Category: Politics

A constitution sets out how a community has agreed to be governed. The British Constitution is a unique, time-worn set of principles and rules, some unwritten, which have developed alongside the historical events in Britain’s journey from Magna Carta Libertatum (1215) to the present day. It has three sectors: the legislative (Parliament), the executive (the Cabinet, Prime Minister, Civil Service and the Monarchy) and the judicial (judges and the court system).

Unlike other countries, Britain does not have a single document that lays out its Constitution; it would be the length of an encyclopedia if one did exist. Instead, it comprises Magna Carta, the Petition of Right  (1628), the Bill of Rights (1689), common law, the Statutes, the precedents set by judges’ decisions (case law) and the conventions.

One only has to look at the power-shifting relationship between the Houses of Lords and Commons which began with the Reform Act of 1832 to appreciate the value of the British Constitution’s flexibility, as well as the existence of various checks and balances, so that modifications are gradual and careful. It has been described as a ‘delicate machinery’ in which any change filters through the apparatus, but that is how it maintains its somewhat quirky integrity.

(Image: pexels.com / CC0)

The Liberal Democrat Party (‘LibDems’) was formed in 1988 as an amalgamation of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party. Today, however, they see themselves as a continuation of the Liberal Party, thereby laying claim to that Party’s history, going back to 1859. The merger served to boost their election results for a while, culminating in the coalition government of 2010-15 in which the LibDem leader (Nick Clegg) became Deputy Prime Minister along with some other LibDem members of the Cabinet.

However, the LibDems appeared ineffective in this situation and public support quickly faded. The Party has instead achieved much more success at local council level. For example, while their policy on re-entering the E.U. is not a vote-winner in a General Election, concern with potholes on local streets from a Party which is not entangled in everyday Parliamentary squabbles does garner support in local elections.

So whereas the Party had at its peak 18% of the national vote yielding 57 MPs (2010), it currently has around 3,000 local councillors, the third highest, with control of some councils overall. It also tends to do well in by-elections, achieving big swings from both Conservatives and Labour, as these generate focus on local as well as national issues.

(Image of LibDem 2015 campaign bus: Liberal Democrats at Flickr.com / CC BY-ND 2.0)

Of the three dozen British dukedoms (duchies) that still exist, several are in royal possession (“merged in Crown”) after having become vacant at some point in the past. There had been just three Dukes of Lancaster before the fourth inherited the title and became King Henry V (1386-1422) simultaneously in 1413, thereby preserving it and all its estates for the monarch personally to this day.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is a Member of Parliament chosen to represent the monarch’s Duchy interests in the Cabinet. The Chancellor answers to the King/Queen for the administration of the commercial, agricultural, financial and residential portfolio, though most of this is delegated to the Duchy Council to carry out. The profits generated by the Duchy go to the monarch via the Keeper of the Privy Purse and amount to some £20,000,000 per year before tax (paid voluntarily). Just one other Duchy provides income to royalty in this way, namely the Duchy of Cornwall.

In Cabinet and in the House of Commons, the Chanellor holds a senior position and has wide-ranging oversight of government policy, security and conduct, including that of major events. For example, in 2023 he was involved in the planning of the King’s Coronation.

(Image of Duchy-owned Lancaster Castle: Ian Taylor at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

King Edward VII (1841-1910) created the Order of Merit (OM) in 1902 in recognition of “..exceptionally meritorious service in Our Navy and Our Army..” (the Air Force was added in 1935) or for civilians equally meritorious in the “..advancement of the Arts, Learning, Literature and Science, or such other exceptional service”. Awardees are chosen solely by the monarch and there are only 24 British or Commonwealth members of the Order at any one time. Foreign recipients are additional to this but on an Honorary basis.

The first 12 members comprised three Field Marshals, two Admirals, two physicists, two politicians, a painter, an astronomer and a surgeon, suggestive of the King’s concerns and interests at the time. The first foreigners to be recognised were three Japanese military leaders in 1906 and the first woman was nurse Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) in 1907. Six British Prime Ministers wore the OM badge ~ Balfour, Lloyd George, Churchill, Atlee, Macmillan and Margaret Thatcher.

Current members include Sir Tim Berners-Lee, David Hockney and Sir James Dyson, and a gathering of some or all of these glittering personalities would make for fascinating conversations! With ages ranging from 56 to 96 and careers including architect, playwright, engineer, archbishop, mathematical physicist and conductor, the anecdotes would doubtless be rather special.

(Image: Oosoom at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0)

One of the noteworthy figures in the formation of Great Britain (England, Wales & Scotland) was the 4th Duke of Hamilton (1658-1712) from Lanarkshire. He, and others, suffered a significant financial loss in Scotland’s Darién Scheme of 1698-1700, with the ship named after him being among those that never returned from a short-lived colony in Spanish-controlled territory. The Scottish economy, already hit by a string of poor harvests, almost collapsed.

Furthermore, Hamilton proffered his claim to the  joint Scottish-English throne, as he was of Stuart descent, like Queen Anne (1665-1714), who had no living child. The Scots were angry that the English Parliament independently pursued the German royal line for a successor, so they passed a law affirming their right to have a separate monarch, as they did pre-1603.

The English then threatened to put Scots on the same footing as any other foreigners. Queen Anne saw union as the solution, which would come with jobs and financial assistance, plus the retention of the Scottish church, education and legal systems. Hamilton was persuaded but stayed away from the 1707 Parliamentary vote on the Act of Union with toothache. He subsequently received several English titles but was killed in a duel in London over an inheritance.

(Images:- Great Britain flag [adjusted]: Elliott Brown at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0, Scottish & English flags: publicdomainpictures.net / CC0)

Members of Parliament can be regarded as the front-end, public-facing partners of His/Her Majesty’s Home Civil Service (HCS), an organisation which is tasked with the nuts-and-bolts administration of the country. HCS employees are called civil servants but they are actually Crown servants and they populate dozens of departments and specialist agencies covering numerous aspects of government control.

The total number of civil servants, which has been over a million and is currently (2022) around half that, varies according to prevailing political factors, such as:-

• wars/conflicts
• nationalisation/privatisation of major industries
• report recommendations on recruitment/redundancy
• Parliament’s desire to follow new, untried, far-reaching policies

The origins of the HCS lie in the small teams of clerks who assisted court appointees. These teams, or secretariats, blossomed with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the British Empire, but by the mid-1800s it was recognised that the whole body needed overhauling and regulation, with entrance examinations and promotion given on merit. Indeed the size and efficiency of the HCS has been a regular topic for parliamentary consideration. HCS careers can be tailored to one department or many and range from leadership and responsibility for policy formation and implementation, to administrative office work and boots-on-the-ground tasks.

(Image of civil servants in training: UK CivilService at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The Good Parliament of 28 April – 10 July 1376 was followed by the Bad Parliament of 27 January – 2 March 1377, which reversed everything accomplished by the former and added an unpopular poll tax on top. Indeed the issue of tax was one of the main reasons the ailing King Edward III (1312-77) had brought the MPs together.

A 10-day debate opened the session, in which all their complaints were aired, including:-

• Edward’s excessive demands for tax
• the financial corruption of his inner circle
• his mis-management of the war with France resulting in loss of French territory
• the fortune given to his mistress, Alice Perrers (1348-1400), from royal coffers
• Perrers’s interference in legal cases against her friends

Sir Peter de la Mare (c.1330-c.1390) summarised their grievances so well that he was elected ‘Prolocutor’, or Speaker, to represent these to the King.  He was the first to hold such a position.

Another ‘first’ was the use of impeachment ~ a prosecution conducted by the House of Commons and judged by the House of Lords. Three of the King’s financial associates were thus sentenced, jailed and fined. Perrers was made to swear that she would not go near the King, even when his son the Black Prince died in the June.

(Image of King Edward III: www.worldhistory.org / CC BY-NC 4.0)

2019 was the year the Brexit Party emerged as a phenomenal grass-roots success in British politics, focused on fully implementing the 2016 referendum vote to leave the European Union. The Brexit Party’s rapid progress can be summarised thus:-

• Registration by Catherine Blaiklock in January 2019
• Official launch in April 2019 with Nigel Farage as Leader
• Election of 29 Members to the European Parliament in May 2019 (the largest representation there) as ‘insider’ guardians of UK sovereignty
• Strategic placing of MP candidates in November 2019 to avoid splitting the ‘Please-Just-Get-On-With-Leaving’ vote…
• …in the December 2019 General Election, won with a huge 80-seat majority by an ostensibly pro-Brexit Conservative Party, bolstered by voters who had never voted Conservative before, simply to “Get Brexit Done!”
• Brexit finally happens on 31st January 2020! The Brexit Party hosts a celebration in London’s Parliament Square.

Kent-born Nigel Farage (1964-) had spent years campaigning for Brexit. Although his Party had no MPs, his charisma, his gift for speech-making and his political insights, rescued the UK from moving deeper and deeper into an EU behemoth.

In 2021 he stood down as Leader and the Party’s Chairman, Londoner Richard Tice (1964-), took over. The Party was re-branded as ‘Reform UK’, with an expanded range of common-sense policies for the post-Brexit country.

(Top image of Nigel Farage: Gage Skidmore at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC 2.0)

With its first-past-the-post voting principle, a UK General Election does not often result in no party having a working majority of 326 MPs, but when it does, a coalition government is one option. The devolved governments of Scotland and Wales, with their proportional representation systems of voting, thereby regularly produce coalitions. Northern Ireland has a coalition at all times, in accordance with the 1998 power-sharing Good Friday Agreement.

The UK had a coalition government during both World Wars and during The Depression of the 1930s. It came close to having a coalition in the 1970s but the parties could only agree on a pact. The only other national coalition of modern times was in 2010-15 when the Conservatives had 307 MPs and governed with the Liberal Democrats, who had 57 MPs.

There are no set rules on the formation of a coalition, other than that the sitting Prime Minister has the first shot at attempting such a solution. In 2010, negotiating teams were apparently assembled prior to the Election to prepare for what seemed a potential outcome. Common policy points were sought and ministerial roles strategically allocated. However, the Liberal Democrats lost 49 of their seats in the next Election, signifying a large-scale rejection of their effectiveness.

(Image of newly partnered LibDem (L) and Conservative (R) leaders in 2010: Number 10 at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Ever since its legal creation in 1921, Northern Ireland has had its own Parliament, or Assembly, but its operation has never been without difficulties. This has resulted in several temporary suspensions or even the shutting down of proceedings for years at a time. In the current Assembly model, the top post is shared equally between the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister, one of whom will be unionist, the other nationalist.

There are 90 Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs), 5 for each of 18 constituencies, and they must register as  ‘Nationalist’, ‘Unionist’ or ‘Other’. There are 9 Departments dealing with matters such as education, health, justice and agriculture. The Ministers and Committee Chairs are allocated according to the D’Hondt formula for proportional power-sharing among all the parties.

The very first elected Members gathered together on 7th June 1921 at Belfast City Hall and there was a Royal inaugural ceremony two weeks later. There was another in 1932 for the completion of work on the new ‘Parliament Buildings’, a rather stately addition to Stormont Castle on a 235-acre site near Belfast. The nationalists criticised it as a symbol of Ireland’s permanent partition. In contrast, the unionists saw it as solid confirmation of Northern Ireland’s new status.

(Image of Parliament Buildings: Mike Faherty at geograph.ie / CC BY-SA 2.0)