The constitutional monarchy is the elephant in the room of our politics

By James Gray

Republic’s case for a new republican constitution has two distinct forms.

The first concerns the social and cultural implications of hereditary power: the message it sends to our children and the rest of the world, the obscene privilege it represents. For many of our members that is enough to want to see the end of the monarchy. Maybe it’s enough for you.

But the second form concerns how the monarchy influences the way we do politics, how it keeps power from the hands of the people and stands in the way of genuine reform. It is this aspect of the monarchy debate that we’ll be focusing on at Republic’s Annual Conference on Saturday June 5th.

We’ve lined up some excellent guest speakers including LabourListers Alex Smith and Paul Richards. They’ll be joined by many other figures from progressive politics such as Gary Younge, Jonathan Bartley, Geoffrey Robertson and Natalie Bennett.

The mistake many monarchists make is to assume that republicans are concerned solely with the power that the Queen wields as an individual. Make no mistake, the monarch does wield power: she has the power to appoint the Prime Minister, dissolve parliament and withhold royal assent. These are real powers. If the Queen chose to exercise them against the advice of the government, she would be perfectly entitled to do so.

But it’s a lot more complicated than that. What many people forget is that the Crown is the foundation of our constitution, it is where final political authority is invested.

As a result, our government enjoys more power and less scrutiny than almost every other government in the democratic world. It can declare war, exercise emergency powers, sign international treaties, restructure and politicise the civil service, make appointments to quangos – all without parliamentary approval.

The state does not belong to us, it belongs to the Queen-in-Parliament. The concept of parliamentary sovereignty is a monarchical one. It states that absolute power must reside centrally, in one place – and must be kept away from the people. It gives parliament the power to pass any law it likes, literally any law. Notions of liberties or rights are alien to this system, of which the monarchy is the lynchpin.

The monarchy also means the British people are denied a head of state who can play a meaningful role in politics. There are times when a head of state can and should act – such as when a government falls during a fixed term parliament but it is unclear who should form a new administration. But our current monarch would never risk jeopardising the future of the monarchy by doing so unless she is forced to – in which case she is completely unaccountable for her actions, answerable to no one but the deity she believes appointed her.

This is the reality of a constitutional monarchy – it really is the elephant in the room of British politics. Our Annual Conference will be calling on political reformers, wherever they stand on the political spectrum, to tackle the issue head on over the course of the new parliament.

I hope you’ll be able to join us.