Constitutional monarchy

After the dislike of fractional reserve banking and the fondness for the gold standard, this is the third area I find bizarre about some libertarian thought, though this one applies only, so far as I am aware, to U.K. libertarians. Perhaps I’m slow on the uptake, but this was the subject that first made me realise that some contemporary Libertarians are quite removed from the Liberal origins of the movement, being basically small-government Tories, adrift from the modern, corporatist Conservative Party.

I could point to a number of examples of the idea I’m thinking of, from various prominent Libertarians, but Obnoxio posted about this recently and summed up the argument as well as anyone has:

A constitutional monarchy is not the endgame objective of any Libertarian. It is profoundly unlibertarian that someone can rule over you by accident of birth. However, through happy accident, it transpires that having a ruling monarch that is required to give assent to laws, along with two strong chambers of debate is a pretty good mix for reasonable governance in a democratic, rather than an anarchic state.

I could criticise this on principle, but the strongest objection, I think, is what you might call reality-based. The last time Royal Assent was given in person was in 1854. The last time Royal Assent was refused was in 1707/8. The Queen does not give Royal Assent to Acts of Parliament. The process of an Act getting Royal Assent is entirely automatic. It happens in name alone.

As a republican, I ought to welcome the idea that the monarch should try to withhold assent. In the furore that followed, if there weren’t an abdication, Parliament would simply pass legislation underlining its authority, effectively undermining or even removing the monarch from this theoretical constitutional position. That’s what they have done in the past when something similar happened. And in the event of an abdication today, we’d have Charles, the Cretinous Dauphin, on the throne – and a more powerful argument for republicanism would be impossible to make.

But as one on the libertarian wing of politics, I find such arguments depressing. I like Obo’s postings a lot, but this argument reveals, I think, a shaky understanding not just of the history of the Royal Assent, but also of the way we have reached our present constitutional arrangements.

Initially, we had Kings. Kings did not, at first, govern autocratically, but instead did so in Council with the important magnates of the land. When a King, John, was felt to be taking the wrong counsels, those of nobles not from England, and to be levying taxes without their consent, the Barons forced him to sign Magna Carta. Parliament could be said to have had its roots in that document and very rapidly came to consist of two chambers, Lords and Commons, who met to give their consent to taxation proposals.

That’s how things stayed for a couple of centuries, until a monarch who believed himself possessed of a Divine Right to rule unhindered by Parliament, refused to accept Parliament’s restrictions on his proposed taxes. This led to civil war and though the short-lived Republic was replaced by Charles II, the idea that Parliament should have influence over policy, and not just taxation, had taken root. Four years after Charles’s death, the Bill of Rights enshrined this idea in English Law. At that time, you might have been able to argue that there was a balance of powers in England. But this situation began, rapidly, to change. The Bill of Rights was signed in 1689, the last refusal of Royal Assent, as I have noted above, was just eight years later. Power was shifting to Parliament. Within Parliament, it started to shift to the Commons.

The mistake is to forget we have not had a fixed constitution, but rather a process of change. We haven’t had adequate checks and balances of power in this country for centuries, if ever.

Obo is right to feel we should have such a system. But if we are to start from where we actually are, rather than root our ideas in Golden Ageism, I can see only one direction in which we can move if we are to have a balanced government. That is to a constitutional republic, one in which the constitution limits the scope of government and distributes power between institutions. British experience during the Enlightenment allowed an almost perfect Liberal constitution to be drawn up, by British people. At least, by people who were either born here or who had until a year or two previously considered themselves to be British.

It is the American Constitution, and I recommend it to this House.