How Impartial Is The Queen?
How politically neutral is Her Majesty the Queen? In my view Royal neutrality is a bit of a myth. Her Majesty’s very public endorsement of the 1998 surrender to the IRA, well-publicised in the weeks between the instrument of surrender and the far-from-fair and far-from-frank referendum which endorsed the surrender, was a direct intervention in contentious politics. When I called the Palace at the time and asked them to explain, they told me to ‘consult a constitutional expert’. I asked them if they had a list of approved ones, and the line went quiet.
Of course it did. There is no court of appeal on such things.
Then, in her 2004 Christmas broadcast she proclaimed 'diversity is indeed a strength' - a Royal endorsement of the multiculturalism many oppose and dislike. I thought then, and think now, that this was a breach of impartiality too. And I was worried by her apparent intervention in the Scottish referendum. Was this proper?
What about the Monarch’s apparently warm attitude towards the EU, and her seeming endorsement of its disputed and dubious claim to be a force for peace and harmony, which many believe was exposed in this Berlin speech on Thursday, delivered to an enthusiastically nodding Angela Merkel? Division in Europe dangerous? Who says? The safest period of my life was the Cold War, far more peaceful than now, as the EU rampages around the Balkans and the Ukraine.
Well, what is the monarch’s standing in the EU? Buckingham Palace’s website makes an interesting statement on this, here
http://www.royal.gov.uk/MonarchUK/QueenandGovernment/Queenandvoting.aspx
What’s interesting is that under English or United Kingdom law and precedent, the Queen , being part of Parliament (‘The Queen in Parliament’ ) is simply not able to vote for members of another part of the legislature. This is part of the wiring of our ancient constitution, not a rule later invented, but a fact.
This is also, as far as I can work it out, why she cannot issue herself with a passport, which (although it is an EU document with a flatulent, vestigial rubric on it about an (unidentified, see below) Secretary of State ‘requesting and requiring’ Johnny Foreigner to do this or that, which these days he generally doesn’t) still bears her insignia.
UK passports are still issued under Royal Prerogative, the simplest source of state authority, rather than under Parliamentary law. This may also be why Her Majesty does not have to have a licence plate on her car, though I’m happy to be corrected by anyone who understands this better. I think it’s also why she used not to pay any tax.
However, compare and contrast : ‘Under the Maastricht Treaty, The Queen and other members of the Royal Family would be entitled to vote for the European Parliament, or to stand for election to that Parliament.
‘However, The Queen would only exercise these rights on the advice of her Ministers. Their advice would invariably be that she should neither vote nor stand for an elected position so as not to compromise her neutrality.’
But , as she’s not part of the European Parliament, which actually has sovereignty over this country and legislates for it, under the guidance of the Commission , the European Council and the European Court of Justice, her abstention is a choice, not a constitutional fact.
This is quite interesting, if you like poking about in the hidden wiring of our constitution. For it turns out(and Buckingham Palace has confirmed this to me today) that the Queen, by virtue of being a British *national* (she is not a British *citizen*, and of course was not, in the days when the rest of us had that lost privilege, a *subject* of herself) is a *citizen* of the European Union.
Though born in the then colony of Malta, I was by right of British parentage a British subject from 1951 to 1982. I did not notice that I had lost this historically rather moving and exceptional status until , trapped in some airport by delays, I studied my passport more carefully than usual and found that I had at some point become a citizen, with the ‘right of abode’ in my own country. This happened in 1982. At the same time the passport ceased to say what your occupation was, so anyone who claims that it ‘says in their passport’ that they are something or other ( as people often do) is making up it up.
Not long afterwards, I’d guess 1984 or 1985, I was at a political lunch with the then Home Secretary Leon Brittan, recently deceased, who arrived late explaining that he had been at a ceremony in which the issuing of passports was transferred from the Foreign Office to the Home Office. This was presumably because the passport was about to become an EU document, issued on behalf of the EU by the Home Office, rather than by an independent country declaring that it recognised and protected its people when travelling abroad. The old rubric about ‘Her Britannic Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs’ requesting and requiring all those whom it might concern to afford the bearer all necessary whatsit, etc etc was altered to ‘Her Majesty’s Secretary of State’, unspecified. For all anyone knew, it might be the Secretary of State for Wales, or Drains. I can remember Leon Brittan explaining that this would now mean him, as Home Secretary. I think they left that out because it might alert people to the fact that they were now carrying an EU document. One side-effect of this was that the ancient system under which the SIS (MI6) officer in every embassy was officially the Passport officer had to be abandoned and they had to think of a new cover story.
In 1988 the old stiff blue passport began to be replaced by the Building Society passbook which we have had since, first bearing the words European Community and then , in 1997, ‘European Union’ (the lettering in which ‘European Union’ is stamped on the front cover grows marginally bigger as the years pass, though you need to be observant to notice this). My last proper blue passport, containing a lovely collection of Warsaw Pact visa stamps and my Moscow residence permit, was stolen from a jacket pocket in the old ‘Daily Express ‘ office soon after I returned from Russia in 1992.
Well, now that I and Her Majesty are both EU citizens, whether we want to be or not, What does EU citizenship entail? All is explained here:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/atyourservice/en/displayFtu.html?ftuId=FTU_2.1.1.html
So, at the moment, it’s just a few not especially wonderful rights. But then there’s the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (This began life as the original Treaty of Rome but has been substantially revised over the years. It is the core of the EU’s constitution and can be studied in its ‘ consolidated version’ here
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:12012E/TXT&from=EN )
In its Part Two, you will find that Article 20, paragraph 2 reads (my emphasis):
- Citizenship of the Union is hereby established. Every person holding the nationality of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union. Citizenship of the Union shall be additional to and not replace national citizenship. 2. Citizens of the Union shall enjoy the rights and be subject to the duties provided for in the Treaties.
It adds that there are, as yet, no duties. But when they think of some, the Treaty already obliges us to be subject to them. All they have to do is devise them and ram them through the EU’s decision-making process. So as far as I can see, the Queen, technically, is a subject of the EU, which, as a Sovereign, she cannot be. A Palace spokesperson told me today that the Queen’s EU citizenship ‘ in no way affects her prerogatives, rights and responsibilities as the Sovereign and Head of State.’
But I’m really not sure that can be so. I’ll see if I can find a constitutional expert.