.
22 House of Commons Public Administration Committee, “Taming the Prerogative: Strengthening Ministerial Accountability to Parliament – Fourth Report of Session 2003–04,” HC 422, 16 March 2004, 5.
23 A phrase earlier used by political legal scholars R. F. V. Heuston and (later by) Geoffrey Marshall. See Marshall, Parliamentary Sovereignty and the Commonwealth, 47.
24 Kumarasingham (ed.), Viceregalism.
25 See Tables 1 and 2 in H. Kumarasingham, “Viceregalism – The Roles and Rights of Parliamentary Heads of State,” in Kumarasingham, Viceregalism.
26 Hardman, “The Queen Can Handle Coups.”
27 The Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, was one who believed a coup had occurred in Britain in 2019. ‘Make no mistake, this is a very British coup’ on the day prorogation, quoted in “Johnson to suspend parliament before Brexit, opposition denounces ‘coup’”, Reuters, 28 August 2019. There was talk in some circles in 1967–1968 including the Newspaper baron Cecil King that the Labour government of Harold Wilson beset by economic problems and labour unrest should be replaced by an unelected national government with figures like Sir Oswald Mosely and Lord Mountbatten personally canvassed to head the administration and restore morale. This discussion of a ‘coup’, as some have termed it, could come about ‘when the Crown would have to intervene’ as the conspirators around King recorded, with Mountbatten favoured to help facilitate the plot to supplant the government due to his connections with the Royal Family and Armed Forces. This fascinating piece of British history has most recently been discussed in Lownie, The Mountbattens, 317–26.
28 See note 6.
29 Kelly and Bramston, The Dismissal, 133.
30 Twomey, “When Is Prorogation ‘Improper’?”
31 O’Brien, “Prorogation: A Postcolonial Perspective.”
32 Twomey, The Veiled Sceptre.
33 Twomey, Veiled Sceptre, 592–93.
34 See Russell and Sossin (ed.), Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis; and Russell, “Codifying Conventions.”
35 Hennessy, Hidden Wiring, 65.
36 See Stewart, “The British Government and the South African Neutrality Crisis, 1938–39,” 947–72; and Tothill, “Why General Smuts Won on 4th September 1939,” 5–28.
37 “Position of the Monarchy in Commonwealth Countries,” January–December 1972, FCO 68/450, The National Archives.
38 Ghai and Cottrell, The Head of State in Pacific Island States, 68.
39 Laski, “Foreword” in Evatt, The King and His Dominion Governors, vi.
40 Kumarasingham, “Viceregalism – The Roles and Rights of Parliamentary Heads of State.”
41 The Queen’s Christmas Broadcast, December 23, 2019 (https://www.royal.uk/queen%E2%80%99s-christmas-broadcast-2019).