All our Prime Ministers are unelected

Some good news to start with: Larry the Cat, who is not the Camerons' cat but a civil servant tasked to get rid of mice and rats (the four-legged ones) in Number 10, is staying on to take his rightful position under the new Prime Minister. I had always assumed that the Camerons were more of a dog family but kept a cat because of the difficulties of canine life in Downing Street. Not a bit of it. Larry is part of the government machine as is Palmerston, the Foreign Office cat. Sadly, being a civil servant not a politician, he cannot become the Prime Minister. Not yet, anyway.

The other piece of good news is that not writing about the supposed fight over children between May and Leadsom over the week-end meant that I do not have to write about it at all. By  Monday morning it was all over and Andrea Leadsom had pulled out of the contest. Did she jump or was she pushed? We do not know for certain but can make our own assumptions.

What we do know is that she was comprehensively stitched up by the media and, specifically, by the paper of record, the Times. All the stories that had been spread about her turned out to be untrue and Rachel Sylvester admitted that she had introduced the issue of Leadsom having children and May not into the conversation. The little we know from the tape (most of it is still in the secret archives of the paper of record) confirms that. Leadsom was probably naive not to insist on seeing that article before it was published and one could argue that alone shows that she is not ready for Number 10. But do we really want a situation in which less than honourable hacks decide who can and who cannot become party leader and Prime Minister? I find that appalling as I find it appalling how many people continue to believe and repeat the headlines even though doubts about the veracity of the story emerged very early.

Another curious aspect of the whole brouhaha has been outlined by Ross Clark in the Spectator: A traditional family life is now a handicap. Angela Eagle can explain that being gay, working class and a northern lass gives her some kind of a special insight into the country's mentality; Theresa May can (slightly more justifiably) excite people's sympathy because apparently she could not have children; but try talking about your children and implying that perhaps bringing them up does give you some qualifications and empathy with a very large proportion of the population and you are dead in the political arena.

How outrageous that Jeremy Corbyn’s challenger should bring her class, her geographical birthplace and her sexuality into the leadership debate, suggesting that they would make her a more suitable leader than Corbyn. Or maybe it isn’t outrageous that someone should draw on their personal experiences while campaigning for office. I certainly haven’t come across anyone else making the point I have just made, and neither did I hear anyone protesting when Stephen Crabb talked about his council house upbringing while launching his leadership bid, nor when Sadiq Khan went on ad nauseam during the London mayoral election about his father being a bus driver.

In which case why was it such a scandal when Andrea Leadsom suggested that being a mother gave her valuable experience for being Prime Minister? If being northern and working class makes you better able to understand a section of the population then surely being a parent helps you understand the demands on millions of other parents. Moreover, having to juggle the needs of work and childcare and still follow a successful career surely shows the world that you have valuable skills in time-management.

And we accept all this manipulation. Truly we get the media and the politicians we deserve.

Having got all that out of the way, let me turn to the inevitable cries that have already started: Theresa May is an unelected Prime Minister. We had them when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister. He, too, was unelected. Well, of course, they are. All our Prime Ministers are unelected. We do not have a presidential system and we do not vote for Prime Ministers. We vote for MPs and through them for parties in the sense that the party with the largest number of MPs forms the government, choosing the leader according to their own rules.

Ah yes, I am told, but Theresa May (or Gordon Brown) did not lead their parties in an election. True.
A surprising number of Prime Ministers did not do so, when they were appointed to their jobs. Usually I start with 1940 when Churchill became an unelected Prime Minister but, for once, I shall go a little further back.

So here is a list of appointed Prime Ministers from 1916:

1916: Lloyd George becomes PM without an election when Asquith falls
1922:  Andrew Bonar Law became PM after the 1922 Committee revolt against the Coalition but called an election almost immediately
1923: With Bonar Law resigning because of his terminal cancer Stanley Baldwin is appointed PM. He, too, called an election soon after his appointment, which was inconclusive and led to a vote of no confidence, which, in turn, led to
1924: Ramsay Macdonald being appointed to be PM
Baldwin's second term came after he had led the Conservative Party to a huge victory but
1935: Baldwin was appointed Prime Minister of the Coalition government as Ramsay Macdonald's health was failing; he then won an election but
1937: Baldwin resigned and Chamberlain was appointed PM.

Before anyone starts making stupid comments about Neville Chamberlain let me say it quite forcefully that had there been an election in 1940 as intended, the Conservatives under him would have been returned triumphantly.

And so we come to 1940, from which the situation is a good deal more clear-cut with no real problems with the few coalitions we had.

1940: Churchill appointed PM and, obviously, could not call an election. In any case he leads a war-time coalition that is not dissolved till spring 1945 when Attlee demands an election, not something WSC was keen on. Labour landslide. Churchill loses one more election in 1950 and Conservatives are returned in 1951 though only just and without a popular mandate, which does not matter under our system.
1955: Churchill finally retires and Anthony Eden is appointed PM. He called an immediate General Election and increased the Conservative majority considerably. Well, we all know the sad story of Eden's premiership.
1957: Harold Macmillan is appointed PM. Did not call an election till 1959 which he won.
1963: Sir Alec Douglas Home is appointed PM after Supermac's resignation. Calls election in 1964 and loses though only just by five seats.
1976: James Callaghan is appointed PM after Harold Wilson completely unexpected resignation. Calls election in 1979 and loses.
1990: John Major is appointed PM after the drama of challenge to Thatcher and her resignation. Calls election in 1992 and wins.
2007: Gordon Brown appointed PM after Tony Blair's rather protracted resignation saga. Calls election in 2010 and loses.
2016: Theresa May appointed PM after David Cameron gambles on the EU referendum and loses, resigning immediately. No need to call an election especially as we now have fixed term Parliaments.

For the sake of brevity I have written of PMs losing or winning elections. Of course, it was the party they led that did so. Let me reiterate my two points:

1. None of our Prime Ministers are elected and
2.  Quite a few of our Prime Ministers even under the modern party system were appointed as their predecessors resigned. Some called an election immediately, some delayed; some then led their parties to victory, some did not.

Meanwhile, back on the home front

The EU Referendum Bill is still making its way through Parliament. As expected the House of Commons reversed the Amendment that would have given 16 and 17 year olds the right to vote in it (unlike the right to buy tobacco or alcohol or decide whether they want to stop being part of the education system) and agreed to all the government Amendments. (See columns 881 to 885 for the vote.)

So the Bill returns to the Lords in what has become known as "ping-pong" and from 3 pm on the proceedings can be watched here. It will be interesting to see how the Lords will deal with a problem that seems to have been added to the procedure quite gratuitously.

At the beginning of that debate in the Commons on December 8, the Speaker said:

I must draw the House’s attention to the fact that Lords amendment 1 engages financial privilege. Lords amendment 1 is the first amendment to be taken, and to move the Government motion to disagree I call the Minister, eager and expectant.

Financial privilege attached to the amendment implies that the Lords will not be able to reinstate it. It is hard to see why this amendment should have financial privilege attached to it while other matters should not.

Naturally, an extension of the electorate even temporarily carries a price but then all legislation carries a price. Is the Speaker saying that the Lords will now not be able to amend any legislation, in case that amendment might have some financial implication. If so, it introduces an important constitutional change, which should be discussed widely and not simply announced in a somewhat off-hand fashion by the Speaker.

This is all part and parcel of the government's intention to do away with any kind of check on its power. Given our system that check is not going to come from the House of Commons, though its members might be elected; it can come only from the courts (another theme altogether) or the Lords. Readers of this blog know that it is greatly in favour of the Lords providing that check even when the blog disagrees with their decision, as it does in this case.

Interestingly, support for that point of view has come from the Adam Smith Institute. Dr Eamonn Butler writes on their blot that An unelected check is better than no check on the House of Commons.

Who says politicians are useless and inefficient? They are superbly efficient at one thing, at least – curbing any restraints on their own power.

Thus Lord Strathclyde, the Conservative grandee charged by Prime Minister David Cameron with reviewing the role of peers in the governance of the United Kingdom, is set to propose that the Lords lose their veto over delegated or ‘secondary’ legislation. It all stems from the Prime Minister’s (and the Chancellor’s) agitation at the House of Lords blocking plans to cut tax credits. And that was not the first time that the Lords has irritated the House of Commons by questioning its legislative plans.

The argument is that the Commons is elected and the Lords (mostly) isn’t. So the Lords have no right to block Commons legislation. But even the most slavering MP these days would not suggest simply abolishing the Lords and giving the House of Commons absolute power. That would lead to riots. But they figure they can get rid of the ‘problem’ a bit at a time. The Lords have already lost their powers to block financial legislation; they can delay but not veto other measures; and the Parliament Act, designed to be used in dire emergencies, is now deployed with dazzling frequency, to push through measures that the Lords feel queasy about.

Lord Strathclyde’s proposals are just the latest sortie in these one-sided air-strikes. Secondary legislation is the detailed regulatory stuff that MPs can’t be bothered with, and delegate to officials: so (runs the argument) why do we need the Lords to worry about that?

Well, we should all worry about it, as we can at least get rid of MPs and even overturn laws, but we can’t vote out regulators. Scrapping regulations ain’t so easy, either. So it is good that such proposals are properly scrutinised before they get going. Give it a year or three, though, and there will be some other issue, and the Lords’ powers will be trimmed again. And again.

I find this obsession with elections completely baffling, especially as so often the people who insist on it also complain about the electoral system and about the people who get elected. Surely, having another House that is chosen in a different way is a good idea.

There are many problems with the House of Lords as it stands. Lord Pearson's repeated complaint that the Lib-Dims are over-represented in it while UKIP is under-represented is fair; the packing of the House by the previous Labour and Coalition as well as the present Conservative governments is part and parcel of their intention to control its activity and ought to be stopped. A moratorium on any further peerages should be introduced immediately until we sort out the mess that has been created by the packing.

But let us not forget that the argument for nobody being appointed and everybody being elected leads to the next one, which is the one about elected politicians not being elected by all that large a proportion of the electorate. A discussion of whom MPs represent and what their position is or ought to be in the political world is something for another blog in which Edmund Burke will be quoted correctly but let us quickly look at the logical conclusion of that argument: it is surely that unless about 90 per cent or more vote for the government it has no legitimacy. Well there are and have been for many years political systems based on that. Do the critics of our system really want to live like that?

Clearing the ground

Every now and then I am moved to write a blog that puts most of my readers into the position of the proverbial grandmother who is being taught how to consume an egg or two without using her teeth. I apologize to those who are particularly annoyed but feel that a little ground needs clearing. The immediate cause of this rant discussion of basic facts is someone trotting out the old chestnut on another forum that Gordon Brown was not even elected to be Prime Minister. When I stopped raving and tearing my hair out in fury I replied in words of utmost simplicity and tried to explain that we do not elect Prime Ministers in this country. Why is that so difficult to understand?

So, let me try to clear some of that ground. We do not have a directly elected Executive in this country. Maybe we should but that is another story altogether. Once out of the EU or standing beside its debris we might change our constitution and create a system that would, indeed, elect our government directly rather than indirectly through Parliament. So far I have not seen a single proposal that would create anything but a Premiership that was even less accountable than it is now.

Let me go through it all again: in the General Election we vote for individual MPs on a first past the post system and the party that collects the largest number of MPs, should it find itself in a position of being  able to form a government, does so. Who becomes Prime Minister in those circumstances is up to the party in question to decide. Whoever is the leader of that party is summoned by Her Majesty and asked  to form the next government. Presumably, she also adds sotto voce "and God help you".

This does not run smoothly all the time and there have been various  occasions when the party in question, being in an overall minority in the House of Commons, has to make choices: its leader can form a minority government with the certain knowledge that there will be another election within a few months; he (the one time we had a she the question did not arise) can form a minority government with the full support of one of the smaller parties, usually the third one; or he can team up with another party to form a coalition, a tricky but not particularly unusual course of action in modern British politics.

As a matter of fact, there was no talk of any coalition during the 2010 election and it was formed against the wishes of elected representatives of both parties as well as those of the electorate. So, if any government is unelected, it is this one.

The argument about Gordon Brown runs as follows: when it is pointed out that his party happens to have won unequivocally three elections, with two of them as landslides, the response is that he was not the leader at the time so people did not vote for him. (They did, as it happens, in his own constituency but let that pass.) This is true and, perhaps, the Labour Party would have done better to hold some sort of a leadership election when Tony Blair announced his resignation. However, I repeat, that is up to them.

A new Prime Minister taking over in the middle of a parliamentary term is a very common occurrence. In 1935 Stanley Baldwin replaced Ramsay Macdonald, called a general election, which gave the National Government  another huge victory. Baldwin was replaced by Neville Chamberlain in 1937. An election was going to be called in 1940, which the Conservatives would have won, but events intervened. Instead, another "unelected" Prime Minister came to power, Winston Churchill. No election till 1945, which was called with great reluctance on his part and which resulted in a Labour landslide. Then there was another Labour victory and in 1951 a grudging Conservative one.

Chuchill hung on till 1955 when he was succeeded by the "unelected" Anthony Eden, who called an election and increased the Conservative majority. The Suez debacle led to his resignation and he was succeeded by the "unelected" Harold Macmillan who resigned in 1963 to be succeeded by the "unelected" Sir Alec Douglas-Home.

Moving right along, we have an "unelected" Prime Minister in James Callaghan in 1976 and in John Major in 1991 1990. Quite a common occurrence in fact and nobody has ever called them unelected in the past, possibly because people were better versed in the British constitutional rules.

Let me also add that until 1965 the Conservatives did not elect their leaders, who simply emerged after a great deal of negotiation behind the scenes. Labour did elect but there was just as much negotiation behind those scenes before the vote went through.

Apart from Eden, all the post-war Prime Ministers who took over between elections, continued in place to the last possible minute after which the party they led was either returned with a smaller majority as in the case of Macmillan and Major or lost as in the case of Douglas-Home and Callaghan. No particular conclusions can be drawn from that.

I trust I have cleared some ground.

It's been brought forward

Yes, that speech. You know, the one that has been trailed like some blockbuster movie for weeks on end. The one that will be made in the Netherlands. That one. What's his name's speech on you know what. Got it, David Cameron's speech on ... well, we really don't know what it will be on as it has been trailed variously as being on Europe, on Britain's "relations with the EU", on the referendum and on David Cameron's political future. (Well, OK, I made the last one up.)

The Boss is ahead of me, as usual. (I suspect he does not drink quite as much coffee as I do.) But I, too, noticed that the reason for moving the speech from January 22nd to the 18th was that somebody realized that the original date was "the 50th anniversary of the Franco-German peace accord, the Elysée treaty, the formal ratification of the coal and steel agreement that led to the formation of the EU". As the Guardian adds: "A speech attacking the current shape of the EU on such a day was seen as diplomatically unwise."

Mind you, those attacks are likely to be very mild and more like a slap on the wrist then a real blow.

I assume this means that the Boy-King and his advisers have finally worked out what he will say though I still assume that it will be an anodyne speech that will please nobody. At least, he will have no excuse for not being in the Chamber for the Second Reading the Succession to the Crown Bill 2012 - 13. Unless he considers celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Elysée treaty is more important than a serious change in this country's constitutional set-up.

That, I suspect, was the aim

For some time now I have been saying that this government is rivalling the previous one in the creation of new peers. Today we are told by the Guardian that Cameron has overtaken Blair in this particular aspect of constitutional vandalism. The House is now seriously bloated and there is little room though, as before, few of the new peers do any actual work on committees (you don't get any payment for that).

However, I disagree with Hélène Mulholland and the report she cites: the wrecking of the House of Lords is not an unintended consequence. For some time now the Upper Chamber has been the only part of the British Constitution (oh yes, we do have one) that was still functioning. It has been undermined comprehensively by successive governments and their lackeys in the House but the final destruction is being carried out by the Cleggerons. And before anyone tells me that they should all be elected, anyway, let me remind my readers of the "hugely successful" elected Lower Chamber. There is more to constitutional democracy than elections.

Second Reading of the Constitutional Reform Bill

Of course this Bill, as Lord Norton of Louth pointed out during the Second Reading, is not going to go through all the stages as there is not enough time before Parliament has to be prorogued. Indeed, his lordship was more than a little displeased with the notion that a Constitutional Bill should be brought in so late in the session. To be fair, he said very similar things about the half-baked constitutional reforms that the Government appears to be playing around with just a few weeks before the session must come to an end.

The Bill may be accused of comprising a set of constitutional reforms which have been put together in haste, have not been subject to widespread consultation, and derive from no clear, coherent approach to constitutional change. The Minister, in replying to the debate, may have in mind making these very points. He would be most unwise to do so because the description I have just supplied applies just as well to the Government's proposals for constitutional change. The Prime Minister has announced a set of reform proposals that appear detached from any process of extended deliberation within government and which relate to no discernible coherent approach to constitutional change. This Bill, like the Prime Minister's proposals, comes at the end of a Parliament when there is no time for either House to consider it in detail.

This martial statement is a little unfair. While the Prime Minister’s proposals do have an air of something that was put together in haste and will be repented at leisure (something that we can say about all the constitutional reforms of the last 13 years), Lord Willoughby de Broke’s Bill has been presented to Parliament before but Private Members’ Bills tend to get fitted in when the Business of the House allows it.

Furthermore, Lord Willoughby in his speech outlined the main theme of his suggested reforms and it seems to be a coherent one:

The thrust of my Bill is the rebalancing of powers away from the Executive and a whipped Parliament to the people. Sir Francis Bacon wrote:

"A country is less free if it is all in the hands of the state".

This Bill will go some way to loosening the state's grasp, and I commend it to your Lordships. I beg to move.

As it happens, Lord Norton prefers a long and stately process in constitutional reform: lots of consultations, committees, White Papers, Green Papers and so on. He may well be right in essence but it is not seemly for a parliamentarian to dismiss another parliamentarian’s efforts to aid the matter of reform along. It is what parliamentarians are for. But then Lord Norton suffers from a slight problem: he is supposed to be one of our greatest living experts on constitutional law and has been asked by the Conservatives to produce ideas for strengthening Parliament, yet he does not seem to appreciate the importance of our EU membership. At least, not in public.

As Lord McNally, speaking for the Lib-Dims reminded him with less than complete historical accuracy:

I entirely support the idea of the noble Lord, Lord Norton, of a holistic, deliberative and coherent approach to this Bill. The only thing I note as a student of these issues is that the great constitutional advances have been made not by committees sitting endlessly around tables-we have been doing that for the past decade and made very little progress-but by people who believed in certain changes and fought for them. We fought a civil war, a king lost his head, another king lost his throne, we frightened the establishment by revolution to get an 1832 Act, and women chained themselves to railings-one woman spectacularly died-to get votes for women. The idea of constitutional reform being a matter for gradualism and rational debate is true up to a point, but constitutional reform is also made by people who believe in it.

Actually, Lord McNally’s speech was not at all bad, as soon as he stopped putting on his tiresome “man of the people” act. The truth is that he has been a political apparatchik all his life not a man of the people.

As the speech progressed, however, it became obvious that he (or his researcher) unlike the Noble Minister or Lord Henley for the Conservatives, had read the Bill and thought carefully about each article, supporting some, opposing others and remaining cautiously neutral on one or two. The one problem he did not manage to resolve is the Lib-Dim position on the in or out referendum.

He was asked by Lord Pearson of Rannoch:

Will the noble Lord clarify the position of his own party on a referendum on whether this country should be in or out of the European Union? Did not his leader, Mr Clegg, flounce out of the House of Commons because he was not going to get an "in or out" referendum on our membership? When I moved a suitable amendment here, the noble Lord's party failed to support it, so it would be very helpful to your Lordships to know whether the Liberal Democrats now support an "in or out" referendum on the European Union. If they do, they would be with us, of course.

To which Lord McNally returned a rather confused response:

First of all, Mr Clegg has never flounced anywhere in his life. We have said time and again that the Lisbon treaty, as the Conservative Party knows well, was a series of adjustments to EU arrangements to take account of the increasing membership of the EU. It was not the new constitution on which we had pledged a referendum. We have said consistently that if the EU comes forward with major constitutional changes, we will support an "in or out" referendum. It would be dishonest to keep suggesting referenda on changes, which, if they were carried, would cripple the EU, without having the courage to argue the "in or out" case.

It is, of course, easy to be confused about the Lib-Dim policy on practically anything.

Curiously and disappointingly, Lord Henley’s speech on behalf of the Conservative Party was little more than a petulant exercise in foot-stamping.

I accept that every private Member has a right to bring forward a Bill in this House or in another place. I would not want to restrict that in any way. But occasionally, possibly, there is a small element of abuse in bringing forward a Bill, right at the end of a Parliament, which has no prospect whatever of coming into law. It will waste our time on a number of Fridays or whenever when we have to deal with its Committee stage. Its sole purpose seems to be UKIP's general election manifesto.

Responding on HMG’s behalf, Lord Tunnicliffe said very little of any interest. Either he was not given his speech in time or he decided not to look at it before he stood up to deliver it in the House but one did not get the feeling that he actually knew what he was reading from his papers.

His rejection of Article I, withdrawal from the European Union, was not particularly thoughtful:

First, and perhaps least surprisingly given the noble Lord's membership of the United Kingdom Independence Party, Clause 1 would withdraw the United Kingdom from the European Union. The Government believe that our membership of the European Union has brought real benefits to the United Kingdom through jobs, peace and security. Through our membership, we belong to the world's biggest trading bloc. Over half of the United Kingdom's trade is within the EU, with an estimated 3.5 million British jobs linked to it. Our membership allows us to live, work and travel across Europe.

In fact, the words “clichés” and “hackneyed” spring to mind. He was challenged on one of the most obviously nonsensical parts of that statement by Lord Pearson:

I wonder if the noble Lord could explain how leaving the political construct of the European Union and continuing in free trade with our friends in Europe would have any effect on jobs whatsoever.

What, I wondered sitting up in the gallery, would the Noble Minister say to that. Well, actually, nothing. Literally. He refused to answer the question and said so. Obviously, this is a painful topic that needs to be referred to again and again, as even the talented researchers in the Minister’s office seem unable to deal with the problem. UKIP PPCs please note.

I hope readers of this blog will take the time to read through Lord Willoughby de Broke’s Bill (linked to above) but I shall summarize the main points:

1. Withdrawal from the European Union as no meaningful constitutional reform can be carried out while we are still in that noxious organization (those words are not in the Bill as that is most definitely unparliamentary language).

2. Repeal of the Human Rights Act as it undermines HMG’s ability to deal with crimes, terrorism and other related matters, as the Conservatives once put it when they played around with the idea.

3. Parliamentary approval for all international treaties and military involvement (though that might have to be honed as some treaties are quite routine and barely need any debate and there many small military involvements around for Britain to participate in).

4. Fewer parliamentary seats – the Bill suggests 250 but others think it might have to be as many as 400. This can be discussed at Committee stage.

5. Fixed parliamentary terms of 5 years but this can be overruled by a vote of no confidence in the government or by a referendum that is properly requested as outlined in later articles.

6. Reduce sitting days to prevent endless legislation either through primary or secondary channels.

7. MPs to have a salary of £30,000 plus expenses of £175,000, properly explained. MPs to be encouraged to take jobs outside their political activity though clearly they cannot be compelled.

8. A referendum on the House of Lords within seven years of the Act being passed, in which there are four options, one being total abolition, the other status quo and two more.

9. The central point of the Bill is the inclusion of referendums in the British constitutional structure, the Swiss model being an obvious one. Referendums will have to be called if 1 out of 60 persons on the electoral register sign a petition to that effect. Clearly, the numbers are a detail to be discussed in Committee. Petitions cannot be run on line as that makes fraud easier. Among other matters that can be subject to a referendum is the question of whether an election should be called between the statutory dates. After all, as Lord Willoughby de Broke pointed out, the Prime Minister intends to have a referendum on whether to change the centuries old first past the post system (though, of course, not on whether the entire constitutional structure of this country should be submitted to the Constitutional Lisbon Treaty).

10. Apart from a few, carefully defined national issues, matters should be handed over to various forms of local government, who should be legislating on them (if they really think they should) as well as raising taxes. Local referendums on various issues should be part of the arrangement.

11. A Royal Commission should be appointed to examine the existing public bodies, quangos, regional assemblies and other such leach-like institutions (unparliamentary language again) to decide, which are essential to the country, which should be kept on national level and which should be handed over to local authorities to do with them as they wish.

All, in all, a rebalancing of powers without the benefit of many committees and consultations. The Bill has now been committed to the Committee of the Whole House.

There would be unintended consequences

Or maybe the consequences would be intended but not announced. Martin Howe, one of our leading constitutional lawyers, has an article in the Wall Street Journal in which he summarizes his pamphlet for Politeia.

After outlining the present situation as far as British and European legislation are concerned and quoting previous legal decisions, Mr Howe comes to an interesting conclusion:

The Lisbon Treaty expands the EU's law-making powers and correspondingly restricts the power of the U.K. Parliament to make law. So the U.K. Parliament, while under the transient majority control of one party, has apparently permanently restricted the law-making power of future Parliaments, by ratifying the Lisbon Treaty. This restriction on the future law-making power of Parliament has no political legitimacy because it was never put to the British people for their approval.

According to orthodox and accepted understanding of the U.K.'s unwritten constitution, Parliament had no power to do this. As a matter of the U.K.'s internal law, Parliament can disregard or disapply any laws of EU origin even if that step might put the U.K. in breach of its international treaty obligations.

British courts have commented on this issue a few times since the U.K. joined what was called the Common Market in 1973. They have expressed the view that the U.K. Parliament retains the power to override EU laws if it expressly decides to do so, but if it is silent on the matter there is a presumption that normal Acts of Parliament will give way to EU law.

But the U.K.'s rule of parliamentary sovereignty is not embodied in any formal constitutional text. Rather, it is the product of centuries of custom and practice. Its continued validity ultimately depends upon the willingness of the judges in the U.K.'s new Supreme Court to uphold and apply it. There is a risk that over time, as more and more powers accrete to the EU, our judges might revise or depart from our long established rule of sovereignty.

This is why the U.K. now needs a bill which will write formally into law the rule that Parliament is sovereign and that it can, if it so chooses, over-ride any laws of external origin including those originating from the EU. This bill will cement the rule of sovereignty firmly into a formal constitutional text and make it resistant to erosion.

A law of this kind, if passed and actually applied, unlike the posturing of the German Karlsruhe Court, could have serious consequences in the UK and the EU. Is the Boy-King going to announce it as part of the Conservative manifesto?

I may have to start screaming

And you would not like that. The reason I feel like screaming is that I am still reading numerous references to Gordon Brown not being the elected Prime Minister but being a despot and a tyrant as well as, no doubt, a usurper.

He is none of those things though we have moved a long way from the sort of liberal, constitutional democracy that many of us would like. That process was helped along by both parties, particularly since this country's membership of what started as the EEC and is now the EU.

Now please, everybody repeat after me: we do not elect Prime Ministers, we elect parties to form governments. As the leader of the party that has won three elections (and what does that tell you about political life in this country?) Gordon Brown is the duly elected Prime Minister of this country (and what does that tell you ....?). Tough.

I appreciate that the Labour Party should not have crowned him after Blair's resignation instead of going through their usual internal electoral process but that is their problem. It has nothing to do with the country or its constitution.

Just to remind everyone: other "unelected" Prime Ministers were Churchill in 1940, Eden in 1955, Macmillan in 1957, Douglas-Home in 1963, Callaghan in 1976 and Major in 1991 1990 (thank you for the correction). All unelected tyrants, presumably.

Devolving power?

There is just one point that has been missed by many of the commentariat in both old and new media about the competition between David Cameron and Jack Straw for ideas that involve tinkering round the edges of our derelict parliamentary system.

Recall of MPs, set-term parliaments, committees elected by back-bench members, more scrutiny of legislation, all sound wonderful ideas but none of them tackle the main issues of legislation being done by bodies we do not elect or control.

Cameron is also talking about devolving power to ever lower rungs of government, an idea that he may or may not have acquired from Daniel Hannan and Douglas Carswell. Nothing wrong with that, though having a quango to supervise the House of Commons finances does not seem to me to be a step in the right direction.

This, however, has turned into articles and headlines that tell us about David Cameron wanting to devolve power to the people. If that is what the Boy-King means then he has completely misunderstood the basic tenet of modern English and Anglospheric power structure. The state cannot devolve power to the people because it belongs to them in the first place; the state does not grant the people liberties because those liberties are the people's property. It is all the other way round: the people might, for various reasons, loan powers and agree to forego their liberties for certain purposes. It is high time our politicians grasped this simple fact.