The Silent Throne

The Supreme Governor's opinions about almost anything are a mystery, which is part of the point. I do wonder what she thinks of this week's constitutional shenanigans. Some of my Remainer friends have nurtured the incongruously Cavalier fantasy that she might tell the Prime Minister that he can't prorogue Parliament, that he is a liar and a fraud and that he, or his messengers despatched Balmoral-ward, should get out of her sight. But of course she can't. The Opposition protests that power in Britain resides in Parliament; the Tory Brexiteers, that it flows from that amorphous and manipulable if unpredictable spring, The People. Neither is right: the source of authority in this realm is the Crown, and the Crown means the executive, much less restrained by legal checks and balances here than Mr Trump is on the far side of the Atlantic. In theory the Queen acts on the advice of her Prime Minister; in fact it is he that acts, no matter what she may advise. 

The former minister, the estimable ex-spy Mr Stewart recently said on the wireless that had Mr Johnson prorogued Parliament over the fateful date of All Hallows Eve itself, he thought a majority of MPs would simply refuse to be prorogued, and sit somewhere else. Revolutions often happen when nobody intends them, when constitutions break under the pressure of events, and 'revolution' would not be too extreme a word to describe the legislature decamping and leaving the executive to its own devices. 

I suppose it all depends now on whether Mr Johnson can bring something back from Brussels which will amount to an agreement allowing the UK to depart the EU in something approaching good order. If so, the revolution might not happen even yet. But if he doesn't, I somehow don't think the electorate will reward him for the results. 

And the Supreme Governor? As I say, I wonder about her thoughts. As she draws to the close of a long life of (as she and many others would see it) dedicated public service, she must at least be contemplating the very possible ruin of everything she swore in 1953 to preserve: the rule of law, the Union, constitutional monarchy itself, all at the hands of a supposedly Conservative and Unionist administration, one in reality anything but, one which is prepared to sacrifice everything for a single goal. And she can do nothing about it. As someone commented, the Queen has a veto over the Government, but she only has one veto. Once she plays that card, the game is over. Once she takes sides, she is no longer impartial. She destroys the constitutional monarchy in the very act of trying to preserve it.