A brief note on British democracy

A brief note on British democracy on the day Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigns but doesn't leave.

From 1935-1945, Britain had a "National" government consisting of a coalition. No elections were held in Britain for those 10 years. The king chose the PM and with the PM, they both chose the cabinet. According to biographers, the king chose the PM based on his class and chose the aristocrat Churchill over the working-class alternative.

By the early 1960's, sentiment had shifted. When a Tory PM resigned with a Tory majority, it was up to the queen, as it had been before with her father and his father and his mother and so forth and so on, to select the "top man" for the job. The British Tories weren't electing leaders in those days. She had two leading Tory members to ask to form a new government, and, like her father, she chose the aristocrat - Lord Home, who was incompetent and lasted ONE YEAR, exposing the queen to a flurry of criticism.

So, when PM and Labour leader Tony Blair announced he would resign, and to avoid any appearance of the queen's involvement and earlier backlash, Blair, still PM with a majority, coordinated a hat trick with his party and the palace. He formerly stepped down only as leader of the Labour Party. His successor, Gordon Brown, was then elected as leader of the Labour Party, at which time Blair tendered his resignation to the queen as PM. Then she called for Gordon Brown, the leader of the party. 

Otherwise, it would have appeared that she herself had filled the office.

The last monarch to bring a government down for political reasons was William IV, after he refused to endorse the democratizing Reform Bill of 1832. The last monarch to bring down a government at all was his successor, Victoria, because she refused the incoming PM his demand that her personal staff be mixed and not all of his opposing party.

Both maneuvers would have succeeded a generation earlier, but both failed even in the 1800's. William had to recall the fallen government and sign a bill that weakened his powers and the powers of the aristocracy. Victoria, too, had to recall the fallen government and change the composition of her staff.

To my knowledge, no monarch since has dared do this. Popular sentiment, whatever you think of it, scares these people.

Unlike all of his successors, Boris Johnson's resignation this morning made absolutely no reference to the queen. This was always a formality, just as upon taking office, a PM would say "I have just come from seeing the queen, and she has asked me to form a government .... blah blah blah." Equally, upon resigning of a loss of a Parliamentary majority after an election, a defeated PM would say, "I have gone to see the queen to offer my resignation ... blah blah blah."

Boris said none of this.

What's happening here may not be at all on the scale of an October Revolution or a march from the Sierra Maestra on January 1959, and it may be overlooked. But it is the force of democracy, and our work has yielded this - going back to those radicals after Charles was executed and Republic England unleashed democratic demands, continuing with the Shay's Rebellion, the emanations of the women's movements, and the first and enduring abolitionists: those Africans who refused to submit.

The supernatural powers of the aristocracies of the world are collapsing. I know this is a strange lesson to draw from this morning's resignation, but as one guy said, "Them's the breaks.

Like they say, this is a marathon, not a sprint. Don't forget the long view of things.