Taspher’s Constitution Proposal
This is part of a series of threads I am making which cover the constitution of the UK and how we can fix it. You can find the main page for these threads here.
The Proposal
Explaination
It is well-known that Parliament cannot bind itself, and I have no desire to try and circumvent that. It is also true that the nature of power is strength. “If the law isn’t enforced, then it isn’t the law.” As such, I chose to entrench this bill by not entrenching it. Instead, the King is just told that by his Oath, he cannot give effect to a law which goes counter to this Constitution, under the implicit threat that if he breaks that oath, he can be removed from the throne.
The form of entrenchment is taken from Sweden. The reason being that I think we should still want a fairly flexible constitution, and using referendums to amend the constitution would be a mess. I deliberately left the Thanes out of this, but I would not be terribly opposed to a requirement to pass all three houses twice.
The Repeals section is nowhere near complete. This would have to be done closer to the time this bill is being passed.
Likewise, the transitional provisions section isn’t complete either. There needs to be a lot of thinking about implementation. For instance, the Shires need to be created and elected prior to the first election of this new Parliament. The transition between Police structures, the integration of territory, the transition of the Supreme Court back into the House of Lords, and so on and so forth would take a very long time to think about. In reality, it would be an entire part of this bill unto itself.
The King, aka, the Crown is Parliament is an archaic constitutional figure head who does have influence but has never overtly used his influence for good of his “subjects”. I studied constitution law which the powers that should not be prefer to call ‘Public Administrative Law’.
In theory the King could veto legislation by way of his Royal Prerogative powers and refuse to give his Royal Assent to Acts of Parliament. But the last time this royal prerogative power was used was in 1708 and so, it has not been used in over 300 years. It occurred to me that the reason it is not used is because, the Monarch is hardly likely to deny the Royal Assent when the Monarch has, in his Parliament’s opening ceremony given a speech saying “My government” will do this, that and the other. In substance and effect, the Monarch has already agreed to the Acts of Parliament when he gave his Parliamentary speech. Thus, he already knows about the Acts his government will pass long before they even start the legislative process.
Note the Monarch’s Parliament speech when they first open Parliament. His speech is not about OUR democratically elected government. The Monarch’s speech is about HIS Government. Same as HIS Majesty’s revenue and customs (HMRC) and His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service etc. It’s not ours, it is HIS. That is our Constitutional Monarchy. The King/Queen has already agreed with HIS government’s policies when he ‘invites’ the Party Leader to form his government. He has already publicly told everyone he has agreed to those policies in his Parliament opening speech, so he is never going to use his prerogative power and withhold the Royal Assent even if that is in the best interests of the citizenry.
I’m completely with you on the need for a constitution policy. We do need to sort out our Constitution. We need more transparency on what our constitution is and exactly how constitutional power is used and/or abused.
To your point about removing the Monarch for breach of his oath, begs the question as to why do we even have a monarch? What’s the point of a Monarch in a modern democratic society?
