Why should the Queen endorse the unions’ decision to choose a new Labour PM mid-term?
Imagine that the prime minister of the day — whoever he might be were to stand down as PM and leader of the majority party in Parliament. His party would choose a new leader. The new leader would presumably become prime minister. I say ‘presumably’ because, according to my understanding of our unwritten constitution, it would be for the monarch to decide that this new leader was the person best placed to command a working majority in the House of Commons and, having so decided, invite him to form a government. The monarch’s task (runs the argument) would simply be to rubber-stamp.
Or would it? I’ll hold to that ‘presumably’ while I put to you a hypothetical question a silly enough hypothetical question, I grant, but designed to test a principle. Suppose a party was returned to government at a general election, led by a man who promised to serve for the full term of that new government. Suppose this party had adopted an internal constitution which provided that if a leader did stand down, his replacement was henceforward to be chosen not by the party’s MPs, but by — say — the general secretary of the Socialist International.
And suppose the prime minister broke his promise to stay, and stood down some years before any general election was expected. In which case (so long as the party’s MPs were content to have a leader imposed upon them) the monarch would have to empower the general secretary of the Socialist International to choose the next prime minister, without any intervening general election.
Of course the monarch could trigger such elections, by dissolving Parliament. I suggest that in these circumstances there would be an argument (though contested) that the monarch should decline to invite the new party leader to form a government before putting the arrangement to the popular plebiscite of a general election.
A cogent case could be made both for and against such a royal intervention. The case in favour would be that the reason our constitution remains unwritten is that as a nation we want to be governed by the spirit, not the letter, of a shared understanding of how and for what purposes power is exercised. After a general election, the monarch invites the leader of the largest party to form a government because the people have expressed their will, and the monarch is giving effect to it. If a political party’s own constitutional arrangements permitted the effective appointment of a prime minister by neither the people nor the elected tribunes of the people, and without a general election, then such arrangements would run counter to the spirit of the British constitution. They could not trump it. They could not force upon the monarch the installation of a new prime minister with a defective democratic mandate.
Courts are quite ready, these days, to inquire into the overarching purpose rather than simply the letter of the law, and in such circumstances it might be thought a piece of progressive jurisprudence, rather than archaic interference, for the monarch to do the same.
But the argument the other way is also strong. This would be that it is not for the monarch to inquire as to how a party leader has been chosen, but only whether the leader thus chosen can command a majority in the Commons. If the electorate have returned to government a party with eccentric, undemocratic, arbitrary or even seditious arrangements for replacing its leaders, then more fool the voters. They should have read the small print of the parties’ own constitutions. If the governing party’s MPs are so supine as to allow an external power to appoint their leader, then the only question for the monarch is whether they are now disposed to accept his leadership. If they are, he must become prime minister.
I incline to this latter argument. But it has one great defect. It is surely too strong. What if a governing party decided to ask the president of France to appoint its leader? Or the Pope? Or the inmates of Brixton Prison? What if they decided to hold a lottery for the post? If we are saying that the choice of leader is purely an internal matter for a party, then we are saying that, however chosen, even in a manner repugnant to the spirit of our unwritten constitution, such people could require the monarch to appoint them prime minister without the democratic test of a general election.
If, however, we baulk at that, preferring to say that when it comes to a governing party changing horses in midstream, there must somewhere be a limit to how democratically offensive the party’s procedures may be, and that at some point a monarch may decline to rubber-stamp the appointment, then our debate is about the degree of offensiveness to democracy, not principle.
All this may look rather Jesuitical to you. But before many months have passed it is likely that our present Prime Minister will stand down; and after Labour’s Manchester conference last week there is a chance that the election of his successor as Labour leader could become a serious contest. In recent years such contests took place when Margaret Thatcher stood down and when Harold Wilson did so. Their successors, John Major and Jim Callaghan, were chosen by their parliamentary parties alone. It was only after Mr Callaghan’s election that Labour changed its rules to widen the electoral college, and now the Conservatives have done so too.
I think it follows that, without the validation of an intervening general election, no British monarch has yet been asked to appoint as prime minister an individual chosen by anyone other than his own parliamentary party, themselves elected by the people.
Just imagine that by next year John Reid’s or Alan Johnson’s stock had so risen that the contest with Gordon Brown looked touch and go. One third of the votes in the electoral college that would decide it are those of the members of trade unions affiliated to Labour.
All at once the million or so trade unionists expected to vote (about half the number who are eligible) would become a very interesting mini-electorate. The news media would be reading their mood. The pronouncements of union leaders and branch secretaries, who will be recommending to their members how to vote, would be national news. Candidates for the Labour leadership might start trying to woo them. Pledges would be sought, and promises given.
There are now about a third as many eligible trade-union voters (within a third as many affiliated trade unions) as 25 years ago. This strange, shrunken and in some eyes unlovely electorate-within-an-electorate could swing it. Quite possibly they would swing it against the wishes of the Parliamentary Labour party. They would be choosing our next prime minister for years to come. Wouldn’t there be many in Britain who would consider that outrageous? I believe so.
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