Prime Minister of The United Kingdom - Constitutional Background

Constitutional Background

The British system of government is based on an "unwritten" constitution, meaning that it is not codified into a single document. Scattered across 800 years, the British constitution consists of many documents—such as Magna Carta (1215), the Great Reform Bill (1832), and the Parliament Act (1911)—and, most important for the evolution of the office of Prime Minister, customs known as conventions that became accepted practice. In 1841, Prime Minister Lord Melbourne explained this feature of the British constitution in a letter to young Queen Victoria:

All the political part of the English Constitution is fully understood, and distinctly stated in Blackstone and many other books, but the Ministerial part, the work of conducting the executive government, has rested so much on practice, on usage, on understanding, that there is no particular publication to which reference can be made for the explanation and description of it. It is to be sought in debates, in protests, in letters, in memoirs, and wherever it can be picked up.

Almost one hundred years later, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith made the same point in his memoirs:

In this country we live... under an unwritten Constitution. It is true that we have on the Statute-book great instruments like Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, and the Bill of Rights which define and secure many of our rights and privileges; but the great bulk of our constitutional liberties and . . . our constitutional practices do not derive their validity and sanction from any Bill which has received the formal assent of the King, Lords and Commons. They rest on usage, custom, convention, often of slow growth in their early stages, not always uniform, but which in the course of time received universal observance and respect.

Until the 20th century the relationship between the Prime Minister vis-a-vis the Sovereign, Parliament and Cabinet was defined entirely by these unwritten conventions of the constitution. Despite its growing dominance in the constitutional hierarchy, the Premiership was given little formal recognition; the legal fiction was maintained that the Sovereign still governed directly. For example, many of the Prime Minister's executive and legislative powers are actually “royal prerogatives” and still formally vested in the Head of State, the Sovereign.

Under this arrangement Britain might appear to have two executives: the Prime Minister and Sovereign. The concept of "the Crown" resolves this paradox. The Crown symbolises the state’s authority to govern: to make laws and execute them, impose taxes and collect them, declare war and make peace. Before the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 the Sovereign wore the Crown and exercised the powers it symbolises. Afterwards Parliament gradually forced Sovereigns to assume a neutral political position. Parliament placed the Crown in "commission", entrusting its authority to responsible Ministers (the Prime Minister and Cabinet), accountable for their policies and actions to Parliament and the people. Although the Sovereign still wears the Crown and her prerogative powers are still legally intact, Parliament has removed her from everyday governance, leaving her in practice with three constitutional rights: to be kept informed, to advise, and to warn.