A Modest Proposal

Philip Murphy | 20 June 2024

Letter from the director of History & Policy in Private Eye (No. 1626) 21 June 2024

The satirical magazine Private Eye might not seem like the obvious platform from which to float policy ideas. But its fortnightly helping of political gossip has been required reading in Whitehall and Westminster since the 1960s. Its ‘Court Circular’ column, written under the pseudonym ‘Flunkey’ provides occasionally useful clues for those of us interested in the relationship between the royal family and the British government. Long-established nicknames for the royals include Brian (for King Charles) and Brenda (for his late mother).

In the edition of the Eye published on 7 June, Flunkey suggested that Elizabeth II would have dealt in a more measured and considered way than her son had done with prime minister Rishi Sunak’s surprise request on 22 May for the King to approve a dissolution of parliament in order to trigger a general election.

It seemed to me, as it did to some other historians with whom I was in contact, that this counterfactual rather ignored the Palace’s less than assured handling of the prorogation crisis in 2019. Shackled by the now-defunct Fixed Term Parliaments Act, a parliament without a clear government majority had reached deadlock over its attitude towards Brexit. Boris Johnson, who had been elected by the Conservative Party as its leader in July 2019 was determined that the UK should leave the European Union on 31 October that year, if necessary without a deal on its future relationship with the EU. On 28 August, Johnson formally advised the Queen to prorogue parliament. This would have ensured that parliament would only reconvene with the state opening on 14 October, just 17 days before Britain’s departure from the EU. The move was widely seen as a means of preventing parliamentary scrutiny of Johnson’s Brexit plans. Indeed, a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court on 24 September found that the prorogation was unlawful on the grounds that it had the effect ‘of frustrating or preventing, without reasonable justification, the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions as a legislature.’

While constitutional experts were divided as to whether the Queen was in practice obliged to follow the prime minister’s advice in this instance, there is little evidence that the Palace deliberated over the decision and its implications. The request was put to the monarch at a brief meeting at Balmoral Castle by the leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg on 28 August, and the Queen agreed. Whatever the constitutional precedents might have been, it seems bizarre that a head of state with decades of experience should so swiftly have agreed to a course of action that was subsequently judged unlawful by the highest court in the land. Hence my scepticism that she would have dealt any more confidently with Sunak’s request for a snap election. Hence also my suggestion that the Palace create a proper constitution unit to keep on top of such matters (although admittedly the Royal Lodge which currently seems to be the subject of a turf war between the King and his brother Prince Andrew might not be the ideal location).

Despite its significance as the home of the head of state of the UK and fourteen other Commonwealth Realms, the Palace, as a bureaucracy, has always operated in a very skeletal form. Indeed, former courtiers tend to deny that ‘the Palace’ actually exists in a collective sense: constitutionally there is simply ‘the Crown’ or ‘the monarch’ and their immediate staff. Yet without a sense of collective identity, it is difficult to have an institutional memory. And without that, the head of state will struggle to access the accumulated wisdom of his or her office when it is needed.

The anomalous status of the Palace emerged clearly from the last really thorough public investigation into its work, conducted way back in 1971 by the parliamentary Select Committee on the Civil List. Indeed, a proposal made by a Labour member of the committee, Douglas Houghton, was that the Palace be formally reconstituted as a department of state (the ‘Department of the Crown’) under a permanent secretary. It would be funded like any other government department and be answerable to parliament. Despite being supported by the then Labour opposition, Houghton’s idea did not make it into the report’s final recommendations. Nor did it find favour with the Palace itself, partly because the Queen’s position as sovereign of a number of separate independent countries made it uncomfortable with anything that seemed to tie her exclusively to the British state. Yet the Palace’s complex international role arguably made it all the more important that it should have a properly staffed bureaucracy with a decent institutional memory. Recent events suggest that this is still lacking. On 12 June, The Times noted in its own Court Circular column that on the previous day the King had ‘received a briefing from Constitutional Experts’ suggesting, rather worryingly, that ‘in-house’ expertise was not available to him.

The call in a recent report from the Heywood Foundation for historical expertise to be institutionalised across Whitehall through a network of departmental ‘chief historians’ will probably be met with claims that funding for such additional posts is just not available. Yet the Palace, which has done very well from the financial settlement agreed in the 2011 Sovereign Grant Act, could certainly afford to add a constitutional historian or two to its payroll. Furthermore, it is in its interests to do so. Its responsibilities for the remaining Commonwealth Realms in a period when republicanism is gaining momentum means it needs to be on top of the complex constitutional issues they sometimes raise. In Britain itself support for a republic is still relatively weak, although it is significantly stronger among younger voters. In an increasingly undeferential age, the monarchy faces a problem of legitimacy which it cannot hope to tackle purely through public relations. An investment in a new in-house constitution unit could create an internationally-respected centre of expertise, one that would enhance public confidence in the ability of our head of state to defend democratic norms and freedoms. The idea surely deserves serious consideration?

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About the author

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Philip Murphy is Professor of British and Commonwealth History at the University of London and Director of History & Policy at the Institute of Historical Research. From 2009 to 2022 he was Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICwS). He has published extensively on British, imperial and Commonwealth history. He has also maintained an on-going interest in the history of the British intelligence community and is currently writing the volume on the UK Security Service, MI5, for the Georgetown Studies in Intelligence series.