Labour Hanging On.

Both the polls out today, show Labour and the Lib dems neck and neck in the upper 20s and the Tories back down to the lower 30s. This does not look like an outright Tory win. In fact both polls put Labour just in front on seats, with the Lib Dems with enough MPs to give a majority to either main party. We are back in hung parliament territory.

This country’s so called flexible constitution is based on the concept of the absolute power of the Monarch being delegated to her Prime Minister and his government, which is, in fact, her government. After the election it stays in office until the Prime Minister resigns. This he would do if another party emerged from the election with a majority. If not, what then?

He would stay in office as a caretaker Prime Minister with a caretaker government until defeated in the House of Commons on a Vote of Confidence. The Queen’s Speech counts as such a vote if defeated. The Queen would then ask the next most likely candidate to have a go at forming a government. In practice, to avoid chaotic parliamentary antics causing foreign investors to take fright and rank the UK as dodgy as Greece, negotiations would be conducted between the Parties in which officials would facilitate discussions. All of this would however be under the control of the caretaker PM, ie Gordon Brown.

In any other country with a parliamentary system vaguely similar to ours such negotiations are organised by the Head of State. This is either an elected President or a Constitutional Monarch. Unfortunately in our country we have a so called Constitutional Monarchy, but there is no formal Constitution. Thus whoever is prime minister of the moment is for all practical puposes Head of State as well. Reform is required to separate the function of Head of Government from Head of State. This can be done by allowing the Queen to exercise certain of those powers as in the past, by electing a political Head of State, or by officially giving the job to the prime minister, who would then have to be directly elected by universal suffrage by the people, as in the US or France.

Meanwhile it is most important that in the event of a hung parliament the leaders of all the parties at Westminster and especially the three main ones likely to be involved in the horse trading necessary to reach a viable agreement leading to a stable government, recognise that the Palace has a part to play and a pro-active one at that, using the existing authority of the Monarch. If this is unpalatable to modern democracy the matter can be dealt with by Constitutional Reform when there is a new government. But first we have to have a government.