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a mere figurehead going into a gold carriage and opening parliament, they may
be oblivious or unaware of a fact that she is Head of State and has a
significant role as Head of State in the unwritten constitution. The fact that
those powers are called reserve powers obscures or conceals the fact that they
are indeed real powers.
I would argue that the existing constitutional framework in the United
Kingdom creates several kinds of problems. These are problems of obscurity or
lack of clarity caused by the ancient nature of these powers being used and
applied in a 21st century democracy. So, what we have is the historical form of
a medieval monarchy still manifest, not merely as a vestige, but as the actual
structure of the state. That does create problems certainly in addressing the
remit of government especially when three are equal challenges. So, that
framework also creates problems relating to constitutional competence. For
example, problems for the judiciary when they have to deal with highly
contentious political issues. That’s problem of the legal structure which quite
manifest in the recent case, the Miller case, which was actually a challenge
to the authority of the government to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.
Put in simple terms, the government wanted to trigger the provision to leave
the European Union and acting under royal prerogative. That was challenged.
If you look at the Supreme Court judgement of the UK, you can see that there
are conceptual problems with the way in which the most senior judges grapple,
in my view, rather weakly, with the complexity of this obscure historical
constitution.
When we look at the institutions of government and parliament. The
sovereign body and the state, by which, I mean the ultimate legal and political
authority in the state. That, in the UK, is said to be the Queen-in-Parliament.
This key principle of the constitution is just that. It is said to be the key
principle of the constitution, but it is a principle, and not a law. The Queen-in-
Parliament refers to the deliberations and law-making of the House of Commons
and the House of Lords, the lower chamber and the upper chamber, and the
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assent of the Crown. So, there are three elements to it. The actions in the
lower chamber of the House of Commons, the deliberations and law making of
the upper chamber as the House of Lords, and the assent of the Crown which
is given by the monarchs. So, it’s the underlying power. The sovereign body is
this tri-party system.
Conceptually, there is a duality in the term of the Crown. The Crown
refers to the actions of the government, but in relation to the idea of the
Queen-in-Parliament’s sovereign body, it means the formal assent of the
monarch. By convention, the monarch assents to that which her government
proposes, save and except where she exercises reserve powers. Only one part
