Page 185 - DPOL202_COMPARATIVE_POLITICS_AND_GOVERNMENT_ENGLISH

Comparative Politics and Government

Notes himself in touch with important matters affecting his people and his country. If he so likes, he
may call the Prime Minister for gathering necessary information.
• The advisory functions of the king have got an importance of their own and a wise and sagacious
king should not press his counsels to the point of creating a crisis. The mystic aura of royalty
and the traditional reverence for his highest office lend special weight to his counsels.
• The monarch provides the golden link of the empire, a lace that joins, like the different beads,
the various parts of the Commonwealth of Nations. Though a titular head of the state, British
king stands as the shield of imperialism and also as the symbol of peaceful relationship between
the ‘mother country’ and its colonies whether dependent or self-governing dominions. The
Commonwealth of Nations thus finds a cementing bond in the great office of the monarch as
the dominions pay final allegiance to the king and the republics regard him as the ‘symbol of
friendship.’
• The English people are essentially conservative and they do not want to change their old
institutions radically. The experience of the Commonwealth Period (1649-60) drove home the
lesson of even a despotic king’s being better than a military dictator.
• Britain has a cabinet government in which the monarch finds a fitting place. He is the only non-
political member of the political machine in the hands of a cabinet having a Prime Minister and
other ministers of either Labour or Conservative party. The phrase that ‘king can do no wrong’,
or ‘that he reigns but does not govern’, is a proof of the fact that real authority is exercised by
the ministers “responsible to the Parliament and the people, while the king is just a symbol of
dignified executive.
• The office of the monarch is not without many advantages on the national plane. The king
proves himself to be indispensable in the working of the government and the promotion of the
interests of the English people. It is he who invites the leader of the majority party in the House
of Commons to form the government as desired by the electorate and it is he who dissolves the
House to seek a fresh verdict of the people.
• The distinction between King and Crown may be made more clear with the help of a few
noteworthy points. First, the former is a living person, while the latter is the institution. As a
person, king is born and he is to die one day; while the Crown is the permanent institution of
Britain. The phrase that ‘king is dead, long live the king’ really means that the king as a person
is no more, but may the office of monarch live long.
• The classical doctrine of the Prime Minister’s being ‘first among equals’ or primus inter pares
now stands thoroughly discredited. Such an astounding development of the British constitutional
system, however, found its best expression in the statement of R.H.S. Crossman who should be
regarded as the author of a new doctrine.
• The Prime Minister is the master of his Cabinet. As such, any minister fighting in the Cabinet
for his Department can be sacked by the Prime Minister any day. The ministers must be constantly
aware that their tenure of office depends on his personal decisions.
• The Prime Minister decides about the organisation of the Cabinet committees. What committees
exist, how they are manned, above all, who are the chairmen — all this is entirely a concern of
the Prime Minister.
• The final power of the Prime Minister is his personal control of Government publicity. The
Government’s press relations are conducted by the Number 10 press department at its daily
press conferences. That means, the people have a daily coherent, central explanation of what
the Government is doing—an explanation naturally in terms the Prime Minister thinks right.
• A Prime Minister who habitually ignored the Cabinet, who behaved as if Prime Ministerial
Government were a reality – such a Prime Minister could come to grief. He would be challenged
by his colleagues in the Cabinet and on occasion overridden. Theoretically, a Prime Minister
could dismiss all his Ministers; but then he would present his critics in the party with potent
leadership:

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