Tuesday 8 December 2015

The Republic of the United Kingdom

We are a republic. The country is ruled by Parliament, the Cabinet and the Prime Minister. And like Germany - and for the better in both countries - the head of government is separate from the head of state. Unlike Germany, our head of state is hereditary.

It is not true that we have no constitution. It is all over the place, and mostly in rules and strongly entrenched customs which are usually to do with the actions of the republic in the name of the monarch. That the structures which result are not written down in one place is a secondary matter. Or,  looking at it from another point of view, the monarchy is a governor, in the engineering sense that it keeps the mechanisms of the republic on an even keel, through the rules which have grown up and evolved over time.

If the monarch were replaced by a President, one can imagine Alec Douglas Hume and James Callaghan in the role since the war, and as President they would have done very well. But they could   not have been the focus of the nation to any significant extent. This has two aspects. As Churchill remarked,  it is better if the embodiment of the state is not used as a lever by politicians., which can happen if the head of government is also the head of state. And by attracting to itself the glamour of celebrity and by reflecting human values the monarchy is a very efficient mechanism for keeping the politicians and others in line with the agreed rules and customs embodied in the monarchy.

Harold Wilson, a socialist prime minister, mentioned Bagehot's distinction between the efficient part of the constitution,  the government,  and the dignified part, the monarchy, and added that if the efficient part were run as efficiently as the dignified part the country would have few problems.

This efficiency would by lost in a presidential system, with a worthy but scarcely iconic head of state . Against that it can be argued that the monarchy promotes social divisions and snobism. But this argument is far less important than  the good governance of the country. And in addition the Establishment, headed by the Queen, has certainly moved with the times. Mick Jagger has a knighthood and Brian Rix is in the House of Lords as Lord Rix of Whitehall. This is serious and sensible, and not a farce.